Posted: August 1st, 2023
Is Guantanamo Ethical?
Is Guantanamo Ethical?
Topics:
1. React to the following statement: The National Security Agency (NSA) should be
abolished.
2. Respond to the following question: Should technology companies be forced to turn over
any and all records that the government deems pertinent to terrorism investigations?
3. React to the following statement: The U.S.-run terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely.
4. React to the following statement: The federal government should manage all aspects of
counterterrorism operations inside the United States.
Here are the parameters for this term paper, due by the deadline:
1. Submit, in Microsoft Word, approximately 7-10 pages of content (not including title, abstract, and references pages). Use Times New Roman Font (size 12), double spaced.
3 scholarly resources
Is Guantanamo Ethical?
After the 2001 terrorist attack, under George W. Bush, the United States undertook measures to ensure greater deterrence measures on the future attack. The Guantanamo Bay Naval Detention Camp was converted into a terrorist prison, to house some of the highest-profile suspects of terrorism (Dougherty, Leaning, Greenough, & Burkle Jr, 2013). Most of whom were cited to be frustrating the United States anti-terrorism operations worldwide and transferred to this specific facility to be detained as they wait for their trials. The facility largely hosts detainees who are considered terrorists and a threat to the U.S. government. But the circumstances surrounding their detention and how the U.S. is obligated to treat them have been in the spotlight for several years now. International media and various non-governmental organization had continued to identify the detention facility as a stain to human rights record intentionally perpetuated by the United States on citizens not of the U.S. This is because, in most cases, before Obama’s administration, prisoners were held indefinitely without access to fair trial or avenue to get to be accorded one (Dougherty et al., 2013). The U.S. was also not obligated and motivated to give them up, as it deemed them prisoners of war. Apart from being expensive, some of the facility’s more pressing failures offer human rights conditions to detainees and intentional lack of rights to a fair trial.
Guantanamo detention facility has no legal provisions for existing or functioning under the international and U.S. Constitutional laws. This is a critical factor in trying to examine whether the facility should be able to run indefinitely. According to research, in the cases of Rasul v. Bush, Boumediene v. Bush, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the U.S. supreme court concluded that all international laws applied to the prisoners and that they could not be held indefinitely within the facility (Boehm, 2012). The U.S. habeas Corpus protection is also applied to them, labeling them as foreign combatants that were unconstitutional and beyond the law. This ruling critically evaluated and identified the United States as breaking the law and internationally defying the course of justice for its selfish gains, aided by its legislature (Boehm, 2012). The facility continued existence, as such, represents the United States’ intentional subversion of law and in breach of the Geneva convention in which the U.S. is a party.
Guantanamo detention camps remain to be a representation of anarchy perpetrated by the mighty and powerful nations of the world. Research identifies that under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, passed by Obama, the U.S. is obligated to treat all foreign entities as enemy combatants rather than the criminal defendant (Pope, 2012). This critically strips the detainees any form of recognition under the U.S. laws. It removes them further away from a justified trial and, in a sense, justifies placing them in a perpetual state of detention. Human Rights Watch defines the facility as a legal black hole relative to the criterion surrounding its establishment and existence. The international rules embody any party to capture the combatants for the war duration in the duration of a war. Unlike the previous conflict, the war on terror is not conventional but asymmetrical in more than one form. There are no defined rules of engagement that both sides, especially the terrorist use in the field (Pope, 2012). It has become harder to end or define. This is the basis from which the U.S. justifies its continued detention of prisoners in Guantanamo.
The facility’s past operations have been sighted to apply the use of torture against its detainees. This is a direct breach of international human rights laws. Prison, being strategically out of most U.S. courts’ jurisdiction operates in semi-secrecy and with greater censorship. This allows them to conduct a clandestine operation that, in most cases, have ended up in the torture and murder of prisoners without access to a fair trial before the courts. Political galvanization has been critical in creating and perpetuating the clandestine operations within the prison (Boehm, 2012). A general lack of public support, achieved through greater secrecy, maintained the lack of interest in its dealing for a long time. During the Bush administration, it was sighted that staff at the facility used enhanced interrogation techniques that otherwise compromised the prisoners (Boehm, 2012). This creates a legal breach by the U.S. At the same time. It can be regarded as a blatant disregard of law and regulation set in place within the U.S. and international communities to ensure fairness and justice for all.
Other factors that frustrate law is the location of the facility. Guantanamo has strategically located offshore U.S. mainland from the geographical location on leased Cuban territory beyond any U.S. court’s jurisdiction. This critically creates a system where the law does not recognize the facility, and the U.S. does not have the authority to provide care for the detainees objectively. The facility as a unique experiment on the dangers of sovereign power, stating that the U.S. has imposed the intentional use of negative gestures such as torture and continued to rely on legal frameworks to perpetuate its actions. This is even though the detention facilities negate the U.S. Constitutional law and the Geneva conventions of 1949 (Dougherty et al., 2013). This is because the prison facility is officially limited to the outside world. At the same time, the facility is physically removed from any jurisdiction. In so doing, there is no active system of the rule of law that applies, especially to the prisoners.
Guantanamo holds the detainees indefinitely contrary to international and U.S. laws that require a fair trial to be provided. Human rights watchdogs have defined facility as a legal black hole. There are a variety of factors that perpetuate this state of being and, at the same time, legally do not implicate a person directly for its existence (Dougherty et al., 2013). Herein lies the major failures of the system. The U.S. courts recognize that the facility is unlawful, but do not have jurisdiction to motivate other enforcement agencies to work. While they recognize that the detainees have a right to a fair trial, there is no way that the detainees can be given access to U.S. courts as their efforts are frustrated by the U.S. Congress. Congress has categorically refused to fund the prisoners’ trials, as such frustrate efforts made in the Obama administration to allow a fair trial on U.S. soil.
Additionally, the detention works in secrecy by controlling the majority of the information. As such, little information is provided evidentially to show that the prisoners are being tortured. This is an outright violation of the United States and world laws and protocol on conventions of war. It critically promotes avenues to harm the detainees it considers foreign combatants by failing to acknowledge them (Dougherty et al., 2013). Since there is no due process accorded to the prisoners, they generally have no rights. They continually face hardships considering that there is an option that the majority of them might be innocent. Torture of victims designates the U.S. military as the judge and jury, bypassing the law in more than one way. One critical factor that brought the issue of torture to light was when most of the prisoners went on hunger strikes. According to Dougherty et al. (2013), the U.S. officials running the prison participated in a force-feeding program, which on itself was its own kind of torture for the prisoners. This is a matter that most people agreed on and implicated the United States negatively, showing that it also defied its own laws and regulation. Additionally, researchers point out that the U.S. outright denied the allegation and tried to create an alternative view into the matter (Pope, 2012). In justifying torture, researchers identify that the United States gained negative attention and lost public trust in regard to the benefit of the facility.
The Guantanamo detention facility has been a critical tool for terrorist recruiters. This mainly deals with the attitudes surrounding the facility’s general view and perception as a direct limitation to individual freedoms and liberties by a government. The United States, as a party to various laws essential to the protection of human rights, is required to live up to certain standards and expectations. Pope (2012) shows that public opinion has offered greater justice to the prisoners concerning the detention facility than the courts assigned to fulfill this task. This is critical because it shapes people’s attitudes and minds within the United States and across the world.
War on terror is an ideological war. Aside from the unconventional physical battles, the war on terror is a war of hearts and minds, mainly against western aggression and constant interference in Middle East affairs and the general Muslim population worldwide, at least in the average terrorist’s perspective (Pope, 2015). While the west may create its justification in the war, the east also has as much stake and justification. Guantanamo is mainly an image of civil violation by the U.S. This enemy deems itself to propel humanity’s values and dignified treatment of all fellow men. The camp’s existence has served to majorly depose the U.S. from the moral higher ground and created avenues for more resentment and creation of anger.According to Dougherty et al. (2013), terrorist recruiters are continually provided with propaganda tools to recruit more people in this regard. This actively works to sustain the war and perpetually keep the terrorists locked in Guantanamo detention facilities.
The detention facility intentionally works to frustrate cooperation between countries in the fight against terrorism. Its existence is retrogressive as it works to alienate Muslim communities (not allied to Islamic extremist ideologies) from working with the U.S. In total, the U.S. captured people from a total of 44 countries. Most of them were in haphazard manners, i.e., not based on a standard criterion. The majority of the members were of Muslim background, some of which had little contact with an established target and, as such, extra-judicially take to detention. In the Persian region, Pakistan and Afghanistan’s cooperation was further frustrated after Pakistan boasted of intentionally giving up hundreds of suspects to the CIA for detention and interrogation (Dougherty et al., 2013). This worked to critically limit information sharing as it alienated the Islamic community to the marginal, essentially normal citizens as it hindered them from the association. In case of an association, Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, British citizens were unlawfully detained in the Gambia and imprisoned in Guantanamo for years for an alleged association with another English cleric, Abu Qatada.
The detention of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna was in direct contradiction of the freedoms of association as the U.S. later released them after failing to prove their ties with terror groups. This meant that the U.S. terrorized members of the Islamic community worldwide without reproach, as they did not need justification or a warrant to hold people. According to Dougherty et al. (2013), the U.S. picked suspects from Afghanistan, Gambia, Uzbekistan, Egypt, and in territories of Africa and the Middle East without proper governmental authorization is such territories. This ultimately worked to create a greater level of distrust between the governments and the people actively prolonging the war on terror.
In the above arrests, Gambia is not a region where military conflict has been officially declared on the key issue that stands out. The conventional guidelines do allow the United States to arrest and detain combatants during the duration of military conflict. Still, in cases where the alleged combatants were not picked in a direct military zone, various legal issues arise as to why they are still being held indefinitely. Amnesty International has indicated that the United States is increasingly treating the whole world as a battleground, where human rights do not apply. This is because the U.S. has made dozens of arrests worldwide, mostly in regions where the rule of law still applies. Here the U.S. actively manipulates the rule of law to ensure that it is always winning at the expense of global human rights laws. This is bad precedence for the world as it critically creates avenues for rogue states to start and justify similar practices.
Maintaining the detention facility is expensive for the taxpayers. Guantanamo Detention camp is an elaborate institution that mirrors a prison. Instead of private or public security guards, it is manned by military officials all mandated to certain goals and objectives. The institution has controlled activities, and organization of people into ranks, and posts to create a form of disciplinary power. The implication is that it is expensive to maintain and run on a day to day basis. Dougherty et al. (2013) show that the soldiers are assigned on a rotational basis, constantly trained using tax funds. Above all, the prison is within a naval base. Its management and funding are directly under the federal government. Running the Guantanamo detention facility is 13 million dollars per prisoner, compared to the highest mainland U.S. prison “Supermax” facility in Colorado, which stands at $78,000. This is a huge amount considering the prisoners are not required to do anything in their duration and, in most cases, remain in solitary confinement (Pope, 2015). The new manual gave a green light to solitary confinement, which among other things, prohibited reading materials to a limited number, and exposure to the outside world. In 2018, the amount was tallied to reach 540 million dollars a year in upkeep. This is a very exorbitant amount considering that access to certain basic needs such as housing, food, healthcare and education is out of reach for millions of American people (Pope, 2015). This money could have been better invested somewhere else.
Guantanamo detention facility has played some of the helpful roles to house suspects who played a critical role in various terror operations. It is generally necessary to consider that since there is no fair trial being accorded, some of the suspects could be innocent and wrongly incarcerated within this system. Since 2002, when the first suspects were admitted into the facility, the Guantanamo detention facility has housed more than 700 prisoners (Dougherty et al., 2013). The facility on and in itself provides a very essential in the war against terror. It provided a neutral and secure facility where most people considered to be dangerous are housed. Some of the reasons why the facility exists in the first place are to play as a critical host and a deterrent to critically limit the detainees from reengaging in terrorist activities when released. 27 detainees were released by Obama. Another suspected 47 detainees returned to terrorism. This critically works to sustain the argument that the facility played a critical role in deterring terrorism (Dougherty et al., 2013). It is especially emphasized when one considers the fact that the United States defined the prisoners as some of the major high profile terrorists likely to compromise its security if released. In many regards, many the countries from which the detainees were arrested, may not pose as the perfect location for their imprisonment since they remain volatile and vulnerable.
The Guantanamo detention facility has been very helpful in holding terrorists and preventing them from reengagement. On the contrary, its existent overlook certain important international laws on human rights and United States constitutional laws. Its existence is essentially out of the scope of the United States constitution and out of the scope of the United Nation laws. This allows third party actors not representing the will of the people who elected them to office nor abiding by the rules of the international human rights to critically abuse the non-derogable rights of other people while at the same time paying little regard to human rights. Ultimately, there are a variety of laws that have been intentionally breached by the U.S. government. The breach and illegalities tend to create serious ethical questions on the detention camp’s purpose and objectives. As it stands, the camp has no legal provisions that permit the United States government to conducts detention. Nonetheless, the U.S. continues to circumvent the international and its constitutional laws, and subject people to arbitrary arrest and detention. They violate territorial integrities and perpetuate an unlawful notion where other countries’ laws are not recognized at the pleasure of its own. Furthermore, it defies human rights laws and subject people to torture and illegal indefinite detention. The facility is additionally very costly to maintain compared to mainland U.S. facilities. The moral dilemma that exists and perpetuates the facilities’ existence is, as such, outweighed by its vices.
References
Boehm, D. C. (2012). Guantanamo Bay and the Conflict of Ethical Lawyering. Penn St. L. Rev., 117, 283.
Dougherty, S. M., Leaning, J., Greenough, P. G., & Burkle Jr, F. M. (2013). Hunger strikers: Ethical and legal dimensions of medical complicity in torture at Guantanamo Bay. Prehospital and disaster medicine, 28(6), 616.
Pope, K. S. (2015). Are the American Psychological Association’s detainee interrogation policies ethical and effective?. Zeitschrift für Psychologie.
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