I'm not an expert on torture techniques, except with respect to the infliction of my poetry on unsuspecting readers. But I do watch the television show 24, which gives me some credibility. And the technique seems to be to occasionally let off. Let the guy think about it. Give him some room to come to the conclusion that he needs to see things your way.
So when I read something by Victor David Hanson the other day I wondered at the similarity between torture and terrorism:
Terror is the signature of the Islamist: hit, back off; hit, back off — hoping in a few years to erode the will and nerve of affluent and leisured Western countries.Perhaps. But it seems that the West is even more threatened, if less dramatically, by low population replacement rates. Europe, like an old soldier, won't die but will likely fade away.
Bin Laden has so far only made one mistake: He took down the entire World Trade Center rather than the top floors, and had the misfortune of having George Bush as president. Thus he lost Afghanistan and ended up with democratic reform from Iraq and Lebanon to the Gulf and Egypt. Train bombings in Madrid and bus explosions in London, like the carnage in Iraq, are preferable, since they are enough to terrify and demoralize the Westerner but not quite enough to knock sense into him that only military resistance and victory will save his civilization.
So the attacks will never quite be of such a stature to convince Western voters that one more such explosion will destroy their societies. The trick is instead to wage war insidiously, incrementally, and stealthily to avoid an overwhelming response. A cooling-off period in between 9/11 and 7/7 in which Western apologists, pacifists, and Islamist sympathizers go to work is essential for the terror to continue.
Finally, ABC's This Week constantly reminds us of soldier's deaths. Here's the story of one soldier's heroism.
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