Thesis (M.S.)--School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, 2008. / "June 2008." Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-91). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Würzburg, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 531-544).

Post-modern feminist security studies explore how our discourse about gender and war affects the construction of security as a concept. Military narratives valorizing the masculine over the feminine have long marginalized women warriors. In recent years, images of the torture and abuse of detainees have appropriated the representation of women interrogators during the Global War on Terrorism in particular. This research applied interpretative phenomenological analysis to the narratives of women interrogators in order to challenge the silence concerning their lived experiences by addressing how women interrogators understand their experiences both as woman and as interrogators, and how they negotiated socially constructed contradictions between these identities. Based on an analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight participants, the findings produced seven, interrelated themes. First, the findings explored the integration of gender with other markers of identity. Next, the findings demonstrated women interrogators recognize gender as a context-dependent role negotiated within the military institution through the development and demonstration of technical prowess. Then, the findings described interrogation as a complex adaptive system in which women interrogators harnessed to achieve their goals. Finally, the findings determined that the intersection of women interrogators’ identities and their interactions in the context of interrogation operations generated the perception of women interrogators as non-threatening. Women interrogators learned to exploit the meaning of this emergent phenomenon through introspection and the development of self-awareness.

This study examines the phenomenon of abusive violence (AV) in the context of the American Post-9/11 Counter-terrorism and Counter-insurgency campaigns. Previous research into atrocities by states and their agents has largely come from examinations of totalitarian regimes with well-developed torture and assassination institutions. The mechanisms influencing willingness to do harm have been examined in experimental studies of obedience to authority and the influences of deindividuation, dehumanization, context and system. This study used Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to examine the lived experience of AV reported by fourteen American military and intelligence veterans. Participants were AV observers, objectors, or abusers. Subjects described why AV appeared sensible at the time, how methods of violence were selected, and what sense they made of their experiences after the fact. Accounts revealed the roles that frustration, fear, anger and mission pressure played to prompt acts of AV that ranged from the petty to heinous. Much of the AV was tied to a shift in mission view from macro strategic aims of CT and COIN to individual and small group survival. Routine hazing punishment soldiers received involving forced exercise and stress positions made similar acts inflicted on detainees unrecognizable as abusive. Overt and implied permissiveness from military superiors enabled AV extending to torture, and extra-judicial killings. Attempting to overcome feelings of vulnerability, powerlessness and rage, subjects enacted communal punishment through indiscriminate beatings and shooting. Participants committed AV to amuse themselves and humiliate their enemies; some killed detainees to force confessions from others, conceal misdeeds, and avoid routine paperwork. Participants realized that AV practices were unnecessary, counter-productive, and self-damaging. Several reduced or halted their AV as a result. The lived experience of AV left most respondents feeling guilt, shame, and inadequacy, whether they committed abuse or failed to stop it.