How often do average people question the policies of the government?
How often do Americans question policies set out to “ensure national security?”
It is a well-known fact that the USA PATRIOT Act was passed in Congress about a month after 9/11 because there was a sense of national emergency at the time.
Now, after review by legal scholars and lawyers, many people are finding certain sections of the act quite atrocious because of its privacy-violating nature. However, since it was deemed crucial to national security at the time it was passed, few, if any, questioned this act and the policies that followed.
While the PATRIOT Act proves it is important to review U.S. domestic policy on national security it sometimes can be drastically more important to check U.S. foreign policy on the same subject.
The issue of extraordinary rendition (the practice of exporting prisoners to prisons in other countries), is a foreign policy issue that has been festering for almost a decade.
Since 9/11, detainees have often been sent from prisons in the U.S. to prisons in countries with a history of torturing and abusing prisoners.
Sometimes, these prisoners turn out to be innocent.
Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was sent by the CIA to the “Salt Pit,” a prison in Afghanistan.
There, he claims he was regularly beaten as part of his interrogation.
After an American in the prison learned el-Masri was innocent, he called Washington to try to get him released. In April 2003, when the CIA called a special meeting about el-Masri’s case. CIA Director George Tenet was told there was an innocent man was being held in the Salt Pit.
In late May, el-Masri was finally released from the Salt Pit after the camp received a second order release order from Condoleezza Rice, then-director of the National Security Council.
After release, when el-Masri tried to sue the United States for wrongful incarceration, his case was dismissed on the grounds that a full investigation could compromise national security.
While it is unethical to employ inhumane tactics like torture, it is downright foolish to use inhumane tactics on people who have not been proven guilty.
Rendition victims are not given a chance to represent themselves in court. While it is valid to make the argument that our national security depends upon extrajudicial and unethical practices like rendition, it is also plausible that these practices can be replaced by more humane forms of incarceration or that, in some cases, these practices can be done away with altogether.
This has been the case for Guantanamo Bay detainees, who have enjoyed a growing number of rights in the past few years.
Rasul v. Bush, a Supreme Court case in 2004, held that the U.S. judicial system had the authority to decide whether foreign nationals were wrongfully imprisoned.
Boumediene v. Bush, decided this July by the Supreme Court, held that Guantanamo prisoners had a right to habeas corpus.
Sadly, none of these rights are given to rendition victims.
Rendition should be done away. It creates more ill feelings toward the United States than it generates valid intelligence.
However, for those who disagree, I do believe a compromise can be reached: Rendition victims should given the rights of Guantanamo detainees, as well as the protections guaranteed to them under the Torture Act of 2000, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 and the War Crimes Act of 1996.
If we are to patch up U.S. foreign relations worldwide, we must address the issue of extraordinary rendition.
The practice creates hatred abroad, and that hatred sometimes manifests itself in the form of terrorism, thereby creating a cycle of violence.
If the majority of the American public continues its complacent approach to the government policy of rendition, this hatred will only keep growing.
Something needs to be done about this growing problem soon. And there is no better time for the public to take political action than during an election year.
Ohm Devani is a University College freshman. He is a copy editor and guest columnist for The Daily.
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jfreezy 3 years, 7 months ago
The National Security argument is a bogus claim that allows the people in power to do what they want without scrutiny from the public. It is a means by which they keep the truth to themselves, thereby sidestepping their responsibilities of transparency to the people. National Security, War on Terror, Executive Privilege, etc., you name it; these are all blanket terms that allow the government, especially the executive, to engage in any sort of activity they think fit. It starts with us though. We need to stop buying into this BS, and start taking back ownership of the government.