While students gripe about RAs being too active in trying to thwart underage drinking or furiously blaming Maryland’s shoddy football performances on the banning of a song, international laws are being broken left and right by our own government.
Too many times, as college students, we are caught up with our own lovely and highly alcoholic lives without ever bothering to pay attention to what really matters: The world we will face the day we sadly part with College Park. Though we might not know it, or want to, we live in that world already.
In the past week, there has been much excitement and banter over the Bush legislation – the Detainee Detention Act. Pundits and politicians alike have been questioning the morality (or sanity) of our administration’s decision to introduce legislation that would essentially rewrite the 47-year-old Geneva Convention, which sets the international standards for humanitarian treatment, and the War Crimes Act, which makes violations of the Geneva Convention criminal.
According to Bush, the Geneva Convention is unclear. Doesn’t it seem bizarre that the U.S. has been able to abide by the Convention and its words for the past 47 years, even while we were busy interrogating Soviet spies? Very frankly: To say that words in the convention such as “outrages upon human dignity” or “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture” are not clear is absurd.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. This comes from the man who asked, “Is our children learning?” But enough pointless ridicule.
What does the actual proposed legislation say? Not much. The president establishes no substantive interpretations of what lines cannot be crossed in the torture (sorry, the treatment) of prisoners. The bill still allows for coerced testimony – while giving no definition for it – and for classified evidence to be withheld from defendants in a trial. The bill is essentially a slight rewording of sections of the Geneva Convention, bending the rules to the amoral needs of the administration.
And, of course, Republicans are trying to steamroll it right through the process. After all, it would look good to appear to hold a firm stance on the war on terror for the upcoming elections. But remember what came out last time something was rushed through Congress like this? The Patriot Act. Now that is legislation to be proud of.
At his Rose Garden news conference on Sept. 15, Bush was asked how he would feel if another nation, say, North Korea or Iran, decided to adopt interrogation tactics that would be tolerated by the Detainee Detention Act. Unable to answer, he finally said, “The world would be better.”
But just imagine our president’s outrage if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran decided to waterboard captured American soldiers and justified this with his U.S.-inspired reinterpretation of the Geneva protections. The U.S. has no more a right to rewrite an international convention than any other nation, and doing so could place American soldiers in even more danger.
Of course, one shouldn’t forget that it’s election season. The fear-mongering and the usual “you’re either with us or against us” attitude that saturates the rhetoric surrounding this bill arrived just in time. This is a perfect example of the right-wing’s usual tactic: Scare people into voting for them.
This is where students come in. Be you Republican, Democrat or Green, it is of paramount significance that you vote! Hold this administration accountable. We are entering this world in no time, and we shouldn’t have to clean up this administration’s mess for decades to come. Even if we choose to ignore the world around us during our remaining blissful time in College Park, at least we should face reality on one day this year – Nov. 7.
Anika Fontaine is a senior marketing major. She can be reached at amfontaine@gmail.com.
