One reason alone is why, the President has so ordered it. The CIA is acting under orders, as is the Military to do what ever it takes to find out information. The fifteenth and sixteenth paragraphs of an article named Military Lawyers Fought Policy on Interrogations by Josh White of the Washington Post Newspaper, puts the blame exactly where it belongs on who is responsible for this. “In 2002, the State Department's legal adviser expressed concerns that the Bush administration had ignored the Geneva Conventions in deciding how to treat captured members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Because such captives have been categorized as "enemy combatants" and not prisoners of war, the administration has said the conditions of their detention are not governed by the Geneva Conventions, though they would be treated humanely.
Guantanamo Bay The issue of keeping Guantanamo Bay open or closed is one worth looking at. Guantanamo has come under scrutiny since its conception in January of 2002 because of alleged violations of Habeas Corpus, which requires due process to anyone held in a United States prison. However, the Bush administration defined the prisoners as enemy combatants, which allowed them to be detained until the end of hostilities. Detaining international citizens with these justifications sheds light on gray areas in an otherwise black and white US judicial system. Should Guantanamo Bay remain an operating prison or should it close its doors?
Surprisingly, the results of Milgram’s experiment proved that when individuals are in a position of following an authority figure’s directive, or their own moral conscience, people will overwhelmingly choose to obey. Milgram’s study could be viewed as a blueprint to explain why a rather ordinary person, can become a world renowned war criminal, during war time. General Douglas MacArthur said, “The soldier, be he friend or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and the unarmed” (qtd. in Carter 20). On the morning of March 16, 1968, three American military companies entered two Vietnamese villages My Lai and My Khe (Cookman 156).
December 8, 2011 A Comparative Critique of “The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror” and “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism” The subject of obedience to authority to the point where a human would cause physical harm to another human has been greatly debated among modern critics. In his article “The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror”, Crispin Sartwell suggests that the average ordinary citizen will participate in mass genocide. In contrast, “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism” by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak focuses on the response of soldiers in the military to their superiors. Both articles cover ground dealing with man’s response to social consensus and obedience. In contrast, however, Sartwell’s article focuses primarily upon the civilian aspect of obedience, whereas Szegedy-Maszak focuses more upon the military aspect.
Because America is a haven from violence, the violence under the Taliban in Kabul is even more shocking and sobering. Amir gets a taste of violence when he and Baba are fleeing for Pakistan and Kamal's father commits suicide. However, nothing can prepare him for the extent of violence and suffering in Afghanistann. One of the most graphic accounts is of the stonings at Ghazi Stadium. Like the rapes of Hassan and Sohrab, the event symbolizes the devastation of Afghanistan as a whole, as Afghans once knew it.
This notion is further emphasised through the use of jargon in the lines, “The Japs used to weigh us, to see how thin our bodies could get before we started dying”. This statement implies the nature of the camp to be brutal and unforgivable. Misto has incorporated both visual images and jargon to create an effective sense of authority to therefore relive their experience of war through memory. Likewise, the poem Dulce et decorum est by Wilfred Owen is how the post himself saw war with no knowledge, imagination or training which prepared Owen for the shock and suffering of front line experience. Its horrifying imagery has made it one of the most popular condemnations of war ever written.
Why are we trying Bales? In the article “fReeBale-Yes!” English professor Michael Fisher introduces his readers to a recent crime committed by a US Army soldier who allegedly shot and killed 16-17 innocent lives while deployed on a tour in Afghanistan. Fisher states that Staff Sergeant Robert Bales should plead guilty for the charges against him whether he committed them or not. I personally respect Fishers argument although I strongly believe Bales has already established a foundation for a path towards his own freedom by receiving the right to be tried in the US rather than the country his crime was committed in. Fisher proposes valuable points about the possible outcome of this trial if Bales was to be set free by the American court system.
“The Case for Torture”, by Michael Levin and “Torture’s Terrible Toll”, by John McCain are two pieces of writing that argue the pros and cons of using torture as a means to receive information from terrorists. Although the use of torture to secure information is viewed differently by each author, the moral and human rights of every individual is agreed upon by both Levin and McCain. While Levin views torture as necessary in extreme life threatening circumstances, McCain views it as unconstitutional and believes that it is inhumane and goes against individual human rights. In the world today, where terrorist threats seem to be a normal occurrence, there is no doubt that the country must be ready and willing to do whatever is necessary to keep
http://www.crisispapers.org/essays/powell.htm At one and the same time, McNamara is seeking absolution (from us, representative Americans) for his unnamed sins, and also wants to keep silent even now about many of the unconscionable policy-atrocities in which he participated and, at times, initiated. One gets the distinct impression that if he were to talk in detail publicly about those secrets, he would have to swallow the black revolver. He's that delicately poised on the razor's edge of conscience. INS101/POLS203 Research Paper In the 2004 documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, Robert S. McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense of the United States, reveals how he understands the world and how
War can affect many people on different levels; be it inspire them or discourage them. Vonnegut took what happened to him in World War II and wrote Slaughterhouse 5 with the hope that it would motivate some form of movement against war. Within the story, Vonnegut inputs his antiwar opinions. As a member of the US Army, Vonnegut served in the war and suffered the tragedy of being a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. This consumed his inner thoughts to the point where he wanted to try and relive some of the worst interactions that occurred so that he could include them in his book.