Amnesty ignorant again

This spring and summer, as part of their "Counter Terror with Justice" initiative, members of Amnesty International will be touring both seaboards of the United States complete with a replica of a standard cell at Guantanamo Bay. Indeed, as evidenced in a recently aired piece on the Daily Show [1], national director Larry Cox and his cronies have responded to the repeated refusals of the United States government to let a known anti-American NGO into a highly sensitive post with their own response; that of building their own Gitmo cell and trying to show off its "horrors" to the American public. According to their own people (posted on their cell tour subsection of their website) "Most detainees at Guantánamo are held in isolation, many of them with virtually no access to natural light or contact with other human beings, for up to 24 hours a day. Compounding their suffering is the fact that they have no indication of when or if they will be freed from Guantánamo. [2]" In addition, the Amnesty’s "Counter Terror with Justice" campaign website cites the entire Guantanamo Bay institution as "illegal" [3]. Once again, the fine folks at Amnesty International have shown a clear misunderstanding of the facts; perhaps a few clarifications would help.

To begin with, why does Amnesty International even feel it has a right to demand the United States government let them see Guantanamo Bay? First, Amnesty International has no special legal right to inspect any installation, as opposed to organizations such as the Red Cross that do. Secondly, there is no document the United States government has ever signed allowing Amnesty unfettered access to its installations. In fact, no such government agreement exists anywhere. Naturally then, what choice did the military have but to deny this organization access? After all, Amnesty has shown itself to be remarkably anti-American in its orientation (this Counter Terror with Justice campaign seems to only focus on the United States), and the increase in non-military personnel at a secure location would increase to the possibility for leaks exponentially (which as noted worryingly in recent literature may be impossible to track if the new Media Shield bill passes).

Legal grounds aside, there are a number of other reasons why this campaign is foolhardy and misguided. First of all, one of the issues Amnesty has cited as its reasoning for this campaign is our so-called "mistreatment" of prisoners [4]. They claim that the 8×10 cells at Gitmo are inhumane because of their size. Just out of curiosity, but does Amnesty remember that this part of the installation is meant as a prison? How big are prison cells supposed to be? In fact, using the state of Florida (which has a high number of prisoners) as an example, the average cell size for the state is around 7×12.5 [5]. That equates to about 88 square feet as opposed to the 80 at Guantanamo, and a very small actual difference in size. Hence when the United States incarcerates people who have not committed war crimes or terrorism in marginally larger cells that those who have, its hard to say that the size of the cell "violates human rights". (Unless Amnesty would just like to release all criminals altogether, in which case why even bother with laws.)

Another complaint in regards to the cells at Guantanamo Bay put forth by Amnesty International (or at least what they hope viewers of their replica will conclude) is the cell’s sparseness. Amnesty does have it right in this case; the cells have only a bed area, toilet, and a sink. What a travesty is being perpetrated to deny to men accustomed to living in the caves of the Afghan-Pakistani border their daily allotment of DirectTV! Once again I feel compelled to ask the leadership of Amnesty International if their heads are on straight. This is a prison, not a day spa. These men aren’t here for jaywalking or a speeding ticket; they’re here for playing a role in supporting terror and contributing to the deaths of innocent civilians worldwide. Why should this be made an enjoyable experience for them? Did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed make the lives of the people he plotted to murder on September 11th comfortable? Of course he didn’t. Are the lives of the people all around the world that have lost loved ones to acts of terrorism comfortable? Obviously they aren’t. It really is strange that Amnesty is choosing to focus on trying to help the perpetrators of terrorism rather than its true victims.

Having shown that its accusations in regards to the material aspects of the cells at Guantanamo Bay being "inhumane" to be baseless, it is time to challenge the very legal basis of Amnesty International’s oft made assertion that these detentions are "illegal" in the first place. Perhaps the leadership of this organization hasn’t done its research, but speaking as someone who has, there is not a single piece of legislation making the detentions at Guantanamo Bay illegal. However, the casual reader need not take just my word for it; instead go straight to the documents themselves. Let us begin with the major ones; the Geneva Convention comes first to mind. Frequently terrorists (as they’ve been trained to do) and their supporters such as Amnesty will cry that America is violating the Geneva Convention by holding these men in "inhumane" conditions (which has proven to be a false allegation) without charging them and so on. On the surface that may seem to be true, but there’s just one tiny catch; the Geneva Convention doesn’t cover terrorists [6]. According to the Third Geneva Convention itself (the one covering POWs), for a person to qualify as a POW and be accorded the treatment proscribed in said convention, that person must be affiliated (either regular army or militia meaning some sort of uniform) with a "High Contracting Power" (a state that was party to the convention but for argument’s sake we’ll say any state). This poses a bit of a legal issue for terrorism and its supporters as terrorists neither wear uniforms nor are affiliated with a "High Contracting Power" (Osama bin Laden’s signature is curiously missing from any Geneva Convention). All of this is certainly not to mention the fact that groups like Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Jemiyat al-Islamiyah and numerous others routinely violate the Geneva Convention with respect to their practices of directly targeting civilians.                     

With the Geneva Conventions clearly not applicable, what else can groups like Amnesty and the ACLU turn to when defending terrorists? Well, as far as major treaties go, the only thing they are left with is the 8th Amendment of the Constitution (the "cruel and unusual punishment" amendment). Here the argument is that practices our interrogators at Guantanamo use, such as never turning off the lights, playing music loudly and so on violate this amendment. There is only one problem; once again this document is not applicable. As written, the United States Constitution applies to citizens (as exemplified in the word "people") and to a lesser extent residents of this country almost exclusively, not unlawful foreign combatants working against it (especially ones being held outside of the United States where a foreign country retains de facto jurisdiction) [7]. Some readers may be a bit confused as to how the above statement could be true given that the activist judges on the Supreme Court last week ruled that detainees could challenge their detentions in U.S. Civil Courts. After reading the opinion, it turns out that the only reason the detainees are even allowed a single privilege under the Constitution (habeas corpus, which is not in the nominally separate Bill of Rights, an important distinction) is because the Supreme Court ruled that the Detainee Treatment Act, previously the standard used as a substitute by the government in place of habeas corpus, was deemed to be an inadequate one. Thus, in a 5-4 ruling on Thursday the justices insisted that the detainees be allowed true habeas corpus, though they made no attempt to insinuate that any other part of the Constitution applies to the detainees, even noting the narrowness of this case [8]. To allay a related issue, with regard to Americans working with terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay, any such American citizens caught working with or as terrorists would have violated the Constitution and be subject to laws concerning high treason, for which execution is a perfectly legal sentence; hence Guantanamo would be unnecessary in those cases. So then, with the two most often used documents out, what’s left? How about the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights then, or the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights, all of which address detention issues? First, like everything the General Assembly of the United Nations does, the UDHR is non-binding. As for the second two treaties, neither was ever signed by the United States of America. It seems then that the search for legally binding documents that would make any part of our operations at Guantanamo Bay illegal has been exhausted, with a decidedly anti-terror result.  

Having taken apart both the legal and material basis for Amnesty International’s most recent publicity stunt, let’s return to their newest campaign and correct their mistakes. On June 26th, Amnesty will be bringing their cell to Washington D.C., a perfect time to tell them about all the things their unbiased analysts missed when doing their research. Rather than crying for Islamic extremists who happened to get caught as Amnesty would like people to do, I encourage upstanding citizens to march out to that "cell" display and boldly proclaim the idiocy of their claims. Tell them that the cells at Guantanamo Bay are roughly the same size as state penitentiaries in this country and that their conception of legality is seriously flawed. Let them know that most Americans don’t support their ridiculous ideals. I’ll be right there alongside you.