Stardate 20011018.0903 (On Screen): Suppose you go into a war. What do you want enemy soldiers to think of you? Do you want them to think that you'll torture them and kill them if they're captured, or that they'll be treated honorably and be well fed and taken care of until after the war is over? For some, the first reaction is to adopt the former point of view in hopes that it will deter them from fighting by instilling fear. But history shows that it rarely does that; rather what it does is to steel their resolve; and more to the point, makes them know that surrender is not an alternative. Thus if you do fight them, they'll fight to the death. Whereas, if you have a reputation for mercy to the captured, then they will be much more likely to surrender rather than to keep fighting -- and this is something you want. The United States has a clear record of treating its POWs extremely well, for example, and this pays for itself. During the Gulf War, more than 60,000 Iraqi soldiers surrendered, often without a fight, once the ground offensive had begun and this saved many allied lives by reducing the amount of combat which was required to win the war. And German soldiers in WWII were far more likely to surrender on the western front than they were on the eastern front, because of the enormous disparity between how the British and Americans treated prisoners and how the USSR did.
Equally, if you promise to mistreat enemy dead, this does not terrorize their troops; it steels them and makes them hate. You. So this latest threat emanating from Afghanistan is yet another massive miscalculation by our enemies; it can only be carried out if our forces fight theirs, lose some men, and also lose control over the battlefield afterwards so that the enemy gain control over some of the dead. The real feeling it will inspire in our troops is this: They promise to desecrate the corpses of our dead comrades? Well, we'll just have to make sure they don't ever recover any of them, won't we?
That's one of two things about this announcement which are noteworthy. Even more interesting is this: Why was it made by a representative of al Qaeda? Could it be that we really are hurting al Qaeda itself, as is indeed the point of all this? (discuss)
