Unaccountability
Sep. 10th, 2004 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinMore on ghost detainees.
All or most of these people may well be bad, dangerous people who are best kept locked up. But there's really no excuse for this level of unaccountability. It isn't an issue of whether fighting terrorism is a matter of criminal law or of war; in either case there are supposed to be rules for dealing with prisoners. The administration, which prides itself on its moral clarity, has been trying hard to use the ambiguity to create a third category in which they get to do whatever they want without saying why. We've already seen that this atmosphere does lead to abuses including death by beating and the torture of children, and that the unaccountability isn't always even vaguely justified in the first place.
I hesitate to even post this, because the current national mood seems to be that anything less than arbitrary cruelty to suspected terrorists (or to members of groups rhetorically associated with terrorists) is the same as being soft or unserious about fighting them. But we followed the Geneva Convention with high-ranking Nazis in World War II. Ultimately it's against our own national interest to treat prisoners this way; while people who are already terrorists are unlikely to give our captured soldiers any consideration no matter what we do, not all real or potential enemies of the United States fall into that category, and if the US behaves as if it were a country of monsters it may well affect their actions.
All or most of these people may well be bad, dangerous people who are best kept locked up. But there's really no excuse for this level of unaccountability. It isn't an issue of whether fighting terrorism is a matter of criminal law or of war; in either case there are supposed to be rules for dealing with prisoners. The administration, which prides itself on its moral clarity, has been trying hard to use the ambiguity to create a third category in which they get to do whatever they want without saying why. We've already seen that this atmosphere does lead to abuses including death by beating and the torture of children, and that the unaccountability isn't always even vaguely justified in the first place.
I hesitate to even post this, because the current national mood seems to be that anything less than arbitrary cruelty to suspected terrorists (or to members of groups rhetorically associated with terrorists) is the same as being soft or unserious about fighting them. But we followed the Geneva Convention with high-ranking Nazis in World War II. Ultimately it's against our own national interest to treat prisoners this way; while people who are already terrorists are unlikely to give our captured soldiers any consideration no matter what we do, not all real or potential enemies of the United States fall into that category, and if the US behaves as if it were a country of monsters it may well affect their actions.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-10 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-18 09:30 am (UTC)BugMeNot
no subject
Date: 2004-09-18 11:05 am (UTC)