Leftists are busy complaining about US waterboarding to score populist points after the fall of the Bush Administration. No one seems to have placed these events in an international context. Here's an account of how Russia used to deal with Chechenyan rebels:

“We disposed of her body in a field. We placed an artillery shell between her legs and one over her chest, added several 200-gram TNT blocks and blew her to smithereens. The trick is to make sure absolutely nothing is left. No body, no proof, no problem.” The technique was known as pulverisation.

The account is one of a series given to The Sunday Times by two special forces officers who fought the militants in Chechnya over a period of 10 years. Their testimony, the first of its kind to a foreign journalist, provides startling insights into the operation of secret Russian death squads during one of the most brutal conflicts since the second world war.

The men, decorated veterans of more than 40 tours of duty in Chechnya, said not only suspected rebels but also people close to them were systematically tracked, abducted, tortured and killed. Intelligence was often extracted by breaking their limbs with a hammer, administering electric shocks and forcing men to perform sexual acts on each other. The bodies were either buried in unmarked pits or pulverised.

That makes our military violations in the Middle East appear really wimpy. True, it doesn't "justify" US torture per se, and it probably doesn't place Guantanamo Bay in a better light. But it shows America may not be the most evil country on the planet when it comes to breaking international law. And concerning torture, what are we really complaining about:

Let's say there is a life-saving good to be gained by millions of people that can be had only by my unquestionable torture of a another person. The torture is illegal, but let's stipulate that I truly believe that the other person will give up his information only under torture. Should I attempt to save millions of people by violating my qualms and the law against torture? How much good for how much bad? Personally, I would proceed to try to save the millions fully knowing I will be violating the law. What I have to be prepared for is the sacrifice to be made by me should I be brought before the law. If that is to be a sacrifice of myself, so be it.

Corrupt interview with David Donovan

I like Donovan's perspective: sure, brutal torture should be against international law, but if there's a greater goal to be gained via law-breaking methods, someone is going to have to make a personal sacrifice. But there's a double-edged sword in dealing brutal blows against your enemies. Hot Air elaborates:

The Times article never mentions reciprocity explicitly, but it’s an important part of this story — and an important part of human conflict, regardless of whether we like it. This shows both the pitfalls and the purpose of reciprocity. The Russians, to a man, say that the terrorists only understand the kind of atrocities they themselves dish out, and the only way to quell a terrorist group is to kill them all and to use the exact same methods they use to do it. Obviously, it worked; Chechnya has been pacified. However, the reciprocity created its own dynamic of revenge, which made it more difficult to isolate the terrorists and avoid recruitment.

Reciprocity has played a role in every war, at least until recently. In World War II, Britain began bombing German cities after Germany started the Blitz, although Germany claims it was provoked by Britain. In World War I, everyone started using chemical warfare in order to break the stalemate. Each side claims a moral superiority, but it’s usually the losers who pay the price.

What does this tell us about our own conflict? Perhaps not much. After all, our own statutes still outlaw mock executions as torture, and even Jay Bybee admitted that waterboarding qualified as long as the subjects didn’t know that they would be saved from real physical harm. On the other hand, it’s not hard to draw the conclusion that the inmates at Gitmo have to be happy they were sent to fight in Pakistan and Afghanistan instead of Chechnya by the radical Islamist terrorist networks who employed them.

Cripple your enemy and he will be pissed for life. The French and Russian revolutions were nothing more than a crippled public rebelling against their masters. Torture and warfare are not very effective ways of pushing back resistance long-term, unless you aim for a nuclear holocaust. We need to learn from the third world: breed until you're many, then softly overthrow the regime.