Guantanamo Double Standards

Guantanamo Bay: The Double Standard That is America

“Human rights are the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights are the very soul of our sense of nationhood”. Jimmy Carter. If we analyze Jimmy Carters Quote then we can see that he is 100 percent correct. Human rights are the soul of our foreign policy, whether it’s intervening in Myanmar or in Syria when Bashar Al-Assad used chemical weapons on the Syrian rebel groups. When we look further we see the US only does this because it is what we stand for as a country, duo process, equal rights, and religious freedom. In the whole process the US has over looked a problem with in them self’s. The infamous Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) has been the sore thumb of America since the early 2000’s.

It started out great for both sides Cuba was able to get money for leasing the land and the United States gained a base in an area of at the time geopolitical importance. Over time the mutual agreement eroded. The last time Cuba accepted the payment was 1949, and has asked the United States to leave many times but the United States has not (Guantanamo…). It was not until 2000 that the naval base transformed into a detention facility under Bush (Guantanamo…).

Bush transformed the base to include a detention facility in 2000’s. He said in a statement he assured the American public and the international community should not fear. GTMO would follow every single part of the Geneva Convention (rewriting…)..Today GTMO is used to house the most dangerous Taliban members (Miller). At first it seemed great GTMO would house the most dangerous people away from the homeland, keeping them tucked awayOn the face of this it seemed like it’s a great solution however all great things come to an

An inmate that was one of the few lucky to be released from Guantanamo Bay said in press conference that everyone is tortured at GTMO (Associated Press). In most cases the Government says that they use torture as means to get intelligence,basically the ends justify the means. However according to DeGarmo, that there is no scientifically evidence that suggest torturing plays a significant role in gaining valuable intelligence in fact science proves that torture plays no role in what so ever in gaining intelligence. When taking a step back and looking at the picture we can see that the majority of the inmates being tortured have been in GTMO for five years or more, so any intelligence that we would obtain them would either be, one out of date or two, inaccurate given the fact that the inmates have no accesses to the outside world. Furthermore the act of using intelligence to gain intelligence is never acceptable and violates human rights and the Geneva Convention (DeGarmo). With all the torture that goes on one would think the inmates would try to do something, and in fact they have. One of the things they tried was the hunger strikes and we see how that went, moreover, one of the lucky inmates who got a trial, and were found not guilty, went to one of the high courts to try to “press charges” against the US for torture. The court ruled that tapes from GTMO be released to prove the inhumane torture