Monday, December 01, 2008

Torture's blowback

The Koran from the British Museum: (c)Lord Harris
Some Rights Reserved


Use of the Qur'an as an instrument of torture is a backfiring Guantánamo mistake, says Michael Peppard in the Dec. 5 issue of the Catholic magazine Commonweal.

Peppard argues that:

Religious torture generates determined resistance and long-lasting resentments. What has been a mere footnote for us may be the main story for the Muslim world. The U.S. military knows that desecration of the Qur'an leads to hunger strikes and suicide attempts, that playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" over the call to prayer is demoralizing. But they seem not to have considered the long-term effects of such tactics.

Long-term effects include a self-sustaining stream of enemy combatants, as a former Special Operations interrogator explains in Sunday's Washington Post. President-elect Obama plans to dry up that stream by outlawing torture and closing Guantanamo.