PRO
United States must adhere to rights guaranteed at Geneva Convention when dealing with detainees, even if not POWs.
By James Riswick
Assistant Opinions Editor
America can do whatever it wants, when it wants and how it wants. We are free to do so. These Taliban and Al-Qaeda pigs have attacked our nation and we have the right to do with them as we please.
Sorry, but no we don’t. Regardless of how incredibly angry America is at anything related to the words “Taliban” or “Osama,” we still must remember there is an entire world out there that more or less supported us when we needed it. It’s the world that decided to put many of its previous beefs with the U.S. aside and lend resources toward finding the perpetrators of Sept. 11 and stopping terrorism in general.
It is also a world, especially concerning our closest European allies, that is highly committed to the cause of human rights. The nations that have made complaints about American treatment of Taliban and Al-Qaeda “detainees” at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba have every right to be concerned.
When they saw pictures of men on their knees in a chain link cage wearing shackles, handcuffs, earmuffs, black-out goggles and surgical masks, many around the world threw up a red flag.
Some compared the situation to a World War II concentration camp. Admittedly, that is pushing it. Anyone who compares America to Nazis should rethink their logic. Even our most staunch critics should know America is just not like that.
Nevertheless, at the time these photos were taken, there is no doubt these “detainees” were being held in sub-human conditions. If this were to happen to someone else in another country, Americans would be just as equally on the human rights bandwagon. There shouldn’t be a double standard simply because the situation involves America.
Thankfully, the Defense Department explained the photos were taken right after the “detainees” were removed from the airplane that transported them from Afghanistan. Considering the highly volatile nature of these men, the measures taken by the military were probably a good idea.
Also, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assured the public this week that the “detainees” were being treated well, receiving food and health care, and are able to practice their religion.
This is a good thing and it should put the world at ease on that particular matter.
But by not disclosing the information sooner and by sticking by its usual secret nature, the Defense Department set itself up for international scrutiny.
The scrutiny is especially harsh considering the “detainee” title attached to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda at Guantanamo. Under the Geneva Convention of 1949, prisoners of war are supposed to be treated humanely with a set of guidelines to follow. By calling them detainees, the military can do whatever they want to these men. According to the Convention, a prisoner of war is a captive who wears the insignia and uniform and carries the weapon of an enemy state.
“The Al-Qaeda is not a country,” Rumsfeld said. “They did not behave as an army. They did not have insignia.” This is true and under this definition, the captives in Cuba should not be considered POWs.
However, this definition is being used to America’s advantage. The Geneva Convention was written with a traditional war mindset: country versus country.
As the government has said many times before, this is an entirely new type of war. It is still a war, though, and if it were to be written today, the Convention would most likely be written to include these kind of “detainees.”
But as long as the current definition is in place and Al-Qaeda are not considered POWs, the Defense Department can do with them as they please. That means they are exempt from one particular right given to POWs: their required release after hostilities. There is no way America is going to let that happen, which is the real reason we are dealing with “detainees” instead of POWs.
Even if these “detainees” are in fact being treated humanely in the spirit of the Geneva Convention, as Rumsfeld claims, the global community still has the right to ask questions and make sure America is doing the right thing. Just because we’re America doesn’t mean we’re exempt from the same international scrutiny that other nations come under.
These “detainees” may have attacked our nation, but we still have to follow the rules and we shouldn’t be able to simply do with them as we please.
CON
America’s critics are practicing ‘selective humanity’ when crying mistreatment of prisoners held in Guantanemo Bay.
By Kyle Jorrey
Opinions Editor
Whoever said, “All is fair in love and war,” though poetic, was flat-out wrong. Well, at least the war part.
After the atrocities of World Wars I and II, leaders from around the world came together in Geneva to set forth a list of agreements that would protect the rights of prisoners of war.
These rights were made into international law, and their purpose was to ensure that even during an event as violent and inhumane as warfare, countries still respect the basic rights of their enemy captives.
And while these rights are vital in making sure unthinkable cruelty and torture does not go unpunished, those who fight to enforce them often seem to hold the United States to a double standard.
Just last week, after the U.S. military had released photographs of some of the 158 prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, some of our allies and world peace organizations such as Amnesty International were up in arms over our supposed mistreatment of detainees. The photos, which depicted suspects, kneeling and handcuffed, wearing blacked-out goggles and earmuffs, were proof, they said, of U.S. misconduct.
One prominent British newspaper (from the nation that was the first to publicly condemn the Sept. 11 attacks and pledge their support to the U.S.) printed the pictures beneath the outrageous headline, “Tortured.”
In a press release, peace-loving Amnesty International responded to the pictures by stating: “In pursuing the objective of eradicating terrorism, it is essential that States strictly adhere to their international obligations to uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Strictly adhere? Yes, but where were the humanitarians when our American soldiers in Korea and Vietnam were being tortured and mistreated?
Just ask Sen. John McCain, who underwent 5 1/2 years of horrendous torture in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” that included having bamboo shoots plunged beneath his fingernails and electrical cords attached to his sexual organs. Just how well did his captors “strictly adhere” to these rules?
Or how about Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins, who in 1988 was kidnapped, imprisoned and then murdered by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group while serving with the United Nations in a peace-keeping mission in southern Lebanon. Where was Amnesty International then?
These groups are practicing selective humanity, and that isn’t any kind of real humanity at all.
And just this Sunday when photos were released of captive Wall Street Journal reporter, not soldier, Daniel Pearl, bound and gagged with a pistol to his head, where was the international outcry over this mistreatment? There wasn’t any, and this is the problem.
While Al-Qaeda and Taliban members were murdering thousands of innocent men, women and children in Afghanistan, where were these advocates of human rights?
And then, five months after more than 3,000 innocent Americans were murdered in an unthinkable terrorist action, these organizations want the U.S. to feel bad for keeping supporters of the same group who brought about the attack in poor conditions?
Call me crazy, but you won’t see me shed a tear for them, and my guess is you won’t see any of the victims’ families crying tears of sympathy either.
No hard evidence has emerged that these men are being tortured, and I’ll bet anything that the conditions in Cuba are far better than the prison conditions in the vast majority of nations around the world. The Department of Defense has reported that these prisoners are provided three meals a day, medical care, clothing, shelter, and the opportunity to worship. I sincerely doubt the Taliban would provide American detainees the same.
Yet the international community, whose members take great pleasure in enjoying our products while at the same time attacking our values, can’t just leave it alone. Americans should be thrilled that President Bush is not letting these foolish complaints distract him from his ultimate goal of eradicating this world of terrorism.
If Taliban prisoners get a little cold or a little hungry at the expense of returning our great nation from the fear of terrorist attack, then so be it.
So while Amnesty International and the international community waste time and energy worrying about the detainees, America will be trying to rid the world of terrorists, which to me, is a far nobler cause.
January 31, 2002