Getting to the Heart of the Matter

If we were in charge of questioning a passel of Taliban we had captured in Afghanistan to discover why they had been so beastly, how would we go about it? Well, first of all, we’d stop referring to them as POWs. That is so demeaning, so un-Genevalike. Let’s call them "detainees." That is ever so much nicer and in keeping with the image we are trying to project. If it works as well in this situation, there is no reason not to apply it to our other detainees in Leavenworth, San Quentin and Attica.

Secondly, Afghanistan is no place to have a nice relaxed discussion of motives and ideals. There is no comfortable place to sit in all that sand, and the lack of arboreal enhancement is not conducive to heart-to-heart chats leading to spill-your-guts admissions.

Let us board these al Qaeda people on huge C-141 jets and whisk them off 12,000 miles at taxpayers’ expense to an idyllic destination like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There, under the civilizing atmosphere of lush tropical vegetation and the tongue-loosening effect of little umbrella-decorated libations, they are more likely to be amenable to sharing their plans and aspirations for altering our lifestyles.

Finally, we must review our usual choice of interrogators. Instead of the traditional brutish assembly of blue-jawed heavies rhythmically whacking a lead filled sap against their palms while directing intense quartz lights into the eyes of the detainee, we need a radical change.

In place of some ridiculously scripted good cop/bad cop routine, the situation calls for something subtler if we wish to become confidants of our guests.

Clearly, it flouts all dictates of common sense not to utilize the talents of the best interrogators this country has to offer. We refer, of course, to women. Considering the Taliban attitude toward women, the presence of Western female interrogators would throw the detainees completely off their game. Without a Burka-clad coryphée to distract with a chance glimpse of ankle or wrist, the Taliban would be forced to face the natural genetic ability of women to get at the heart of the matter with dogged persistence. The most intractable detainee would be reduced to the consistency of jellied consume in no time at all. It’s a gift.

For example, I say to my wife, "Mona called while you were gone and said that Francine had her baby. It’s a boy."

"Is Francine OK?"

"I guess so. I forgot to ask."

"What time was he born?" asks my wife.

"She didn’t say, or if she did, I don’t remember."

"How much did the baby weigh?"

"I don’t know."

"Well, how long was it?"

"How long was what?"

"The baby. What are they going to name him?"

"I haven’t the faintest idea. Mona didn’t tell me."

"For crying out loud, why didn’t you ask her?"

"I dunno, it never occurred to me."

By now she knows it’s hopeless to ask whether the baby is fair or dark, how much hair it has, who it looks like and how long Francine was in labor. I have upheld my obligation to respond like a typical male, and she has fulfilled her destiny as a caring sensitive female. We are not stereotypes, we are real human beings doing what we do best.

It is our proposal that the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay fling open its gates to a courageous and determined coterie of women whose innate thoroughness and attention to detail would have the detainees singing like roller canaries in jig time. Remember, nothing is more flattering to a man than when an attractive woman asks the kinds of questions he is able to answer.