Legend — not history — tells us that Gen. John “Black Jack”
Pershing quelled a Moro uprising in the Philippines in about 1911
by burying insurrectionists’ bodies with slaughtered pigs. The
Muslim insurgents supposedly gave up after a few such incidents,
because — according to religious law — this would prevent their
dead from reaching heaven. In the 1935 flick Lives of a Bengal
Lancer, tough guy Gary Cooper threatens a Muslim prisoner with
this treatment, and the man immediately breaks down, giving Coop
the location where the bad guys are holding his colonel’s son
hostage. The question now arises: How, if at all, can we use the
religious beliefs of a prisoner to break down his resistance and
extract information?
We are in the first stages of another “prisoner abuse” mess.
Both the Washington Post and Maureen Dowd are suffering a
severe case of the vapors over revelations that female
interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba terrorist detention
facility are sexually taunting prisoners, aiming at Muslim
religious beliefs to pressure the hard cases to break. The title of
Dowd’s January 30 column, “Torture Chicks Gone Wild,” shows you
where this argument is going. It is usually sufficient that Dowd is
against something to prove we should be for it but, in this case,
we need to parse it out a bit before we make a decision.
According to the February 10 Washington Post story, “female interrogators regularly violated
Muslim taboos about sex and contact with women. The women rubbed
their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them,
made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively.”
Dowd’s column picked up on another point, saying that the U.S. is
“allowing its female interrogators to try to make Muslim men talk
in late-night sessions featuring sexual touching, displays of fake
menstrual blood, and parading in miniskirt, tight T-shirt, bra and
thong underwear.” Which, minus the fake blood, is not a lot
different from what Monica was doing with Lil’ Billy in the Oval
Office.
There are two issues here. First, is it beyond the pale to use a
person’s religious beliefs against him in interrogations? Second,
are sexually aggressive interrogation techniques that stop short of
sexual abuse and torture either illegal or immoral?
Start with the motivation of the terrorists. They believe that
they are serving their religion by their acts. There’s no use in
arguing the point with them. The Koran, as they interpret it,
requires holy war against the American aggressor who comes to the
Middle East to destroy their religion. That is their dogma, their
belief that is so deeply felt that they are eager to sacrifice
their lives in its service. It is this belief that strengthens
them, and makes them highly resistant to normal interrogation
techniques.
We rule out torture. Our laws and the International Convention
Against Torture tell us what the limits
are. Nothing says we cannot attack the beliefs that the terrorists
hold most dear. No one would question sending a tough black FBI
agent in to question a Ku Klux Klan member harshly. Putting someone
that the prisoner fears and reviles in control of the interrogation
is a very good step toward shattering the prisoner’s mental
defenses. It’s one of the best ways to succeed in an
interrogation.
Mr. Jim Guirard has been fighting valiantly, and so far in vain,
to get us to start calling the terrorists “mufsidoon,” the Arabic
word for a criminal whose crimes violate the laws of Islam. It’s a
better label than “jihadist” — holy warrior — which honors the
enemy wrongly. Would it be an attack on a prisoner’s religion to
force him to wear a jumpsuit that had “mufsidoon” painted on the
back in large letters? Of course not. It’s not an attack on the
religion of Islam, it’s an attack on the prisoner’s motivation to
be a terrorist. Putting a scantily clad woman interrogator in
charge of the interrogation is really no different. These aren’t
Muslim holy men. They’re outlaws and we need to show them that we
have no respect for them or their perversion of Islam.
What went on at the Abu Ghraib prison went far beyond sexual
provocation. In many cases, it was sexual abuse. That is why Pvt.
Lynndie England and some of her pals will be doing hard time in
jail. But where do we draw the line? And how do we prevent
interrogators from crossing it?
Our civilian society has become overly sensitized to sexual
harassment. The career of a male boss — civilian or military —
can be ended quickly by an incautious remark to a female
subordinate. We cannot afford to allow this heightened sensitivity
to control the interrogation of terrorist prisoners whose knowledge
we must obtain to save lives.
Should it be forbidden for a female interrogator to rub her
breasts against a prisoner and then laugh at the result? Should she
be prohibited from wearing a thong in his presence and taunting his
manhood? I think not. Should we require female interrogators to do
these things? Certainly not.
Where the line can be drawn in interrogation of terrorist
prisoners is unclear. Sexual abuse: rape, forced sexual acts of any
nature, are abhorrent and must continue to be prohibited. Below
that threshold, we must guard against establishing limits that are
false, and can prevent successful interrogations.
TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than
You Think (Regnery, 2004).
