Western Standard Editorial Contest
The Rights of Terrorists
Dr. Michael Reinhard
I was in Afghanistan this summer interviewing young women for scholarships to attend the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan.
One young lady sat with her eyes down the whole time, looking at her hands on her lap. I asked her why she hadn't finished high school. She said because she was in a refugee camp. Why was she in the refugee camp? Because her father had wanted his daughters to be educated. So why did they leave Afghanistan? Because the Taliban had decapitated another family in their village-a family that had their daughter to read.
At the very end of the interview, because she seemed so traditional, I thought it necessary to caution her about the environment she would be in at an American style university. Girls there have to be ready to speak their mind in class, make their own decisions, and they dress differently, they don't cover there faces or even there hair usually and...
She didn't let the translator finish. She smiled the most beautiful smile. She looked me right in my eyes for the first time and said in English, “I would like it.”
I think of her when I hear people say we should extend to the terrorists held at Guantanamo and elsewhere the rights accorded to criminal defendants under Western court systems.
Our system of rights is designed to deliver justice, but it is not, in itself, justice. These rights are a means, not an end. The court procedures that best approximate justice in one country, in one time, may not in another.
Our courts are designed minimize to minimize the possibility of imprisoning the innocent, but do so at the cost of freeing the guilty. It protects the rights of the accused but at the costs of the rights of future victims. We say with pride that our system will let a hundred guilty go free, rather than imprisoning one innocent. But while that may make sense when dealing with common criminals, it does not when dealing with totalitarian terrorists in an ongoing war. What is being risked in that case is the very possibility of a civilized existence. And the people taking that risk are not us, but others.
As those held by the US gain more of the rights due to criminal defendants in Anglo-American courts, more will go back to the countries they came from. These are people we believe to be members of terrorist organizations even though we can't prove it to the standard required in our domestic courts.
Even without the benefit of the rights of our domestic court system, hundreds held by the 'concentration camps' at Guantanamo have already released; 22 have so far been captured again on the battle field trying to kill American and Canadian soldiers. But it is not our soldiers I worry about.
I worry about the people that have to live in the countries they go back to. I think of the father of that girl, who led his family across a border at night because he wanted his daughter to be able to read, and who years later led his family back, because he had heard the Americans and the Canadians had come.
When we think about rights, we should think not only about the rights of the people we hold prisoner, but about the rights of the people we have pledged to protect.