Lessons from Vietnam in how to 'flip' an enemy

Long ago and across the world in Vietnam, I had the job of persuading enemy soldiers to leave their government to join "our side" in the long struggle there against revolutionary socialism. Some of my experiences could be replicated in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, although the recent news makes me wonder if it's still possible to bring people over to our side.

The names we hear daily in the news – "Haditha," and "Hamandiya" among several others – represent serious investigations into atrocities allegedly committed by American troops. It's impossible to say now what the outcome of these investigations will be. Many of the allegations involve the treatment of Iraqi and Afghan civilians. Some include people who were clearly combatants on the other side in the war.

The responsibility of our soldiers – or anyone's soldiers – to safeguard non-combatants is crystal clear in our law and in international law. The problem of how to deal with enemy fighters is another and more complicated issue.

At the commencement of this war on terror the Bush administration decided that enemy fighters would not be considered "prisoners of war," although they would be afforded comparable protections. This judgment, in my view, has made possible the questionable internment and interrogation facility at Guantánamo, "rendition" of prisoners to countries that are known to torture prisoners, such as Egypt, and a general lowering of standards in the treatment of prisoners in places such as the Abu Ghraib prison complex. From personal experience as a military intelligence officer who dealt with prisoners of war in Vietnam, I can tell you that the rules were quite different.

In Vietnam, enemy prisoners of war were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and were given the POW designation. Many people have seen photographs of American or South Vietnamese soldiers with prisoners from the other side, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. Although there were undoubtedly instances in which individual Americans abused prisoners, I would defy anyone to provide photographic evidence of such abuse in a facility for the detention of enemy prisoners of war in Vietnam.

The enemies captured in Vietnam were held by US or South Vietnamese military police (MPs), interrogated by US Army or South Vietnamese military intelligence, and then sent to prisoner-of-war camps that were run by the South Vietnamese Army under the tutelage of American MP advisers.

Some exceptions applied. Underground political cadres (communist politicians secretly running a shadow government), for example, were not considered to be prisoners of war because they were neither soldiers nor organized guerillas and thus were not protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. They were treated as criminals and traitors to the South Vietnamese state.

Enemy intelligence personnel apprehended in civilian clothes were subject to the sanction traditionally reserved for spies. There's the famous picture of South Vietnam's chief of police, for example, shooting a captured North Vietnamese intelligence officer in the street during the 1968 Tet offensive. The South Vietnamese general thought he was acting within his legal rights.

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