WASHINGTON (ABP) — While a prominent Southern Baptist leader says a recent Supreme Court decision weakens the United States' ability to combat terrorists, some other Christian ethicists say even those accused of terrorism deserve to have their rights upheld through the due process of law.
Days after the Supreme Court declared illegal the military tribunal system set up for prisoners in the U.S. detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, White House officials announced July 11 that all prisoners there will be extended the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
The new policy came in response to the high court's June 29 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision. In the 5-3 opinion, the court's majority said the Pentagon's treatment of the prisoners was unconstitutional. Before the ruling, the White House planned to try the suspects in military tribunals — without the rights that the conventions extend to prisoners of war. The detainees were classified instead as stateless “enemy combatants,” whose rights are not defined under the conventions.
Guantanamo Bay holds about 460 suspected terrorists who were captured in various parts of the world after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The White House has reportedly interpreted the Hamdan ruling to mean that Congress must authorize a court system for trying the prisoners.
International pressure on Bush to close the prison has intensified since three prisoners there committed suicide June 10.
In the midst of the debate, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said in a Baptist Press report that the ruling will undermine President Bush's efforts to keep Americans safe. Land is a frequent Bush ally.
“Make no mistake, we are at war with an enemy that loathes with every fiber of its being everything that we stand for as a nation,” he said, adding that the court's invalidation of Bush's policy toward the detainees “weakens presidential powers in a time of war and betrays a serious and perhaps fatal misunderstanding of the nature of the threat we face….”
Land said the most troubling issue was the ruling's premise “that terrorists, representing no nation and wearing no uniform, are somehow deserving of being accorded the protections of the Geneva Convention covering prisoners of war, protections which exceed those afforded an American citizen arrested for a crime and incarcerated in the local jail.”
Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention, which the United States signed in 1949, says that “no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war.”
But other experts think Guantanamo prisoners should not be relegated to the tribunals, because such proceedings wouldn't adequately protect their rights.
David Gushee, the Graves professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., told Associated Baptist Press the court ruling and subsequent protections under the Geneva Conventions were long overdue.
“I was very pleased with the Hamdan decision,” Gushee said. “It was important in setting limits of executive branch power…. It did show the world that we do have three branches of government, and it is possible for our president to be checked by the judiciary.” Gushee's school is affiliated with the Tennessee Baptist Convention.
And, in contrast to Land's view, Gushee said the rebuff actually helps national security. For example, he said, for every terrorist detained through excessive, “over-reactive” measures after Sept. 11, there were probably five more terrorists created who “hate us with a passion that we can hardly imagine.”
“[The Hamdan decision] helps our national security because it returns the U.S. to the rule of law in this area,” Gushee said. “It has the potential to normalize our conduct…and maybe restore our stature in the world.”
Jeanne Herrick-Stare, senior fellow for civil liberties and human rights at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, agreed. According to Herrick-Stare, the administration has been treating “individual human beings” at Guantanamo in ways it would not tolerate for Americans. The Friends Committee is one of Washington's largest peace lobbies, and was founded by the pacifist Christian Quaker sect in 1943.
“The administration's cruel and brutal treatment of detainees shows the world an ugly picture of the United States, a picture that reinforces the terrorist recruiting efforts,” Herrick-Stare told ABP.
She said that when it comes to Christian ethics, the end of “ridding the world of tyrannical despots and those who would kill and maim innocents” does not always justify the means of circumventing international agreements on the conduct of war.
“To justify creation of the Guantanamo Bay prison and the other secret prison facilities scattered across the globe, the current administration manipulated and distorted definitions and procedures in international treaties — authoritative guidelines that have serviced the world and protected our own troops for half a century,” she said. “While the goals the administration says it is pursuing may be considered worthy or even admirable to many…the means that the administration has utilized to achieve those goals will forever sully the good intentions with which the goals have been pursued.”
Simply put, by crossing the line into unethical conduct, Herrick-Stare said, the current administration has “shocked the conscience of the world.”
That's where another benefit from public outcry comes in, Gushee said. Increased public attention to prisoners' rights could help establish humane environments for prisoners in other war detention centers.
Public outcry did contribute to the implementation of more humane standards in recent years at Guantanamo, he noted. Gushee said similar focus might help make public information about detainees in the U.S. government's many undisclosed facilities around the world, where abuses of power and secrecy may “violate our constitutional and our moral standards.”
Most important for the nation, Gushee said, is to have a “basic Christian concern for justice” with “oversight for the powerless and vulnerable.” In a February Christianity Today cover story called “Five Reasons Why Torture is Always Wrong,” the ethicist noted that the Unites States has signed international anti-torture agreements for decades — from the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the 1985 U.N. Convention Against Torture. As a full-partner with these anti-torture agreements, Gushee said, it's only right that the United States keep up its end of the agreement.
“I sure would like to see [the Guantanamo prison] closed,” he told ABP. “If the prisoners there have committed a crime punishable by U.S. law, then they should be prosecuted on U.S. soil. If not, they should be returned to their own countries.”
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