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| In Iraq's Prisons, Try a Little Tenderness |
| 2005-08-25 |
| From The New York Times, an opinion piece by Scott Gerwehr, a policy analyst, and Nina Hachigian, a senior political scientist, at the RAND Corporation. .... there were some successes in the Vietnam War, including an initiative to win the allegiance of captured and defecting Vietcong and North Vietnamese fighters by treating them generously and reshaping their attitudes. This idea - that harsh treatment of prisoners can be less effective than showing compassion - now deserves a test in Iraq. The program in Vietnam was called Chieu Hoi, roughly translated as "open arms." While rarely effective against the most hard-core and high-ranking insurgents, Chieu Hoi succeeded in winning the support of nearly 200,000 fighters for the American-backed government of South Vietnam. Under Chieu Hoi, defectors and prisoners who proved cooperative received clemency against treason charges as well as good food, health care, vocational training and jobs. At the same time, they were systematically indoctrinated with literature, classes and activities to persuade them to support the South Vietnamese government. Studies carried out during the war by the RAND Corporation found that thousands of those former enemies who participated in Chieu Hoi became good sources of intelligence on the Communist forces, provided American advisers and troops with cultural and linguistic knowledge, enlisted civilians to support the American cause, and even took up arms against their former Vietcong and North Vietnamese comrades. .... Captured enemy documents now in the archives of the Army Special Operations Command discuss the powerful effect of Chieu Hoi on the enemy. One Vietcong report from 1966 says: "The impact of increased enemy military operations and 'Chieu Hoi' programs has, on the whole, resulted in lowering of morale of some ideologically backward men, who often listen to enemy radio broadcasts, keep in their pockets enemy leaflets, and wait to be issued weapons. This attitude on their part has generated an atmosphere of doubt and mistrust among our military ranks." .... Chieu Hoi was something of an import in its own right: it was the brainchild of three men with long experience battling rebels. One was Sir Robert Thompson, who led the British Advisory Mission in Vietnam and was renowned for his work in Britain's quelling of the Communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950's. The others were Rufus Phillips, a former C.I.A. official working for the United States Agency for International Development, and Charles Bohannan, a retired Army colonel; this pair had led the American effort in late 1940's to stop the Huk insurgency in the Philippines. .... The preferred method for long-term change is instilling sincere belief in the new political ideology, making the gun and monitoring unnecessary. American forces in Iraq would have nothing to lose in applying this basic psychology and developing a pilot program based on Chieu Hoi. It is an inexpensive and nonviolent approach that can aid the counterinsurgency: there are some 10,000 prisoners being held in Iraq, and "turning" even a small fraction of them could reap huge dividends in terms of gaining intelligence for our forces, diminishing support for the insurgents and reducing anti-American sentiment among average Iraqis. ..... Some Americans would undoubtedly criticize a program that treated prisoners and defectors well, arguing that insurgents who kill our men and women do not deserve kindness. This is understandable: during the Vietnam War, Chieu Hoi was often derided as "rest and recreation for the enemy." But we are up against a determined insurgency; a desire for retribution should not be allowed to stand in the way of effective policy and our ultimate success in Iraq. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #2 P. Reverse, you using the weed-wacker attachment or the brush cutter attachment ? You should get more control with the brush cutter; then there's no reason for your wife to get on your case. (No, don't thank me, just glad to help) |
| Posted by: Carl in N.H. 2005-08-25 21:31 |
| #1 The same tenderness that my wife shows me when I hedge her plants with a Echo trimmer. |
| Posted by: Poison Reverse 2005-08-25 10:09 |