Correct, he was banned for the sock accounts. (I posted a notice to that effect in ATMB.) I did have questions about whether his posts in this thread were sincere, but that’s a separate issue.
For whatever it’s worth, Diogenes, you’re probably the most stubborn individual I’ve ever come across on the 'net, and possibly in real life as well. Pragmatism aside I don’t think you’d fold in a situation like that, but luckily we won’t have to find out.
Although Mr. Bairn is gone, I wanted to answer this question.
It is strange, but that’s exactly what Stockdale recounts. They gained a psychological advantage from doing exactly what you can’t comprehend. Their captors wanted something. That gives them power, and they can manipulate the situation to use that power. Unless the captors were willing to massacre them, the prisoners can affect them right back.
It took determination, not a little guts, and a lot of cooperation between prisoners. They had ways to communicate through the whole camp. And they could screw with the captors in a lot of ways.
Has the US military been demoralized by prisoners who won’t answer questions or who have stood up to torture at Guantanamo Bay?
While resisting the enemy might by good for morale and self-esteem among the POWS themselves, I think they would be deluding themselves to think the captors were demoralized by it.
That was my point. The post you linked to in the ban notice said he had no problem making fake accounts just to tweak people. I have no idea if this was one of those cases or not. So I’ll just ignore anything he said previously and just read what the rest have to say.
Bringing up GITMO in a discussion about what happened in the Hanoi Hilton is absurd. No one is being tortured at GITMO. I know you will never believe that but I felt the need to say it anyway. And before you start mentioning water boarding you should realize none of that happen in GITMO. The International Red Cross has total access to the camps and monitors the welfare of the detainees.
Plus it needs to be said that food, health care and sanitary conditions are a good bit better at Gitmo than they were at any Vietnamese camp.
Night and day, really.
This is an interesting thread. A few things:
The guy who “signed that paper like lightning” is going to have to deal with his fellow POWs at some point. If you remember World War II, a lot of German POWs murdered other German POWs who they felt were cooperating too much with the Americans. Under torture, deprivation, and et cetera, I have no doubt that some American POWs would do exactly the same to their fellow prisoners.
Likewise, if you take your cooperation to the point of harming other persons, you will probably be looking at spending the rest of your life in a prison cell if you ever are released.
I don’t look down on people like Dio who say they would crack instantly–but at a certain point even some temporary torture is worth not cooperating when said cooperation could bring even worse results for you in the long run.
I have no idea what the motivations of Stockdale and McCain were. My actions are guided by my own internal moral code, I feel that if you join the military your personal moral code should be such that following the Code of Conduct doesn’t cause you to do anything you personally find immoral. I hope that most people in the military, like me, had a personal moral code that meshed will with the CoC. I don’t get the impression that Stockdale and McCain did what they did “because the CoC said to” I get the impression that they did what they did “because the CoC said to and the CoC is a reflection of my own moral values.”
Information that any POW has is probably of limited value. You can make anyone talk after enough torture. But a POW can make sure that what they are saying isn’t important. I would resist torture until I couldn’t stand it anymore before cooperating at all. I think that’s what McCain and Stockdale did–McCain cooperated some, but in a meaningless way and after being tortured until he couldn’t stand it anymore. I wouldn’t do this for any utilitarian reasons, I wouldn’t do this for a code. I’d do it because of my own personal, moral values.
A lot of this thread has focused on utilitarianism or egoism. I wouldn’t care about the utilitarian aspects. I wouldn’t care if my resistance helped out the military, if its effects were meaningless. Because it would be meaningful to me, and because my personal moral code, my sense of what duties I have, is what is important to me. If it helped the Army–great, if it inspired other prisoners–great, but if it did none of those things, it would still be important that I resist until I can’t resist anymore.
So yes, after enough torture I’d talk, I’d sign phony confessions. I’d never reveal certain information–I am pretty confident that I’d die or lose consciousness before giving up information that was truly important. Do I know for sure? Not at all. But I think having confidence that I would act this way at least gives me some assurance that I would have behaved in a manner that reflected my moral guidelines.
Again, this is because of my sense of moral duties it has nothing to do with anything created by a “writer of Codes.” While I can’t know for sure, I think this is how Stockdale and McCain felt.
Basically, maybe Stockdale and McCain caused themselves harm “for no good reason.” What they did may have had no tangible benefit to the United States, any other soldiers, or the military. But if you’re someone who guides your moral decision making based on what you perceive as your personal duties, then those considerations don’t matter.
Stockdale himself even said, “Do the right thing even if it means dying like a dog when no one’s there to see you do it.” What it all boils down to isn’t glory, it isn’t the pride you may feel once it’s over, it’s not the accolades you might receive, it’s not the effects it may or may not have on the big picture, it’s about doing what you think is right, period.
Some people don’t have an evolved ethical code. Some people basically never get past that ethical “childhood” in which “what I want = good” and “things that make me happy = good” and “things that make me sad = bad” and “things that I don’t want to do = bad” et cetera.
Again, I’m not going to pass judgment on any individuals, but I do hold that kind of ethical thinking in low regard.
Gitmo also used stress positioning, sleep deprivation and attack dogs (and that’s just what we know of).
And at least the prisoners at Hanoi were legitimate POW’s instead of randomly kidnapped civilians sold for bounties like the victims in Gitmo. I don’t know that the conduct of the US at Gitmo is any better than the Viet Cong in hanoi. The VC cause was certainly much more legitimate.
The Viet Cong didn’t run the Hanoi Hilton. The Viet Cong were guerrilla fighters operating in South Vietnam, by and large they didn’t operate large POW facilities.
The NVA (the official army of North Vietnam) operated POW facilities, in the grand scheme of things you weren’t very well off if you were captured by the NVA or the VC, but the NVA being a more established military force was less likely to just summarily execute you. As a guerrilla force, VC pretty much often couldn’t “afford” to take prisoners or accept surrenders, they just killed and moved on. Most of those sympathetic to the Communist unification of Vietnam (which included many Vietnamese civilians, the VC, and the NVA) would have been real interested in seeing any pilot captured, pilots were nice prisoners because they were officers and captured officers had a lot of value.
Whatever personal legitimacy you assign to one cause over another, either torture and mistreatment of prisoners is wrong or it isn’t. It doesn’t really matter whether the cause is righteous or not, it is the act itself which must be judged morally right or wrong.
I know you chose to believe what you read when it suits your point of view. I chose to believe my own eyes. To each his own.
Given that the OP has provided 90+% of the views supporting the OP and given that the OP has left the building, this thread is closed.
If someone wishes to open a discussion regarding the value of resisting one’s captors in the face of apprent futility, that poster is welcome to do so.
However, I would hope that such a discussion would treat the matter in a serious and non-hostile manner rather than simply posting to rile up other posters.
[ /Moderating ]