No.

it undermines our legitimacy. It provides unreliable information. it alienates our allies. it solidifies resistance, and makes new enemies.

There are much better ways of obtaining the valuable intel necessary to capture and imprison these criminals.

johnson1010, click on the yes or no button too.

I couldn't agree more.

Harsh interrogation techniques (in the old days we just called it torture) are not effective interrogation techniques. We are constantly given the hypothetical situation of a ticking time bomb and the only way to stop it is by torturing some bad guy. It's a specious argument.

1) In reality, this situation rarely (if ever) happens.
2) Experience tells us that torture is less effective than more humane interrogation techniques.

Has the USA ever won a war against any of the nouns with no spatial location its gone up against?

The poll is a trick question. You can't win a war against terror.

Excellent point.

our national mob mentality is too easily governed by fear, and there are too many people willing to exploit this weakness. More often than not these are the people who shout the loudest that they are patriots.

I think that is true, and in addition the “war on terror” became a bit of a cover for the right wing agenda that seemed to be so close to the heart of the previous administration.

That said, some countries have had some reasonable success with groups that have relied on violent, headline grabbing, terrorist style acts used to try and get their point across. Britain’s efforts in Northern Ireland, and earlier, in the 1950’s, in Malaysia, are examples.

Torture is an abomination. And in many of these sorts of events, massive military displays are also less than productive. What’s worked has been a full slate of political negotiation, social campaigning, intelligence work, and targeted police and military action, based on a thorough understanding of the historical, political, and ethnic issues involved.

I hate the phrase "War on Terror".
People cannot declare a war on terror. It's an oxymoron. War is terror.

Harsh interrogation techniques are torture. Torture isn't even reliable, people will say anything to make the pain stop. Anything they think you want to hear, and most of the time it isn't true.

I think we should be able to do what we have to do. We have to put ourselves first. The terrorist are exploiting the fact that we have to tip toe around every issue related to the war. I would rather have covert CIA operations that included torture, and not have our Military over in Afghanistan.

Hello. I'm not against torture. I'm for anything, potentially, so long as an equal consideration of interests has been afforded everyone involved. I consider we should be able to do what we have to do to be, for the most part, a compelling argument - so long as it is clear that we do know what we have to do. Otherwise I find it more likely the case for it being an argument saying we should be able to do what we want to do. I find the fact-finding and analysis capabilities of both the previous and the current White House along with their intelligence assets to be of a less than envious quality; when it comes to recognizing what needs to be done, they don't. I'm open to torture. I am. I do need something far more concrete however than We have to put ourselves first to give it the thumbs up.

I understand your point, but I feel like our intelligence assets are doing the best they can. People point to Iraq and say we were mislead to believe there were weapons of mass destruction. Of course actual nukes were never found. What people forget is that Saddam Hussein himself said he wanted the world, mainly Iran to believe he had WMD's. The belief that he possessed these weapons kept Iran from attacking.

Sometimes you have to believe the intelligence given to you because the risk of ignoring it and facing the consequences that come with the possibility that the information was correct are too great.

You can't win a war against terror because you can't win a war against something that exists in the minds of the people. That's not to say that I didn't want retribution when the Towers went down. It's just to say that we're fighting johnson1010's "national mob mentality". People are told to be afraid, so they are. The way to end that is to stop telling people to be afraid and to try to make peace with the overall population of a nation. Then, terrorist acts lose any support that they might have and become as repulsive to the people of the nation as they are to the people attacked.

As far as harsh interrogation techniques... I don't believe they are effective for many of the reasons already mentioned, and I believe they have the effect of making us look like terrorists ourselves. It turns us into what we hate in other people.

These are great statements, Ritzy and Krysondra.

I think it doesn’t take too much reflection to come to the conclusion that there is no war on terror.

Terrorism as a tool for those forcefully trying to get what they want has been around for a long, long time. Just a few recent bouts include: the IRA in Northern Ireland, the Bader-Mienhoff Gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Shinning Path in Peru, and the Basque separatists in Spain. Need we even mention the Middle East? Israel had it’s own terrorist groups active while it was the underdog, and committed it’s share of horrible acts. Today it is the Palestinians who are on the ropes, and they are now claiming their share of atrocities.

What changed with 9/11 was that the US felt the full force violence that many in the world have had to put up with for a long time.

The Bush administration has created a mess in Iraq, after attempting an adventure there in order to gain strategic advantage in an oil-rich part of the world. It offered the falsehood of WMD as a cover, and when that was exposed then tried to link terrorism with the late Iraqi regime. There was no such link. There are quite a few terrorists in Iraq now, drawn as if by a magnet by what is widely seen in the region as yet another shot at imperialism. When these arguments fall away, a last ditch defense is sometimes offered: the real reason for going was to plant democracy in the Middle East. I think it hardly bears mentioning that the US, along with most other great powers in their day, have propped up the most authoritarian, repressive regimes imaginable, as long as it suited strategic interest. This includes Iraq under Saddam Hussein, which received massive US aid during its war with Iran in the ‘80s.

The US and NATO are in a similar quagmire in Afghanistan, still stumbling about bombing villages and allowing the poppy crop to go to market after eight years. They are injecting themselves into a tribal and religious conflict, and the notion that it is about international terrorism would probably come as a surprise to many of the local combatants. The argument is made that Afghanistan was used as a training base for terrorism. I guess it was, but much of the essential training for 9/11 was done at flight training centers in the US, and apparently at a hotel room in Hamburg, Germany. In other words determined people can hatch plots like these from any number of locations.

Hence the fiction of a war on terror. It’s a great idea in a way. It is a project that will be hard to measure, and therefore difficult to come up with any criticisms. There will be no real end, and so it can be maintained as long as it suits political purpose. It is a cover for the horrendous loss of life and resources in Iraq and Afghanistan, because they are now both presented as just elements in a much larger and absolutely essential crusade, bungled a little perhaps, but the main war goes on.

The sorts of people who perpetrate these crimes will, unfortunately, be with us for the foreseeable future. There will always be some in the world who feel aggrieved enough, and are invested in the acceptability of violence, that will commit terrorist acts. Those that don’t possess access to conventional power will go for whatever weapon they can to make themselves heard. The most extreme acts will likely lure the sociopath or the outright foolish, but for situations where there is a perceived clearer and more justifiable cause, there will be appeal to a broader spectrum.

Despite the spectacular and tragic impact of 9/11, there is evidence that terrorism has not been increasing in the world overall to any great degree. By some estimates, the 1980’s saw the highest levels of terrorist activity in the world, and it has dropped some since then. It will no doubt ebb and flow in the future, as the geopolitical landscape changes.

We may never get rid of terrorists, but we could likely reduce their numbers significantly. Most obviously, include at least a bit of ethics in international relations. We need the oil in the Middle East, but that’s not a justification for dirty tricks or outright invasion. That would give the relative moderates something to think about. Next would be an attempt to stop the cycle of violence in the various conflicts around the world. Interventions like Iraq, prisons like Guantanamo, and CIA interrogators carving up suspects in dungeons are all examples of feeding the cycle, not putting brakes on it. Whether you or I agree, the vast majority of terrorists, excluding the tiny minority of the above mentioned sociopaths and idiots, likely believe strongly in their cause. Dialogue may work with some of them. But one has to start from a place of greater understanding of world issues, and less pure self-interest than has been the case with the last US administration. Torture and other forms of mayhem are much more likely to perpetuate the cycle.

For the rest we need law enforcement and prisons. This last point will be harder to accomplish without the first one in place. There will be less chance of getting the cooperation of other countries in intelligence sharing and law enforcement, without having a mutually respectful and beneficial relationship.

Commentators who have studied these things have said that torture doesn’t work. It gets you unreliable information. And it is certainly morally reprehensible. Let me ask you a question ajuarbe. If you are for torture, are you willing personally to be the one carving up a suspect in a basement somewhere, strangling, drowning, or cutting off various appendages of someone who is a son, husband, or father? And if not, how comfortable are you willing to be, sitting in an easy chair and turning your head while someone else is delegated to do the dirty work? And more broadly, how comfortable are you seeing this done to “suspects” to support the fallout from the foreign policy decisions of a president who seems to have difficulty in stringing together a couple of sentences?