Counterinsurgency and Torture

After a lapse of thirty years, counterinsurgency is back as a topic of military study. Counterinsurgency is the work of empire. It involves a dominant power forcing its will on a subject people. The modalities involved in this process range from the distribution of food, medical supplies, and other social benefits to outright bribery and on from there into the dark arts of psychological warfare, political assassination, sabotage, and torture. The United States Army has long been involved in the work of counterinsurgency, and methods developed during the Vietnam war are now being redeployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These include torture, whose use in counterinsurgency is widely debated.

The argument about torture pits two schools of thought against each other. Those who believe in its efficacy cite the “ticking time bomb” hypothesis. You torture your opponent to get out of him the tactical information that allows you to diffuse a time bomb before it blows up in your face. Torture is a dark art which you use because it works. The other side argues that this position is wrong. The strong when tortured confess to nothing, and the weak confess to everything. Torture produces an avalanche of disinformation. Haunted by competing ideologies, the U.S. military is anxiously confronting the use of torture in counterinsurgency.