Sample Essay On American Policy During The Global War On Terror

The term legal or human right in the simplest and basic meaning refers to the freedoms and the power to act freely without coercion or restriction from other persons, parties or states. It is a constitutional guarantee that any human being is entitled to some irreducible minimums as far as his or her power to act freely is concerned. A person is supposed to enjoy his or her rights up to the extent where the rights of another person border. This is to say that no person, state or party in the context and/or pretext that it is enjoying or enforcing its rights and freedoms should cross or curtail the rights and basic freedoms of another person, party or state. In the past, the world has experienced series of terror attacks that have left the globe reeling from the effects of terrorism and organized crime. One of the most hit countries was the United States of America, in the historic and memorable 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre. This prompted the United States government to instigate protective measures and combative approach to tackle the menace of terrorism.
In conjunction with other countries around the world, the United States of America initiated an anti-terrorism policy which was coined, “Global War on Terror.” This policy encompassed bold measures that were aimed at curtailing the arms and the stretches of terror related activities. This protective measures in the name of Global War on Terror has been clouded in controversy and a lot of criticism from the legal and civil right movements. For the purpose of this essay, I will discuss in details how the United States of America’s policy during the Global War on Terror, resulted in the production violation of human rights. This meant that there was a group of people “with no state and thus nor rights," were created during the whole process.
The Geneva Convention was the creation of international treaties, which was established as the accord of last resort in the event that national and the international criminal system were suspended or proved inapplicable. In brief, the Geneva treaty gave some freedoms and rights to all global citizens, including prisoners of war. The convention stipulated the basic and irreducible treatment that a prisoner ought to be given regardless of the circumstance. Apparently, the Guantanamo Bay suspects are not entitled to the irreducible minimums stipulated in the Convention, it is as if they are not global citizens! They can neither be tried under the international criminal systems nor the national criminal jurisdictions. This implies that they would be tried under an invented administrative system of bureaucratic manner, where the officials concerned decide whether a person goes to trial or not. This is a clear violation of all the known criminal procedures and systems, which at the very least guarantee a suspect the right to trial within a specified period, upon apprehension.
A suspect is also supposed to be informed of his or her crime or charges, and then subjected to a free and fair trial where guilt or innocence of the suspect ought to be proved. This implies that the suspect would be detained for an indefinite period, so long as the United States of America’s official would decide on when it would be fit to release them or not. This has presented a precedent and an approach where, government all over the world are engaged in self-justificatory procedures during such circumstance. The rational effect is that the nations around the world can follow suit by detaining global citizens on the grounds and reasons that can only be justified by the “detaining officials or the intelligence arm of the respective governments.”
In the traditional and conventional governments are supposed to guarantee the state where the people can have and enjoy their rights and freedoms. Governments are supposed to facilitate e an avenue where human beings regardless of the criminal perception or otherwise are guaranteed of their rights and the irreducible freedoms. These actions by the United States of America to constitute a parallel process and procedures which are nothing other than self-justificatory in nature to detain a person is unappealing. It speaks badly of the compliance of federal stages to lid down and internally recognisable rights, benefits and privileges that all human beings are entitled to, regardless of the circumstance. The right to a fair trial, right to be represented by a counsel of choice, the right to appeal the ruling of the court are some of the irreducible measures that the United States of America’s policy on Global Terror has violated.
It is in the spirit of best practise that guilt, innocence or culpability of a person is determined by an independent and impartial judiciary. This is proper so that the judiciary, as impartial and independent party would render a neutral opinion in these matters. The United States military cannot be the complainant, the judge and the jailor all at the same time. This is a legal absurdity that has been created by the enactment of the Terror policy. All it requires is the unilateral consent of the president to decide on whether the suspect would be kept at indefinite detention be tried by the military or none of the two options.
The military has apprehended suspected terrorist within and outside the United States territorial grounds and borders. Any person, whom the United States of America perceives o poses a high likelihood of terror danger, is apprehended without a second thought. All the persons suspected to high ranking members within the Al-Qaeda, or the Taliban is rounded up in Guantanamo Bay. Once at the incarceration centre, the suspect is no longer a citizen of any country because the treatment and the illegal, procedural, unconventional and the unconstitutional treatment that are meted to them. This is the effect of the creation and the enactment of the War on Global Terror as put forth by the United States Department of Justice.
The assumption by the public is that, the military in most instances have persuasive evidence that the suspects are high ranking members of terror organisations and units such as the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda. Because the general public mood and feeling is negative towards Taliban and Al-Qaeda, thus it becomes a justifiable approach because the public will be concurrent with the measures to protect the citizens of the United States of America and the globe as a whole. To the public and the general population which has experienced the wrath of terrorists and terror gangs such as the Al-Qaeda and Taliban, the mere fact that a person is labelled an Al-Qaeda adherent; his or her rights and freedoms are irrelevant. The court of public opinion does not and cannot support the rights, human or legal of such a person regardless of whichever convention or treaty. The military and the intelligence wing of the government has capitalised on a bad name and reputation that terrorists have earned around the globe to vilify them without trial. There is public anger and rage towards the concerned persons thus, when comparing the effects that terrorist have left in the global map, the violation of the so-called “irreducible human and legal rights” is nothing as compared to the deaths and injuries caused to civilians.
The United States of America policy on Global War on Terror has ridden on the political will of the executive and by extension the general public who have been directly affected by acts of terrorists. Thus, when the military and the intelligence wings of the state are tasked with the mandate and duty to implement the measures aimed at reacting against annihilation by terrorists, nothing else would matter. The feel and the opinion of the victims are that if one person can mete out harm in the form of bombing another innocent civilian, under any circumstance, belongs to not particular state or country. Thus, this policy has aimed at categorising terrorist as people who belong to the nation or state of terrorism. Terrorism as a global menace cannot be tackled or handled by kid-gloves. If a high ranking intelligence clearance lay reasonable ground to believe that a person is involved with terror activities, then that is the end of the human or legal rights of that person. This is so because the terrorists or their financiers do not consider the human or legal rights of the victims whom they attack with reckless abandon. This has been the public relations argument, logic and exercise that the executive and the proponents of Guantanamo Bay incarceration centre have held. Irrespective of nationality, once a person contemplates causing mayhem: pain, suffering, death, injury to persons and loss of property, then it would be unreasonable to consider his or her rights if that same person does not consider the rights of others. Conclusively, the policy has been effected on the grounds of “an eye for an eye.” It is like paying the terrorist in their coin.