Another thought I had on this, is actually how much use is SERE in the kind of war the US has been fighting recently?
Based on the descriptions I’ve read, it seems very much based on what would happen to a US POW during the cold war (or the cold war turning hot). It is preparing soldiers for the eventuality of being captured by Soviet Bloc army and being turned over to their associated intelligence organisation. It’s aim is to try prevent a potential future POW from revealing any information they possess, that would tactically or strategically useful to the enemy, for as a long as possible.
That is very much not the situation a US soldier would face in most recent wars. They are most likely being captured by a non-state actor, who are probably going to act like Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs (“I don’t give a f**k what you know, I am going to torture you anyway”). So most likely their fate will be horrible and no amount of SERE training will prepare them for it.
And whatever happens, the chances of having intelligence that a bunch of insurgents would be in a position to use against the US army seems pretty slim. Wouldn’t better training to be, unless the information is “there is another injured GI hiding in that ditch”, to tell them everything if you think it might save your life, even if that might give them a propaganda win?
I was also talking about torture being used to influence behaviors, that was the case too when the church tortured suspects of heresy and witchcraft. What I was referring is that torture is also used by reprehensible leaders to get false evidence to convince most of the people and power groups under him that the leader has justifications to follow an evil path.
One nitpick here, (and I noted other comments where posters and the Slate writer seem to confuse what SERE was) SERE was created for defensive reasons and to prepare or help soldiers to cope with torture. What it was used in Guantanamo and extreme rendering locations was not SERE but the reverse of it. As the experts said, torture is not effective for gathering reliable information. Because there are other evil reasons our enemies (or flawed democratically elected leaders) will torture combatants, we can see then why SERE training is used.
Again, what was used in Guantanamo was not SERE, but the evil torture that SERE was made to help soldiers cope, endure and survive it.
That’s a highly narrowminded assumption. If crooks want the passcode to a locked vault, I’d think that they very much would be torturing to find out information that serves a practical purpose.
To answer the OP - this is a bit like saying that self-defense classes can be misused because someone could use the knowledge gained to *victimize *people. Sure they could - but that’s an un-preventable *abuse *of a good thing - and the good thing is still a good thing.
I think that sending out troops or pilots who have NOT been SERE-trained, and letting them be captured unprepared to face the vicious treatment, is itself morally questionable. (Not saying that Spice Weasel is suggesting that, but that it is simply unavoidable.)
I want to know what this writer thinks American forces should be taught about enemy behavior. Should they be taught that when Americans are captured by an enemy, that the enemy will give them a hot cup of coffee, a thick blanket, and a queen-sized bed to sleep on?
I’m only being half-sarcastic here. What alternative is he suggesting? A vastly watered-down “captured” training experience that in no way resembles what an enemy would really do?
This was my reaction as well. He sounds like he is whining that torture camp was too tortury, without recognizing its actual purpose. I hate to say he’s whiny because I’d probably fold under conditions not half as bad, but I at least cognitively recognize that SERE isn’t just giving students hell for the fun of it. In fact, the more I learn, the more I feel I can get behind the mission, 100%.
I may be wrong here, but I believe that SERE was brought about because of the Korean War. Our men, when captured had no resistance to the Korean and Chinese use of brainwashing tactics. They weren’t expecting treatment, as POWs to be that barbaric.
I read both articles. I’m also a graduate of USAF SERE school back in 1982.
I skipped reading a few posts in this thread. Given that admission I’m not sure exactly what the OP wants to discuss / debate. What follows are a series of independent observations that don’t add up to a single coherent essay. But they may shed some light for further discussion.
ISTM so far in the thread there are several things that are getting mixed up or blended together. It might be worth some clarification by the OP.
Each of USAF, USN, USMC, and Army have their own schools with their own trainers and curriculums. Presumably CIA has at least one too. Maybe even DEA. There is not one monolithic “SERE”.
Each of these vary in mission and in specific content over time. SERE today and SERE in the cold war era may well be different things.
Each of these vary in the degree to which the school is doing what it’s supposed to do versus it has fallen victim to “inmates taking over the asylum” as happened at Abu Ghraib. That is, where the reality of what is/was going on is way off the rails compared to what the directives and higher commanders say is supposed to be going on.
The mission of SERE training is to “inoculate” the trainee against what may happen to them in combat. Not to injure the trainee, nor to teach them that torture is just another weapon of war.
The mission of the SERE school is to deliver the above training. Not to act as a training ground for torturers or as a development lab for torture techniques.
My own experience, FWIW, echoes that of the Navy guy writing in Business Insider. Unlike him, I did not and do not view it as a life-changing or crucial formative experience. It was simply an unpleasant few days that increased my self-awareness and taught useful skills about how not to become my own worst enemy in captivity. There was no evidence the staff had been “captured by the Dark Side”; the whole thing was professional and well-controlled. Though that does not mean it was zero risk, either physically or psychologically. None of the rest of USAF pilot training was zero risk either. Nor was driving to work today.
Since SERE was developed by DoD in response to lessons learned the hard way by the Viet Nam POWs there have been fairly few US aircrew or soldiers captured and held by regular military forces. Those few who have been have universally reported that their SERE training was invaluable.
I know I’ve written a couple paragraphs on this topic in another thread a few years ago, but I’m not finding them now. In that thread a current USN flyer younger than I added his 2 cents. His experience would have been from 2000ish and he mostly said that his experience / opinion matched mine as described just above.
All militaries have a risk of units going off the rails. Abu Ghraib is not the first such disgrace nor will it be the last. The USMC SERE school that author attended may well be one too.
My bottom line is that I think the author of the Slate article is either exaggerating or attended a SERE program that at that place and time had run amok. There is no way to know from the information presented although his story is fully plausible.
An appropriate investigation should be done and if problems are found the command and instructor cadre should be depopulated and repopulated with UCMJ charges filed as appropriate.
The concept of SERE as a training program itself isn’t the problem.
I was responding to your post#4 in which you mention that torture is unreliable for information gathering. I was merely pointing out that information gathering is a sub set of the reasons torture is used.
Is it acceptable? That’s another debate. I’d say it is de facto acceptable by society. At least implicitly. The conditions of our jails and prisons are evidence of such.
Thank you for your thoughts. My friend is Air Force SERE. I didn’t realize there were different programs. And for what it’s worth, thanks to GIGO’s excellent cite and looking into this more myself, I’ve resolved my own ethical misgivings about the program. They were driven more by a lack of understanding than anything else.
The Survival and Evasion part of SERE is IMO completely uncontroversial. Even in peacetime a servicemember may end up alone in Nature and perhaps injured.
The Resistance and Escape part is an admission that our enemies don’t always play by both the letter and the intent of the Geneva Accords. And that we would be foolish to pretend they do and leave our people exposed to that risk without training them to the degree we can without undue risk and harm.
Much to my shame, in recent decades it seems we don’t abide by Geneva either. In my era it was certainly very clear doctrine for both USAF and US Army at the field level that POWs were to be disarmed then treated humanely. Which includes being fed, watered, sheltered from the elements, and attended to medically as needed.
That certain politicians threw away the moral high ground without even recognizing they were standing on it, and thereby gave a massive green light to those enemy that had been on the good side or were fencesitting on the issue is scurrilous in the extreme. And was utterly antithetical to all that the United States properly stands for among the nations of the world.
Every servicemember of every civilized nation has been put at greater peril by this shortsighted decision of elements within the US government to embrace various gradations and flavors of torture.
I am no great fan of Sen. McCain in general. But from the git-go in 2001 he has been a clear and impassioned voice of sanity and enlightened self-interest on this topic. Torture is ineffective at producing real results and, like poison gas, is simply letting our darkest natures run rampant for the fun of it to little or no practical result. The US has far more to lose by abandoning the high ground than we do to gain.
Without getting off-topic, I am curious if there is an equivalent of SERE in other nation’s militaries, and if so, how that compares with American SERE training. Can anyone comment?
I would be particularly interested in how other countries train their personnel to withstand capture or resist captivity by US forces.
Can’t find a cite but I’ve heard an interview with the British pilots that were shot down, captured, and tortured during the Gulf war. And they definitely refer to SERE-style training that they remembered while trying to resist torture.
Remember, the idea is the West doesn’t do crap like that to ordinary enemy military members. Even now that’s DoD policy AFAIK. The friggin CIA, etc., is a law unto itself apparently.
Nevertheless, if I was in charge of the Russian, Chinese, Iranian, etc. military it’d be part of the training regimen.
The specifics of different country’s prisoner handling methods aren’t really relevant. Once somebody is captured, their captors will try to scare them, destroy their morale, and cause them minor or major physical and psychological pain as part of the process. Instilling fear and hopelessness is the captors’ goal. While playing as many mind games as possible to persuade the captive there *is *a way out: all they need to do is cooperate with the captors by doing X, Y, or Z as asked.
The captive resists this at a higher level of abstraction than “use tactic 1 when facing thumbscrews and tactic 2 when facing rubber hoses.”
Out of morbid curiosity, what would happen if a SERE trainee “resisted interrogation” by saying, “I know this is a training exercise, not real life, and there are doctors nearby to make sure you can’t really hurt me.” Surely he/she would immediately flunk the course and miss out on his/her aviator wings?
Yes, I think torture being performed on non-willing prisoners here is a complete hijack. SERE training does not teach or promote torture. It teaches you to resist torture.
At any time you can opt out. And according to some, the “torture” being enacted upon others for your benefit is all a show.
How often did the torture carried out at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib resemble this sort of torture? As in, we know there is certain valuable information, we know the prisoner has this information, and we can check within a few minutes if they’ve given the information correctly or not.
And what do you do when the torture victim says “I don’t know the code, but Goody Proctor does, get her and torture her and she’ll tell you the code!” If torture always gives results, then it only makes sense to go haul in Goody Proctor, right? And when you torture her, what sort of reliable intelligence information will she reveal?