In the movie the Siege, Anthony Hubbard (Denzel Washington) was fearful of giving up too much freedom for security. That fear came true following the 9/11 attacks; but it did not necessarily “Destroy the very thing we were fighting for” as Hub said. Moreover, the government used its power to try to make America more secure, but at the same time they took away the freedom and rights from the people they imprisoned. America bent their own laws because their mindset was to make America more secure following the devastation of 9/11. On September 11, 2001, an Islamic terrorist group called al-Qaeda coordinated 4 plane attacks on the United States. Following 9/11, the United States started receiving terror threats. Being afraid and innocent, …show more content…
was faced with the problem of where to house prisoners as the Taliban fell. The administration thought of the idea of holding them at Guantanamo Bay, which is a naval base the United States had leased from Cuba since 1903. Guantanamo was attractive to administration officials because it placed the prisoners outside of American laws. This was what Hub was especially afraid about because of the manipulation of what the U.S. did with the placement of Guantanamo Bay. They knew that because Guantanamo did not apply to the American laws, Guantanamo would be a perfect place to make a prison. John Yoo a former law professor and clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said that neither the Taliban nor al-Qaeda were entitled to prisoner-of-war-status or the protection of the Geneva Convention. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed an executive order endorsing Yoo’s opinion that the Geneva Convention did not apply to al-Qaeda and asserting that the Taliban were “unlawful combatants.” Unlawful combatants are like “prisoners of war,” where these people may be held indefinitely without formal charge. Like criminals, these people can be tried and sentenced for planning and carrying out acts of violence in which soldiers are not prosecuted. Ultimately Guantanamo Bay was a bust because only three prisoners were convicted out of the 800 or so prisoners held at Guantanamo