The rules of war; it sounds ridiculous when stated like that. Even though war is a brutal man vs. man, kill or be killed affair, there are rules to war. The 1949 Geneva conventions are the body of international law that deals with armed conflict. They were created for good reasons, but there are also flaws within them. The Geneva Conventions are exploited by terrorists and in some ways interfere with national security. These laws are getting our soldiers undeservedly prosecuted, even though our enemies don’t follow them at all. POW(Prisoner of War) treatment, war crimes, and the application of the laws towards terrorism are three protocols that need to be changed within the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions have strict rules regarding the treatment of POW’s. Under the Geneva Conventions POW’s cannot be harmed, tortured, and must live decently while detained (Stein). Compared to killing your enemy in combat and the bombing of known terrorist hideouts, torture is clearly the lesser moral crime (Stein). It is considered this because of the way torture makes us feel (Stein). You can imagine what torture would feel like; it’s a more personal approach (Stein). It’s not possible to visualize being caught in a bombing run (Stein). When in reality there are severed limbs, burning bodies, and pain just as agonizing as being tortured (Stein). The way wars are fought today in the modern era; where your enemies hide in heavily populated places collateral damage is unavoidable (Harris). Even how advanced our technology, when we drop bombs we drop them full knowing that a number of civilians will be harmed in horrible ways by them (Harris). So now we can ask ourselves if we fight war like this, where innocent civilians are being h... ... middle of paper ... ...Geneva Conventions, “Torture Bans,” and Murdered Soldiers: People on both sides of the aisle.” Accuracy in Media. 12 June 2007. Web. 13 February 2011. Harris, Sam. “In Defense of Torture” Huffington Post. 17 October 2005. Web. 24 February 2011. Luttrell, Marcus, and Patrick Robinson. Lone Survivor. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007. Print. Smith, Jeffrey R. “War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution” The Washington Post. 9 August 2006. Web. 23 February 2011. Stein, Joel. “Joel Stein: Why I’m in Favor of Torture” La Times. 10 October 2006. Web. 24 February 2011 Wilson, Tim. “Understanding the Geneva Conventions” Accuracy in Media. 21 September 2006. Web. 28 February 28 2011 Zielbauer, Paul von. “Charged with war crimes, U.S. troops get legal help from home” The New York Times. 22 July 2007. Web. 23 February 2011.
Who wouldn’t have agreed? Yes, torture is cruel but it is less cruel than the substitute in many positions. Killing Hitler wouldn’t have revived his millions of victims nor would it have ended war. But torture in this predicament is planned to bring no one back but to keep faultless people from being sent off. Of course mass murdering is far more barbaric than torture. The most influential argument against using torture as a penalty or to get an acknowledgment is that such practices ignore the rights of the particulars. Michael Levin’s “The Case for Torture” discusses both sides of being with and being against torture. This essay gets readers thinking a lot about the scenarios Levin mentioned that torture is justified. Though using pathos, he doesn’t achieve the argument as well as he should because of the absence of good judgment and reasoning. In addition to emotional appeal, the author tries to make you think twice about your take on
In short, the only way the world is going to conduct war, is the way it is now. It will take a larger and more sustainable international effort to make universal guidelines for war. Sure, the Geneva Conventions established protocol for war, but those rules and ideas are only acknowledged by the countries that not just ratified it, but also follow it. Through the Geneva Conventions, is the only way that ethics will exist within the realm of war, otherwise it will constantly find itself cast out in favour of strategy and control. Until then, the grand outcome of war will be bound to realism.
Media concentration allows news reporters to fall victim to source bias, commercial impulse, and pack journalism. Together, all three of the aforementioned factors become known as horse race journalism, a cause for great concern in campaign media. In complying with horse race journalism, media outlets exclude third party candidates, reinforce the idea that politics is merely a game, and dismiss issues that directly affect voters and their day to day lives. Through horse race journalism, the media is mobilized in impeding an active form of the democratic debate in American politics. Even across the wide range of human values and beliefs, it is easy to see that campaign media coverage must be changed, if not for us, then for our children. It is imperative that we discern the flaws of the media and follow our civic duty to demand better media
Levin wants to change the negative views that society placed on torture so that, under extreme circumstances torture would be acceptable. He begins his essay with a brief description of why society views the topic of torture as a negative thing. He disagrees with those views, and presents three different cases in which he thinks torture must be carried out with provides few reasons to support his claim. He uses hypothetical cases that are very extreme to situations that we experience in our daily lives. From the start, Levin makes it perfectly clear to the reader that he accepts torture as a punishment. He tries to distinguish the difference between terrorists, and victims in order stop the talk of terrorist “right,” (648). Levin also explains that terrorists commit their crimes for publicity, and for that reason they should be identified and be tortured. He ends his essay by saying that torture is not threat to Western democracy but rather the opposite (Levin
Michael Levin's article on "The Case for Torture." is an article which mainly discusess the use
Zissou, Rebecca. "'Freedom Fighters.'" New York Times Upfront. 22 Apr. 2013: eLibrary. Web.1 Oct. 2013.
Fox News is constantly being bombarded with accusations of media bias, furthermore, a number of different instances of have occurred which question the validity of Fox News (Groeling). These instances occur throughout normal news broadcasts. Some of the more recent, and grossly biased broadcasts, were from the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. Historically the Fox News Channel is known to lean heavily to the right, or on the republican spectrum. President Barrack Obama’s political party is widely known to the public as being democratic. Statistically, to this day according to studies over 17 million households receive some form of the Fox News Channel (Auletta). The Fox News Channel is published through a number of different channels to its viewers. These channels include: Television, radio, newspaper, internet and more increasingly electro...
A good part of Outfoxed focuses on the company's blurring of news and commentary, how anchormen and reporters are encouraged to repeatedly use catch-phrases like "some people say..." as a means of editorializing within a supposedly objective news story; how graphics, speculation and false information are repeated over-and-over throughout the broadcast day until it appears to become fact, and in doing so spreads like a virus and copied on other networks. A PIPA/Knowledge Networks Poll points to glaring, fundamental misconceptions about the news perpetuated upon Fox viewers, versus information received from widely respected news-gathering organizations like NPR and PBS. Asked, for instance, "Has the U.S. found links between Iraq & al-Qaeda?" only 16% of PBS and NPR viewers answered "yes," but a frightening 67% of Fox viewers believed there had.
Wingfield, David R. "Why International Law Supports the Invasion of Iraq: A Short History on UN
The issue of torture is nothing new. It was done in the past and it’s done now in the 21st century. Without saying one side is right and the other side is wrong, let us discuss the part that we agree on and find common ground. We as Americans want to protect Americans from harms. So how do we prevent that from happening without torturing? It is impossible to get answer without some sort of questioning and intimidation techniques, since we know captured prisoners during war are not easily going to give up information. We know the enemy we face doesn’t follow the Geneva Convention or any law that pertains to war, so does that mean we shouldn’t also follow the Geneva Convention also, which prohibits torture? Of course not, because we want to be example for the world. Republicans argue that we have to do whatever is necessary to keep Americans safe, and Democrats argue it goes against our values and makes us look bad. We as Americans, as leader of the free world we
In order for a military to execute its function, every platform of the chain of command must expect and demand obedience to commands (Montrose, 2013), because if this does not happen many lives can be at stake. A simply failure to comply with the orders given can not only jeopardize the lives of the soldiers, it can compromise the safety of all military personnel involved, even in the matter of national security. Utilitarianism has a core theory that some actions may be considered right or wrong relying on the effects of the outcomes. This theory is mostly what could be applied this situation of the detainees in the military prisons. During this time, national security was weak, the country was being attacked and threatened, and thousands of innocent civilians lost their lives. The military could was only looking out for the interest of the country and many interrogation techniques were used to get information that could lead the capture of Al-Qaeda leaders. Soldiers are sent to warzones without the ability to deny their own obligation to war, just because they believe it to be morally wrong. They are sent and receive orders under the assumption the government has all the information needed to make the best decision for the country. According to the periodical, Unjust War and a Soldier’s Moral Dilemma, individual soldiers who have
Around the world and around the clock, human rights violations seem to never cease. In particular, torture violations are still rampant all over the world. One regime, the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, establishes a strong elaboration of norms against torture. Despite its efforts, many countries still outright reject its policies against torture while other countries openly accept them, but surreptitiously still violate them. The US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia have all failed to end torture despite accepting the provisions of the Convention.
On the opposite side, there are people very much in favor of the use of torture. To them, torture is a “morally defensible” interrogation method (8). The most widely used reason for torture is when many lives are in imminent danger. This means that any forms of causing harm are acceptable. This may seem reasonable, as you sacrifice one life to save way more, but it’s demoralizing. The arguments that justify torture usually are way too extreme to happen in the real world. The golden rule also plays a big rol...
From the beginning days of the printing press to the always evolving internet of present day, the media has greatly evolved and changed over the years. No one can possibly overstate the influential power of the new media of television on the rest of the industry. Television continues to influence the media, which recently an era of comedic television shows that specialize in providing “fake news” has captivated. The groundbreaking The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its spin-off The Colbert Report have successfully attracted the youth demographic and have become the new era’s leading political news source. By parodying news companies and satirizing the government, “fake news” has affected the media, the government, and its audience in such a way that Bill Moyers has claimed “you simply can’t understand American politics in the new millennium without The Daily Show,” that started it all (PBS).
Jones, Jeffrey P. "Fox News and the Performance of Ideology." Cinema Journal 51.4 (2012): 178-85. Print.