A Decay of Ideals J. Salvatore Testa II jtesta at hacktivismo dot com December 27th, 2005 Sixty one percent of Americans believe that torture of terrorist suspects is at least justified on rare occasions, according to a poll by the Associated Press[1]. I find this quite shocking, as it is obvious that torture directly opposes many of the core values of the United States of America. This torture is being conducted by U.S. agents in Guantanamo prison in Cuba, Abu-Graib prison in Iraq, and various secret locations throughout Europe--often before the benefit of a fair trial in court. This is a blatant disregard to the spirit of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well as Article Ten of the _United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights_, both of which assert the right of the accused to know what charges they are facing and the right to a fair and public trial[2][3]. Fair trials are necessary because humans are fallible by nature. Letting a small, biased group interpret all the evidence will result in the imprisonment of the innocent. Does it not seem plausible that an individual could be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? Remember that even with fair trials and a careful multi-level appeals process in place, the United States government has nevertheless executed innocent people in its history[4][5]. While punishment of the innocent is an unfortunate inevitability, it remains the duty of every civilized society to implement reasonable mechanisms to minimize it. Clearly, biased agents standing in as judges and juries (if at all) is a wholly unacceptable practice that falls well below this responsibility. Under the current administration, hearsay from a few teenage soldiers regularly results in a suspect being arrested and held thousands of miles away from their homeland in a Guantanamo prison cell for years at a time without ever being told what evidence is against him, nor if ever he will be allowed to return to his family. The forefathers of the United States would certainly consider this to be an abomination, as they listed a similar practice by King George III as a major reason for the American Revolution (see Thomas Jefferson's excellent work, _The Declaration of Independence_)[6]! The Nazis were more evil than al-Qaeda, yet we readily provided them with lawyers to defend themselves in court. Why? Why did we give them a chance to escape justice in the face of overbearing, obvious, and crushing evidence? The reason we ensured fair trials was to send a message to the world: each and every person regardless of creed, race, age, and sex had inherent rights that could not be taken away; a person must be treated with dignity and honor at all times. The Nuremburg trials showed oppressive dictatorships that justice prevails and that no one is above it. These messages are just as important today as they were a half-century ago, yet they are disregarded in a blind pursuit of short-term security. To make matters worse, several international human rights groups are claiming that these kidnapped suspects are being tortured by U.S. agents[7][8]. Again, no one in power is paying heed to the spirit of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, nor to Article Ten of the Universal Declaration. Legal maneuvering by the Bush administration allows this to continue, but the philosophical principles remain intact: all people have the inherent right to freedom from torture. It does not matter if a person has valuable information and refuses to cooperate. All people deserve to be treated with dignity regardless of their skin color and religious beliefs (yes indeed, I am suggesting that this charade is driven in part by down-right racism). No person is any less human than any other, and as such, their rights cannot legally be demoted to privileges and taken away. Furthermore, torture is employed by the U.S. government under the false pretense that it may save American lives. But confessions obtained under duress are already known by the judicial branch to be inaccurate, and so they cannot even be entered as evidence against the suspect. If this unreliable information cannot be used to prevent an imminent attack, nor ensure that guilty parties are put behind bars, what can it do besides further galvanize the enemy and legitimize their tactics? Reality is showing how highly counter-productive this strategy is, even in terms of practicality. In this War on Terror, there are two ways America can lose: 1.) by letting terrorists destroy our physical structures with bombs, or, even worse: 2.) by letting fear destroy our philosophical structures with brash and fanatical witch-hunts. If we cannot preserve our own ideologies when fighting this ideological war, we betray the very essence that makes this country great; we would betray the freedom that millions of soldiers have bravely died for over the last two hundred and thirty years. Without preserving our philosophical ideals, all victories are hollow. REFERENCES [1] Associated Press. "Poll finds broad approval of terrorist torture." 9 Dec. 2005. MSNBC. 18 Dec. 2005 . [2] The United Nations. _Universal Declaration of Human Rights_. Paris: General Assembly, 1948. [3] James Madison. The United States Bill of Rights. New York: Congress, 1789. [4] American Civil Liberties Union. "A Question of Innocence." 9 Dec. 2005. American Civil Liberties Union. 18 Dec. 2005 . [5] Liebman, J. S., Fagan, J., & West, V. (2000). Capital attrition: Error rates in capital cases, 1973-1995. Texas Law Review, 78, 1839-1861. [6] Thomas Jefferson. _The Declaration of Independence_. Philadelphia: Continental Congress, 1776. [7] Roth, K. "Terror suspects should be prosecuted not tortured." 22 Nov. 2005. Human Rights Watch. 18 Dec. 2005 . [8] Amnesty International. "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Guantanamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power." 13 May 2005. Amnesty International. 18 Dec. 2005 . ---- A special thanks goes to the following people for providing suggestions and proofreading support: Amy Dehn, Jonathan Pasquale, and David Hoffman. ---- Copyright (C) 2005 J. Salvatore Testa II This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License . Permission is hereby granted to: * copy, distribute, display, and perform this work * make derivative works * make commercial use of this work