The Daily Background

The following is from a source-review paper (sort of a research proposal, sort of a run-through of types of sources) for my english class. Yes, I’m posting homework. Lame of me, no? I think it’s worth reading though. Humble me. Haha. Anyways I used footnotes to cite sources and I’m much too lazy to put add links plus half of them were from Lexis Nexis which you can’t even link to anyways. Without further adieu…

The object of this research project is to learn about specific human rights abuses committed in the name of Americans as part of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror.” It is now virtually undeniable that wide-ranging violations of domestic and international law are occurring as part of this conflict. It is important to understand not only the nature and scope of said violations in order to make fair judgments about the “War on Terror,” but also to understand the rationalizations being made for these State abuses. The reason for this is that as citizens (and as the financiers of war) it is imperative to know what is being done not only in the name of our safety as Americans– but also in the name of civilization itself. In no venture do private citizens as a group, fork over vast sums of money to some organization and say “Here, do something good with this, and don’t tell me what you’re doing.” Taxes should be no exception to this rule of basic common sense. It is not only irresponsible to be incurious, but also deeply immoral to turn a blind eye to how this funding is being used.

In this research paper I will explore assorted case studies which demonstrate human rights abuses committed by the US government as part of the “War on Terror” which will be representative of wider-scale and even systemic violations. One constant problem in the arena of non-governmental human rights work are the issues of command responsibility and state liability. That is to say, yes human rights abuses are occurring, but connecting these human rights abuses to command figures is a particularly difficult problem. It is for this reason that no higher-level US officials have been held accountable for human rights abuses occurring in the “War on Terror”– even in those cases where trials take place (most of the time HR abuses are left un-prosecuted and un-investigated). If there is a bright spot in this department however, it is that an abundance of previously secret and still-classified documents, notes and memos penned by or approved by upper-level Administration officials have been leaked in the past 5 years. Several of these documents will serve as invaluable secondary-sources.

Another type of sources I will be frequently relying on are various texts of international human rights law to prove that the case studies I cite are in fact instances of human rights violations. For instance, I will use the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which has been signed and ratified by the United States, to demonstrate that extraordinary rendition (essentially kidnapping suspects) is a violation of Article 9 (“Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him” and “No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law” and “Anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation”). ICCPR Article 14 is also violated flagrantly by the denial of the right to fair trial to detainees (“All persons shall be equal before the courts and tribunals” and “To be tried without undue delay” and “To examine, or have examined, the witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him” etc).

Another source of this type I expect to rely on is the text of the Convention Against Torture (or CAT), another treaty of international human rights law to which the United States is a party to. There is instance after instance in which CAT has been violated by the Administration, and I will prove this by quoting sections of official documents which have been photocopied and smuggled out of the Pentagon which demonstrate this unequivocally.

For example, a classified memo from 2002 indicates that outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally signed a document which advised that the following torturous techniques were “legally available” to the US military: cold cell (violent induced hypothermia), waterboarding (literally suffocating a victim while simultaneously simulating drowning; this technique has been known to cause lasting psychological trauma, permanent injury or even death), and prolonged stress positions (such as making a detainee stand with his hands and feet tied to a cement block so he is doubled over for hours on end). On this last point, the Secretary of Defense scribbled in the margin below his approval signature a complaint about the time restriction of four hours per prolonged stress position. “I stand for 8-10 hours a day,” a 72-year old Rumsfeld bragged, perhaps exaggerating a bit. “Why is standing limited to [only] four hours?”

Of course, I will also be relying on a variety of less direct sources, such as news reports and books. One case study I will be examining in the final research paper will be the case of an young Afghani farmer (who became a taxi driver because he couldn’t support his family as a farmer anymore) named Dilawar. The most complete documentation of Dilawar’s story can be found in a New York Times article written in May of 2005. The Times obtained secret US military documents which indicated that the farmer, who was completely innocent of all wrongdoing, was wrongfully detained by US special forces in Afghanistan, repeatedly maintained his innocence, and was eventually shackled to the ceiling and tortured to death by a US Army interrogator who thought that he was doing exactly what army interrogations procedures allowed. This incident was witnessed by an interpreter and other personnel who did nothing to stop it and may have even participated, but the Pentagon covered it up. Once the Times wrote a 5,903 word front-page article about Dilawar’s case and an almost identical one also in Afghanistan, the US military was forced to take action. The Pentagon promptly conducted a “full investigation” and found one person guilty. Of pushing Dilawar up against a wall. They sentenced him. To two months in prison. The Times Editorial Board later concluded that there was a “widespread pattern” of such events.

America should be actively debating whether or not tax dollars should be spent on official policies which allow, promote, and dictate human rights be violated in a wholesale manner (even as I write, a recent report revealed that the US military holds more than 14,000 prisoners completely illegally in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and in secret prison facilities across Europe). American society must debate whether or not any of these human rights abuses are making America– or the world– safer, as the Bush Administration continues to claim it is. It is for this reason that research and broadened dialog on this topic is essential: to ignore research of abuse done in one’s name with one’s money is deeply immoral and cannot be allowed to happen. Turning a blind-eye to abuses is the equivalent of consent. In consenting to widespread human rights abuses which result in oppression of the innocent– be they upstanding Americans citizens or Afghani farmers turned taxi cab drivers– we as a society become no better than the terrorists we are supposed to be fighting.

Filed under: Human Rights, Z-TDB Blog