Do you remember the ‘enemy combatants?’ The ones at Guantanamo bay? There still there! And about now President bush had decided to go ahead with his military tribunals. The hypocrisy of this is so bad, it makes me wish I was not an American! How can America even pretend to be any better than the so called ‘totalitarian regimes’ of Saddam Hussain or the Taliban? These people are prisoners of war, even if we did not go to war officially—congress never declared war, but everyone else called it a war.
I think that the state of affairs surrounding the legal and physical treatment of these prisoners is the biggest threat to the ideals of America and democracy anywhere in the world. Worse than any terrorist attack because it undermines the very ideals on which our country was founded. The US has criticized other nations in the past for the use of military justice against it’s citizens and now we find out President—who is supposed to be the beacon of democracy, liberty and justice in the world—turning America into a hypocrisy, not a democracy.
By placing the prisoners at Guantanamo bay President Bush believes he has placed them beyond the reach of justice. Now he can do with them as he pleases. But the right to justice is just as universal and inalienable as those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Bush has refused to follow the Geneva convention and allow representation to the prisoners. Again making the US a hypocrisy by decrying the broadcasting of captured American in Iraq—a violation of the Geneva convention.
We as the citizens of America who fought for the rights of justice—trial by jury, legal representation, and fair treatment—should cry out in out loudest voice for the Bush Administration to stop undermining those very rights. If we as Americans deserve them then ALL humans deserve them.
(read more here [ www.economist.com ] )