Fighting Terrorism vs. Abusing Human Rights

Which comes first?

from JoeUser Forums
What are the most significant effects, both internally and externally, as a result of widespread governmental human rights abuses in dealing with terrorism or insurgency?

When a government uses human rights abuses to enforce counterterrorism policy, the government's moral superiority is eroded both at home and abroad. For many outside observers, the United States' continued detainment of unlawful combatants at Guantanamo Bay is a miscarriage of human rights. This undermines American efforts at goodwill and reconciliation with nations who oppose the US' policy stances in the Global War on Terror.

As well, committing human rights abuses only serves to inflame the violence and ill will between the warring parties. According to Human Rights Watch,
...with the advent of the "war on terror," governments are
increasingly employing counterterrorism measures that
themselves violate basic human rights. Such approaches
to counterterrorism are not only wrong and illegal, but also
short-sighted and counterproductive. Experience suggests
that human rights abuses committed in the name of
counterterrorism serve to fuel terrorism, not to reduce it.

With the Global War on Terror in full swing, it would serve American diplomacy well to consider the public, global perception of American CT decisions rather than discounting all criticism of CT efforts.

Sources:
"Counterterrorism." Human Rights Watch, 2006. Internet: Link, accessed 26 Jul 2007.
3,085 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
And you think the US is the worst culprit... you should see how Turkey has completely destroyed the morale of the Kurdish separatist movement. Now that is a story of heartbreak and abuse.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
I don't think the U.S. is the worst culprit but I think we have stooped to a level that I thought we were better than. This isn't 24. Then again I think V for Vendetta was a good warning for what can happen if we let go of our freedoms for a sense of security.
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
I guess you have to wonder how much freedom are you willing to give up for security. It's tough to decide between doing the right thing and hoping to live to tell about doing the right thing. It's been said many times over that 2 wrongs don't make a right; while the US may have done things to provoke terrorist to do us harm you have to wonder if this could be a case where it is justifiable to say that 2 wrongs can somehow make a right by them using terrorist tactics to do us harm.

I can only dream of living in a country where cops did not carry guns, where crime was so low the police existed only as a reminder. Where racism, ignorance, poverty, obesity and cancer were a thing of the past. Where people helped each other, got along, cared for each other. Where healthcare was about saving, maintaining and expanding life not benefiting from it. But lets get real, this is only a dream, an illusion, one of which the odds are so much against it you may as well not even consider the possibility of hope. Cops will always have weapons, crime will never be low enough, racism will exist even between people of the same race, ignorance is the full of this economy, no poverty means no Democrats, obesity is in the eye of the beholder (just ask a supermodel who doesn't think is skinny enough) and any disease like cancer can be cured but will either be temporarily controlled for profiting reasons or replaced by something worse. I hate to be the barer of bad news but because we want to be free to do what we please we will always maintain an out of reach distance from the Utopia we trick ourselves into believing we can achieve. It is that same thing that we claim to cherish so badly that is our downfall. To be human and to be free is like oil and water.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top

When a government uses human rights abuses to enforce counterterrorism policy, the government's moral superiority is eroded both at home and abroad. For many outside observers, the United States' continued detainment of unlawful combatants at Guantanamo Bay is a miscarriage of human rights.

That is the problem.  For we are not dealing with reality, but perception.  And the sad part of perception is that it does trump reality.  In the end, those who want to believe something, will, regardless of reality.  If we had treated them according to the Geneva Convention, those people would be dead.  Legally shot as spies.  Would that make it better?  I hardly think so.

In the end, the agenda of the enemies are dictating perception.  And nothing the US could do - while still maintaining soveriegnity, would placate those who want to see ill. 

America has not sacraficed anything yet in this war.  But the cry from those who hate us - or Bush - has been repeated so long and so often, that the perception is we have.  Reality has nothing to do with it.