Blowback

In a "must-read" article by Matthew Alexander, former senior military interrogator who led the interrogations team that located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, comes this bit of truth:

As a senior interrogator in Iraq, I conducted more than three hundred interrogations and monitored more than one thousand. I heard numerous foreign fighters state that the reason they came to Iraq to fight was because of the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Our policy of torture and abuse is Al-Qaeda's number one recruiting tool. These same insurgents have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of our troops in Iraq, not to mention Iraqi civilians. Torture and abuse are counterproductive in the long term and, ultimately, cost us more lives than they save.

The Cunning Realist goes on to make this point about Alexander's revelation.

The current debate about torture focuses on two broad considerations: the moral and the practical. On the latter, I haven't seen much discussion about the issue of blowback. I think if I or a member of my family was tortured/abused, I would dedicate the rest of my life to revenge -- against both the individuals and the country or cause they represented. I wonder how many of our victims or their relatives have made such a vow. When you think about how many prisoners went through Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and the other detention sites, then multiply that by the number of brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, kids and cousins, you're talking about many thousands of potential avengers.

As the means of mass destruction get ever-smaller and more accessible to individuals via vials and backpacks, blowback becomes an even more important issue. It only takes one person from the countless lives that have been damaged or destroyed during the long occupation of two countries. Factor in a culture that puts a premium on honor and grudges and revenge and generally takes a long view of history, and we might not find out for many years exactly how much danger we've put ourselves in.

Precisely. But recognition of this point requires reality-based thinking which was not a strong point of the Bush administration nor of the far-right now.