Torture to Combat Terrorism? It Doesn't Work, but Good Cop Bad Cop Does | Juliet Kayyem | Big Think

I’ve been a woman and a mother in national security. If I got a dollar for every time someone said more aggressive in a meeting, I would be retired. I would be a very rich woman. More aggressive, tougher is not a policy. It’s sort of crazy talk. What does it even mean?

And what we have to remember is we are not under anything close to an existential threat right now. We have a risk. It is heightened because of what is going on in the world. But, like, don’t lose your head. I mean, if you want to be president, I think your number one job requirement is you cannot lose your head every time something goes wrong. You have to sort of brace for it, accept it, learn from it and move on.

And so on the learning part, any person who has been in national security and any professional interrogator will tell you information garnered from torture, waterboarding or the extreme interrogation tactics that were used in the early days after 9/11 didn’t work. It got us nothing. It got us nowhere. It got us a bunch of detainees who we can’t even put through a criminal court because we’ve tortured them, right? Because we don’t want that evidence to come out. This is what it’s gotten us.

And so, you know, it’s not only sort of un-American. It’s just – it doesn’t work. It’s like talking to a five year old. You’re like, okay, two plus two does not equal five. Like, two plus two equals four. And anyone who has been in the interrogation world knows that success in interrogation of a hostile person, right, is generally a good cop, bad cop scenario, right? It’s someone that they feel comfortable with because they feel that they are under stress in the environment that they’re in that they start to talk to.

This toughness talk masks any policy and that’s dangerous. But it also – and this is what worries me – is it once again perpetuates this mythology that, you know, a tough counter terrorism policy will keep us 100 percent safe from terrorism. And if terrorism happens, it means you were too soft. That just can’t be.

As I said before, it’s like you tell me what country is – whether it’s the toughest country in the world – Israel, for example, or the least open country in the world – China or Myanmar, for example, that doesn’t have violence perpetuated by people who want to have a political influence. You take the spectrum, it’s happening and that’s okay. I mean, and it’s like just accept it, it’s a risk. And then respond, brace and everything else for it.