Fighting Terrorism in the Age of Trump
The president-elect has vowed to kill the families of ISIS members and bring back Bush-era torture tactics. Siddhartha Mahanta 4:50 AM ET A detainee's feet are shackled to the floor as he attends a "Life Skills" class inside the Camp 6 high-security detention facility at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in 2010. Michelle Shephard / Reuters In February, Donald Trump vowed to make “enhanced interrogation techniques”—like sleep deprivation, waterboarding, and “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”—part of his then-hypothetical administration’s approach to fighting terrorism. He also promised to target the families of suspected terrorists. His pledges, sometimes reversed , then reinforced , all seemed like instances of his fiery, base-riling campaign rhetoric. Trump faces significant hurdles to reviving George W. Bush-era interrogation practices amounting to torture; those hurdles include the Geneva Conventions and 2005’s Detainee Treatment Act, which pro