Pros And Cons Of Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp

1028 Words3 Pages

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp was created with unilateral, realist ideals. The American government attempted to assert order through the usage of military power and force by detaining individuals without proper due process and tried them in military tribunals instead. The inherent fear caused by the threat of terrorists resulted in the U.S. hastily applying aggressive methods to prove that they were still a strong country that was to be feared . Therefore, they acted in the heat of revenge and carried out torture tactics to interrogate those who were merely suspected of being a terrorist. A specific way that the U.S. displayed realistic ideals was their departure from the international human rights agreement, the Geneva Conventions. …show more content…

Rumsfeld. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, granting a prisoner of war a separate hearing to determine whether or not they were a prisoner of war prior to being tried in a military court as an unlawful enemy combatant. However, Congress followed this decision by legalizing military commission as fair trials when it came time to trying the Gitmo detainees. While Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld provided few other protections such as barring any testimony that appeared to have been taken through coercive tactics, prisoners were still forbidden to challenge their imprisonment and the right to request a re-evaluation of the evidence brought against them. These policies displayed an obvious self-interested, power seeking system that is a core principle of the realist theory. They undermined international order and created disorder due to the overarching sense of fear from the 9/11 …show more content…

They also call for Congress to take all the necessary steps to appoint an independent bipartisan commission modeled on the 9/11 commission to investigate thoroughly all the incidents of torture and abuses at the Guantanamo detention camp. The investigations that have been conducted have been mainly executed the Department of Defense itself, failing to hold anyone accountable to being responsible for authorizing torture. This commission should also carry the responsibility of producing new policies that prevent any abuses and violations in the

Open Document