Americans love torture. Republicans are at least honest about this as they campaign to bring back waterboarding but the Democrats love it as well so long as their guy is in charge of it. During the campaign Donald Trump stated that he wanted to bring waterboarding back. Hopefully he changed his mind about that though. Waterboarding was one of the things discussed in Trumps meeting with James Mattis and Mattis pointed out the bloody obvious:
Trump said that the advice from Mattis, a front-runner for the defense secretary post in a Trump administration, would weigh heavily on whether he will go forward with campaign pledges to bring back waterboarding and torture in interrogations by the military and the CIA.
In his meeting last week with the man he calls “Mad Dog Mattis,” Trump said he asked, “What do you think of waterboarding? He said — I was surprised — he said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful.’ ”
Trump said Mattis told him, ” ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.’ “
Who would have guessed that treating somebody at least somewhat decently would net you more reliable information than beating them until they told you what they thought you wanted to hear in the hopes that you’d stop beating them?
Statists seem to believe that if violence isn’t solving your problem then you’re not using enough of it. But violence doesn’t solve all problems. For example, if you want to get reliable information out of somebody beating it out of them isn’t the way to go. When you start beating them they will simply tell you what they think you want to hear, not what is truthful. On the other hand, if you build a relationship with them that makes them feel positive about you then they’re more apt to give you reliable information because they like you and want to make you happy. It’s the same reason why bombing a people until they like you is much more difficult than establishing positive business relationships with them via trade.