Take the following scenario: You are living your normal daily life. You are a civilian and you are not part of any radical or terrorist organization. Then a foreign government that has invaded your country abducts you. You are taken to another country, where you are held in a prison for six years. You are not told why you are being held there or what crime you have committed and you are deprived of legal counsel. You are tortured for information you don’t have.
Then it is determined that you were never witholding information – that in fact you had been mistaken for someone else. Sounds like something that happens under dictatorial rule, right? Try the U.S. government.
For years, prisoners have been held, both justly and unjustly, at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention camp without charge and with little hope of a fair trial. Following the Sept. 11 attacks, it isn’t hard to understand the lengths people will go to protect their loved ones from further harm. It is plain to see why many people trust their government to protect them, as they should be able to. But for the past several years, the U.S. government, specifically President Bush, has carried out the unconstitutional policy of indefinite detainment in order to hold individuals suspected of terrorist activity. The vast majority never even stands trial before being released without charges.
Many would argue that any measures we can take to prevent the possibility of another terrorist attack are worth acting on, but these policies do not work, to prevent terrorist activity. Keeping people in captivity without enough evidence to warrant detention in no way helps our cause and further hurts our reputation around the world, during a time when we need as much foreign support as possible.
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s recent majority ruling returns checks and balances to a system that has been harmed by the post-Sept. 11 flow of power toward the executive branch. The ruling does not mandate a mass release of all prisoners currently detained there. It does, however, require that the government judge each case based on its merits and gives detainees an opportunity to defend themselves.
The Geneva Convention is often cited in this argument. Some say it covers all enemy combatants, while others argue that it does not apply to terror suspects as they are not uniformed soldiers. The simple fact is that we are in a different type of war. We cannot wait for the "War on Terror" to be settled before we deal with the human rights issues at hand. It could be 20 years or more before we get to the point where we can comfortably assess whether we did the right or wrong thing. We must adapt to the current type of war we are waging, not only militarily, but as far as our legal system will allow us.
Busby, an English sophomore, can be reached via [email protected].
