Thursday, August 29, 2013

The Military Necessity of Sympathy

   Showing sympathy can help an interrogator bond with a disarmed prisoner. Veteran David J. Morris believes soldiers could benefit from similar training in case they become prisoners.
   As a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, David J. Morris attended SERE school in 1995.  SERE is an acronym of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape--was meant to prepare Americans of the Cold War era for torments used by Communist nations like North Korea in the 1950s, sometimes even techniques like waterboarding.      
   In a column for Slate, Morris wrote, "Durant survived by befriending his captors and forcing them to see him as a fellow human being.  SERE conditions servicemen to expect nothing but the worst from their captors; Durant's life depended on his ability to understand his captors...."

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