Politics

“Outsourcing Torture!” That’s the shocked language being used by the morally confused elite who write for the NY and LA Times. By the way, Karen and I had a long talk over Shabbos and decided that “politically correct” is far too mild a description for these people. We have settled on “morally confused” instead. If you have a better label, please let us know.

Anyway, torture. These people who are so concerned about our terrorist prisoners don’t know jack about Counter Terrorist Warfare. For these people, torture is not getting their croissant and cup of Java in the morning. Let’s get this straight: I’m not saying it’s nice, I’m not saying it’s pretty. I’m not even saying we get it right all the time. What I am saying is: torture is the name of the game in Counter Terrorist Warfare. You see in CTW you are not fighting classic open terrain battles. The stuff that US forces are so darn good at. Nope. It’s urban, three dimensional firefights. You get ambushed by one or two terrorists. They hit our guys then melt into the population. Don’t bother calling them cowards. That’s just childish. It’s what they do. Spreading terror is efficient and cheap. It’s classic urban guerrilla tactics, right out of Mao’s little play book. Our soldiers are left with their entrails hanging in the dirt — and there’s no enemy to shoot back at. It’s frustrating. Mao wants us to spin out of control, let discipline crumble and randomly shoot civilians. But what happens is you kill a few grandmas, a few kids and whap, the entire population hates your guts. Next thing a cousin or brother joins the terrorists to avenge his dead relative. Hey, that’s how we lost Viet Nam. That’s how the French lost Algeria.

How to avoid that?

The name of the game is intel, intelligence.

You take a terrorist suspect and you get names, find out who’s in his cell. You want to know who’s financing the hits, the homicide bombers. In Iraq it’s no big secret. Money is flowing in from Iran and from Syria. Saddam’s cousins from Tikrit took their gold and skeddaddled to Damascus and Tehran. They want their old jobs back. It’s fun running Iraq if you’re a Baathist. You get a nice palace, a jacuzzi. You get all the good looking women you want. You kill people you don’t like. You get to torture people just for the sheer entertainment value. I mean, Saddam’s sons used to hang with their buddies in rape rooms. For them it was fun watching some poor woman being gang raped for hours at a time. Sometimes they’d make the woman’s husband watch. When they really wanted to kick back and chill they’d have her children present. Make no mistake about it, these guys used torture the way we use cable TV. And It was all in the service of preserving one of the most horrifying, brutal and evil dictatorships the world has ever known. But the cultural relativists don’t care about that. They just kvetch and moan about “international law.” Right, I care what Belgium or France have to say. Anyway, You think these guys are going to let the good times disappear? No way. As Mel Brooks says: “It’s good to be king.”

Those pictures from Abu Ghraib prison. The ones that so horrified the people with subscriptions to The New Yorker. Let me tell you something: that is not torture. That’s kids stuff. It’s actually embarrassing because it’s so… amateur. And intel is too important to leave to a bunch of white trash morons from West Virginia. We have to turn the high value prisoners over to people who know what they are doing. Professionals. Why? Because we cannnot win without good intel. And the only way to get good intel is by making these guys talk.

Israel has assasinated numerous high profile terrorist leaders in the past few years. You know how they did it? Intel. They find an Abdul who has a grudge against his second cousin and and he talks to an Israeli intelligence officer and gives up names. You pull a second Abdul in and you get more names. A smart intelligence officer will soon be triangulating and before you know it we’ve got an Apache in the air turning some Hamas “spiritual leader” into beef stroganoff. Sometimes the names are freely given. Other times there’s torture. Intelligent, disciplined torture. I’m not talking about bamboo slivers under the nails. That’s over. At least with smart nations like Israel and the US.

A few years ago I read a fascinating little booklet that an Israeli friend slipped to me. Written for the Israeli intelligence services, it explained that what you want to do is make the prisoner so disoriented and so tired that he just gives up information because well, he just wants to get a good night’s sleep. This was an amazing little booklet. It explained that no one can stand up to torture. No one. You know all those dumb movies we make here in Hollywood where the hero–Sly Stallone or Bruce Willis–bravely endures the most horrific torture? It’s pure nonsense. Everyone talks. Usually, just the very threat of torture gets people yammering away. And the Arab world is so riven with personal and clan rivalries that snitching is a way of life. Let me tell you what my Israeli friend told me: Arabs are, bar none, the best snitches. They give up names faster than the questions can be posed. How do you think shiek Yassan got turned into a black smudge in the streets of Gaza? Betcha some second cousin wanted payback because the good shiek didn’t give him a better cut of the shake-down money, which is the lifeblood of Hamas — of all the gangs that run the so-called Palestinian areas. Actually, they’re just a bunch of thugocracies. It’s as if Al Capone were still running Chicago — with the blessing of the UN.

History helps when it comes to torture. Look at the British back in the colonial days. Remember the Mau-Mau uprising back in the 50’s. How many British colonials do you think the Mau-Mua murdered? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, it was eleven. You see, in those days we were still capable of being outraged when innocent men, women and children were butchered while they slept. So, eleven British farmers were murdered, and the British rounded up thousands of Kikuyu tribesmen, tortured a bunch, and wiped out the Mau Mau leadership in less than a year. Those Brits are cold. But they really knew how to fight CTW. Was it right? Was it nice? Was it sensitive? Of course not. And don’t forget, the British finally lost; they fled Africa because, well, it was the age of African Nationalism; romantic stuff and everyone wanted in on all the juicy American foreign aide. Little did they know that Africa would descend into one murderous rampage after another — with no end in sight. Truth is, Africa would be a lot better off if the British had stayed. Sheesh, talk about torture and butchery: no one can touch the Africans for genocide. And they do it the old fashioned way: with machetes.

But I digress.

Point is: America can’t afford to lose in Iraq. If we do, then we’re a paper tiger and the Arabs will have contemnpt for us. Not to mention the Israelis. Heck, they’re still having nightmares about the Jimmy Carter years. And let me tell you, the Israelis were sweating blood about the possibility of Kerry and his gang of pacifists getting into the White House. “Wrong war at the wrong time.” Now that was a moral booster — for the Arabs.

Do the Arabs hate us? You bet. But that’s okay. In fact, that’s the way it should be. We hate them too, we’re just too sensitive to admit it. Instead, we give them acceptable labels like, “dysfunctional societies.” It’s really cute how language perverts truth. Anyway, it’s better that they hate and fear us then have contempt for our weakness. You do not want the Arabs to think you’re weak, because if they do: It. Is. All. Over. Can I be any more clear about that?

So let’s stop lying about how we can’t tolerate torture. Worse than a lie, it’s just plain stupid. No democracy can survive the onslaught of the jihadists without using torture. You think we won WWII without torturing
some Nazis? Dream on. Gosh, often we’d torture the Nazi scum and then just shoot them. In those days, journalists protected our soldiers, they actually cared about our people, they even supported American democracy. Not like the current crop of ivy league journalists who clearly have contempt for our servicemen; these journalists have been schooled in relative moralism and simply can’t wait to nail some poor marine who’s just trying to keep his buddies from getting the chop. In short: torture has always been an integral part of warfare. The sooner we understand this the faster we’ll be able to wipe out the Jihadists — before they wipe us out.

Oh yes, a little Torah on the topic. Here’s what The Rambam, Maimonides, has to say about execution and torture.

This is from the Yad Hachazaka, Laws of Murder and Preservation of Life.

Chapter 2, Law 4: Murderers (who cause the death of others) and who cannot be executed by the Court. The King of Israel may execute them for the welfare and security of the world. Also, a court may execute them (even though they have not been found guilty by trial) because of extraordinary circumstances.

Chapter 2, Law 5: If the King and Court cannot act because of extraordinary times and circumstances, it is the duty to hurt them physically, even threatening death; to imprison them and torture them in order to instill fear upon others and to prevent such murderous acts which may not be tried by the Court.

As always, The Rambam gets it right.

So everyone’s getting all hot and bothered about Syria. The NY Times breathlessly reports that the Saudis, geographical freaks by any standard, have advised the “President” of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, to withdraw his troops from Lebanon. The subtitle proclaims: Arab nations back west.

My Jewish friends are feeling all smug and self-righteous. Finally, the world is paying attention to a another occupation. Make no mistake about it. The Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria are, well, pussies compared to the Syrian troops who occupy Lebanon. I mean drop in on any Palestinian grade school and what are the kids learning? How to pack dynamite into their Power Ranger lunch boxes and shred a bunch of Jews. What occupier puts up with that? Answer: dumb Jews. Pathetic.

Meanwhile, up north in Beirut, the Syrians have clamped down on the TV stations, the newspapers, the universities. If you own a fax machine you have to register it with the “authorities.” Step out of line and you’re on your way to Damascus with a one way ticket for some extreme re-education. Now that’s an occupation.

A few words about Lebanon. It was created by the English and French in 1918, after WWI. Before that it was an outpost of the Ottoman empire made up of warring tribes. Mostly Christian Maronites cutting each other’s throats for sport. So when the Great Powers said, “Okay chaps, you’re a country now,” these tribes set about seriously killing each other — in order to grab power. These groups, gangs really, much like The Crips and The Bloods, except infinitely more violent, have a nasty habit of killing the rival men, then raping the women. Or sometimes making the men watch as they rape the women. It’s like soccer, only more extreme.

Anyway, Lebanese ethnic warfare makes the current Balkans look like a picnic. I know, I know, people talk about Beirut as the “Paris of the Middle East.” But folks, we’re talking the Mid-East here. Whatever peace existed was simply a temporary break in the slaughter. The various gangs were merely biding their time, waiting to make their move and do what comes naturally to them: torture, rape and slaughter one another.

Things are a bit more complicated in Lebanon now. The Maronites are no longer just killing each other, now they’re busy with the Shia, whose women are a lot more fertile, and so the Maronites are looking at a growing Shia majority and let me tell you, no one hates the way a Maronite hates a Shia, and vice-versa.

And now we’ve got the Syrians in the mix.

They call themselves “The Syrian Deterrent Force.” Yeah, right. Truth is, Syria has always considered Lebabon to be a lost province. They’d like to swallow Lebanon — the way my shul friends devour cholent, a Jewish chile, at the Shabbos kiddush, Sabbath meal. Normally, this would not present any problems for the surrounding Arab countries. Arab solidarity is as solid as, well, the last Hollywood contract I signed.

Gosh, I fondly recall the late 60’s and Nasser and all this Pan Arabism. It was sooooo much fun, watching these mobs, screaming and crying after they lost the Six Day War. I said to myself: they just got humiliated big time and they’re begging their leader to stay in power! Wow. Enemies like this you cannot make up.

But the good old days are gone. And all because of George Bush. Yup. The man I voted for. He’s really taking all the fun out of the Mid East game. The Arabs are telling Syria to get out. Why? Because George actually means what he says.

The Arabs are used to girlie-men like Carter, Ford and Clinton. Men who bug out at the first sign of trouble. The Arabs absolutely adored Carter. This guy turned out the lights in the White House. You can’t beat that for stupidity. No way this guy was going to fight anything. That’s the kind of American the Arabs want.

Nope, Bush has thrown a monkey wrench into the game. He’s deployed troops in two Arab countries. He’s freed about 50 million Arabs. He’s willing to take, gasp, casualties. He’s totally retro: he actually believes that everyone yearns for freedom. Personally, when I lived in Israel, the few Arabs I knew all yearned for Charlie’s Angels, but gee, maybe I just chilled with weird Arabs.

So the new calculus is at hand. The Arabs realize that if they don’t make some gesture to pacify Bush, well then, they might wake up one fine morning and find a bunch of foul-mouthed 19-year-old marines, making themselves nice and comfy in their palaces. Talk about locking up your daughters. The Saudi women will be throwing themselves at the US barracks begging for marriage, green card style.

Bashar al-Assad. Or, as I fondly refer to him: Junior. You know that show on TV, Extreme Makeover. They take some hideous man or woman, shove ’em in a stretch limo, give them tons of plastic surgery, cap their teeth, make ’em lose about a zillion pounds and then dress the women like sleazy porn stars and the men like gay hustlers.

Then at “The Reveal,” all the relatives and friends scream and weep and invariably the now less hideous medical experiment intones, and make no mistake about it, this has been carefully scripted: “I now have self-esteem. I like myself. I am a good person.”

Anyway, that’s my absolutely favorite moment. Because like all Hollywood endings it promises a new beginning, a new tomorrow.

Which is complete crap.

These people are gonna revert to their old ways in no time at all. Pathological personalitieshave a way of, ahem, making repeat performances.

I’m bringing this up because Junior does not have a chin. I mean it looks like somebody came along with an axe and sliced off a considerable chunk of bone.

It’s sad.

Anyway, I have this fantasy that a bunch of Hollywood makeover artists (gay, natch) kidnap Junior, give him a complete makeover, and in the end he looks in the mirror and weeps copious tears.

Then he stands on a lovely hill and looks out over Lebanion and says: “I have self-esteem. I’m a good person. I no longer need to occupy this land. I can go back to being a humble optometrist. I now have a chin”

You see, that’s what comes from working in Hollywood for too long. I am delusional.

Now we can:

Fade to Black

WARNING: This post contains a spoiler about the film Million Dollar Baby. Skip it if you have not seen the film and do not want to know the plot.

I was not surprised that Million Dollar Baby garnered so many Oscars. By any definition, Hollywood is a liberal town and Million Dollar Baby addresses one of the more fashionable issues consuming the Hollywood elite: the so-called right to die. In the film, Clint Eastwood kills Hilary Swank; this is presented as an heroic act of compassion and loyalty after she has been greivously wounded. Make no mistake, and as Hugh Hewitt pointed out on his radio show, this is murder, not even suicide-assisted death where a pill is left on a night table. Kervokian was put in jail for exactly this act. Hollywood has found its next “progressive” cause and you should expect to see many more stories with this theme.

Last night, Karen and I took our Huff break. I have the full season of the ShowTime series Huff on disk. Hank Azaria plays a decent and compassionate psychiatrist going through various crises. The writing is superb and the acting is of the highest level. Padgett Brewser, a subtle and riveting actress, plays Azaria’s common sense wife. Oliver Platt steals the show as Azaria’s sex obsessed, drug ingesting lawyer. Most television bores me, but Huff has captured my imagination. I look forward to sitting on the couch with Karen and watching an episode after a long day of work.

But last night, Huff betrayed me.

In the episode we screeened, Blythe Danner, who plays Huff’s blue blood Pasadena mother, euthanizes a close friend who has suffered a massive stroke. The screenwriter makes sure to tell us that there is no brain activity, no hope. And so, when Danner pulls the plug, sits on the edge of the bed and whispers, “You can go now, darling, you can go.” We are meant to breathe a sigh of relief. We are meant to see Danner’s action as compassionate and courageous. I literally got up from the couch and walked away from the TV. I felt betrayed. I felt sick.

But I should not be surprised. Hollywood is filled with people who play G-d every day. They are so insulated from reality that it’s not a big leap for them to advocate murder and justify it with hardly a flicker of doubt.

It would be well for us to remember that the first victims of Nazi murder were not Jews, not Communists. The first people crammed into mobile gas chambers were the mentally ill, and those born with birth defects. It is not well known but this practice of state sponsored murder was halted because of wide spread civic protests by mothers and relatives.

The liberalism of John F. Kennedy, who vowed to pursue freedom at all costs, has morphed into a moral relativity where murder is not only justified but glorified. Pay close attention for we are entering a new era of political thought. The signs are unmistakable: the obsession with health has spawned a new cultural figure: the health Nazi; the rise of PETA, the so-called animal rights movement, founded by Professor Peter Singer of Princeton, a man who advocates the morality of parents killing their babies who have severe birth defects, but protecting “the rights of animals.”

Yes, pay close attention, for a new era of political thought is at hand. The signs are clear, freedom is under attack, not from the right, but from the left. It is the left who would banish gun ownership. It is the left who will eventually ban cigarettes — everywhere. It is the left who see abortion as an unrestricted right. It is the left who worries more about prisoner abuse than terrorism. It is the left who are more concerned with global warming than with the mass graves of the middle east. It is the left who would ban capital punishment, but blithely turn a blind eye to the genocide in the Sudan. It is the left who force the city of Los Angeles to erase a tiny cross from the city seal, yet say not a word about the persecution of Christians in Arab countries. And, of course, it is the left who claim that the Jihadists hate us and kill us for the supposed injustices the West has perpetrated, rather than for who we are–a freedom loving people.

Yes, pay close attention, we are entering a new era where much of classic liberal ideology becomes virtually indistinguishable from totalitarianism.

Karen adds: A related conversation with Robert as we are driving, listening to soundbites on the radio. Hunter S. Thompson, the “gonzo journalist” was lauded as “heroic” as well as “poetic” for shooting himself in the head. The so called “intelligensia” of Los Angeles rallied around this act as a glorification of choosing death rather than endorsing the courage and fortitude it would take to fight life’s battles.

A few hours after I posted War and Lunch I received a lovely and generous note from A Simple Jew, complimenting me on the post, urging me to keep blogging, and drawing my attention to this recent article which I find indescribably moving.

Karen and I are invited to a Shabbos lunch at one of our closest friends in Beverly Hills. Present are three couples from our shul. We are all Orthodox, we are all reasonably successful professionals, all thoughtful and decent people. Of course, as it always will, conversation invariably turns to Israel, to the most recent homicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Attitudes vary. Some at the table believe that there is hope, that with the death of Arafat, the Palestinian terrorist leader, a window of opportunity has opened for peace. Others scoff at this idea. One man says: “I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends.” Another man counters: “No, this actually looks different.” Someone says, “Well what can we do if not negotiate, we have no choice.”

I have deliberately said nothing, but this last comment sets me off, for in a sense this is the most dangerous attitude that one can hold. To believe that you must talk in civilized tones with those who have vowed to butcher you is the height of folly. This kind of thinking has led to the current situation on our university campuses where Jihadists run the so-called “Middle Eastern Studies” departments. Jewish academics have thrown up their hands and said, “What can we do, it’s freedom of speech. We have to engage in dialogue with these people.” The result is that our elite campuses have schooled a whole generation in Wahaabist propaganda. Polite anti-Semitism is no longer polite. It is the most virulent Jew hatred this country has ever seen. You do not talk with these academics, you do not give them tenure, you make sure thay are not hired, you charge them with inciting hatred, you sue them for libel, you hit them where it hurts: in their pocket books. And you certainly do not send your children to these universities and pay the salaries of these crypto Jihadists.

Here is what I say:

“There are conflicts which are, by their very nature, insoluble. We who are middle class people have spent our whole lives learning to compromise, to negotiate, and so it is beyond our imagination that others do not follow this social model. But the world is and has always been filled with people who reject all compromise. In the American Civil War, the South was dedicated to slavery. Only force of arms could break that ideology. And to break the backbone of the sessionist movement, Lincoln understood that he had to smash the civilian infrastructure that gave it suppport. Hence Sherman’s march to the sea. The Southern civilians who had been shielded from the battlefield were made to suffer for their evil ideology. It was Sherman and his well disciplined army that broke the South and ended the war. If not for Sherman, America would be a Balkanized land. In World War II, America fire-bombed Dresden. We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. Certain conflicts will only end when civilians are made to realize the fruits of their support for evil.”

There is a long silence at the table. I often have that effect on nice Shabbos lunches.

“But the Palestinians already suffer terribly,” says one woman.

I know this woman well; she is bright, she is a good person, perhaps too good.

“No, the people of Darfur in the Sudan suffer at the hands of the Janjaweed Arabs. The Tibetans suffer at the hands of the Chinese. The Tutsi minority suffered at the hands of the genocidal Hutu in Rawanda. The Cambodians suffered under the evil rule of Pol Pot. The Palestinians are the most well financed group of so-called refugees the world has ever seen. Ninety percent of the population have televisions. They have their own newspapers. There is no starvation. They receive billions in foreign aide. Excuse me, but standing on line at check points hardly qualifies as extreme suffering.”

“I’m sorry,” the good lady says, “but I don’t think we have to stoop to their level.”

I nod my head and sigh. This woman is a good friend. She is a fine lady who supports the arts, works in social services and has raised devout and sensitive children. But when it comes to war, her decent sensibilities become a deadly liability.

“This is an existential conflict,” I finally say. “The Arabs are quite clear on their genocidal intentions; they have no qualms about teaching it to their children in grade school, putting it out in their newspapers, on television. They have built a society whose blood lust has not been seen since the days of the Aztecs and their human sacrifices. Why don’t you want to believe the Arabs when they say that they want to destroy Israel, eliminate the Jews? They say it from Damascus to Paris”
She is appalled. “Do you advocate killing civilians?”
“I’m saying this: do you prefer dead Jews or dead Arabs?”
“I can’t belive that’s our only choice.”
“That’s what they used to say to Winston Churchill in the British Parliament when he warned of the Nazis. They literally used the same language. Hence Chamberlin’s Peace in Our Time.”
“Times have changed.”
“Not really. You see, the truth is, not one major conflict has ever been ended by a signed treaty. It has always been force of arms. Because some societies are simply so evil that they must be reduced to ashes. After the ashes, there is hope.”

Luckily, the dessert tray arrives and everyone gladly digs in. I look down at my hands and see that they are shaking.