Secure the Perimeter

I read an article in the Times this week where some military men were criticizing the Bush administration's sanction of torture, not just because it's inhumane, but because it doesn't work. In general, it seems humans aren't persuaded to cooperate with people who are shovling electrodes in to them, or pouring water into their upside-down nasal cavities, or the other things too numerous to mention.

The military men had an extraordinary suggestion, which was to use marketing techniques rather than torture. They said American marketing is way more up to date and sophisticated than is our brand of torture (brutish, stuck in the cattle-prod era). And it's true! As someone who works in advertising, I know well the time, money and effort devoted to what might make someone buy a particular kind of cracker, or return to a cookie that they've abandoned. In the latter case, a huge effort is expended to make consumers remember their childhood experiences with that cookie, to connect with feelings of closeness with a parental figure, and to march out of the house nearly hypnotized by remembered warmth, straight to the store to buy those cookies and return to a time when someone cared about you and nurtured you, unlike now when people are so demanding and strange!

I think most people have a general idea of how marketing works, but the level of detail may not be known. The study of consumer habits is scientific in its dense, focused probing. How well could we penetrate an enemy combatant's emotional armor if we A) knew their language and B) used some of these same techniques? What if we tenderly examined their need for emotional stability, their desire to feel in control of their lives, their affection for clean drinking water, and all the other habits that are scrutinized with scientific intensity and focus by marketers in America every day? What if we then used their memories of their childhoods to get them sobbing and confessing they do indeed plan to commit jihad, but not if they can have that can of Coke and that yummy Mr. Chips cookie, because then they wouldn't need to wage war, they would just need the cookies and Cokes to keep coming!

I know I haven't nailed this bizarre-ity yet -- perhaps the Daily Show will, tomorrow night.