By Karen L. MacNutt,
Contributing Editor

He was a soldier in the service of his country when he was captured. He was led off to a cell, cut off from his family, stripped of his identity and dignity. He worried about his family. His tormenters said they wanted answers. They forced him into a bag. It was hot. He could hardly breath. Answers, they demanded. His response was not satisfactory. He could feel the weight of one of them sitting on his chest. Breathing became more difficult. He could not expand his chest. They were yelling at him. The world seemed to narrow. Their voices became hollow and distant. He felt a hand over his mouth. Somehow it no longer mattered as the world closed in. Then there was nothing.

"Hey," the inquisitor asked, "Didn't you hear what I said." He gave the bag a violent shake but there was no response. The prisoner was dead. No information can be obtained from a dead prisoner. Perhaps, he never had any to give.

I grew up in the aftermath of World War II. Stories of our prisoners of war being abused were common themes in movies. Leering Nazi or Japanese officers would promise the prisoner better treatment if he only co-operated and betrayed his fellow Americans. The officer was always accompanied by a beefy assistant with flexing muscles or a pseudo doctor with the "truth serum."

It was easy to tell the good guys from the bad at the Saturday matinee. "How could people be so mean," I thought. How could the German people turn a blind eye to the concentration camps?

The capacity for good or evil is within most of us. Evil seldom stares you square in the face and says, "I am evil." Like the old time stories of people who sell their souls to the devil, evil usually promises something good in exchange for doing something bad.

Some people convince themselves that they can achieve good things by violating other people's rights. In some instances a transitory benefit might be obtained. In the long run, the excuse to violate civil rights keeps expanding until no one's life, liberty or property is safe.

Many of the world's worst atrocities were justified by claims it was for the community's greater good. Respecting the civil rights of all people is key to preventing atrocities. It is especially important to preserve individual civil rights in times of national emergency when the cry to ignore human rights is being fuel by fear.

We are the world's oldest continuous democracy. The United States proved that you could have a stable society without repression. We have been the world's leading proponent of natural law and human rights. If we abandon our principles at the first sign of national trouble, we are saying that those principles are unworkable. We validate the violation of human rights by repressive nations worldwide.

Today we are at war with terrorism. Congress has not declared war, but we are clearly fighting with people who wish to kill as many Americans as possible. Every man, woman and child in the United States is a potential target for extermination. Our enemy believes that they are doing God's work and will be rewarded in heaven for the slaughter they cause. They believe the ends justify the means. It is important that we fight these people. It is important to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq until those countries are stabilized. It is, however, critical that we do not lose our national identity in the process of fighting terrorists.

Since the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the federal government has claimed the power to ignore basic human rights. The Justice Department has argued that the Constitution only applies to citizens. That is not entirely true. Some parts of the Constitution, such as the right to vote in a federal election or to hold office, are reserved to citizens. Other parts of the Constitution, such as sections prohibiting the denial of life, liberty or property without due process and those prohibiting cruel and unusual punishments, apply to everyone.

Most of the Bill of Rights is an expression of natural law. It proclaimed that God, not governments, gave certain rights to all mankind. The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1775. The Constitution was adopted in 1787, twelve years later. The truths that we held self evident, that all men are created equal and given certain rights by God, were not created by the Constitution. The Constitution was written to protect those rights from abuse by man.

The Justice Department also argued that United States law does not apply in places controlled by United States troops outside the United States. Places like Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were claimed to be beyond the jurisdiction of our courts. Our government wanted to have areas where it could hold prisoners indefinitely, without accountability to the courts and without due process. The Justice Department's position shakes the foundation upon which our nation was founded. It was rejected by the Supreme Court in July.

Areas under United States control are, and should be, under the jurisdiction of federal courts. The laws governing United States troops are drafted by Congress under the war power clause of the Constitution. Those laws follow the troops and civilians accompanying the troops wherever they go. Were this not so, the military could not maintain order within its own ranks.

"But those people are terrorists. Anything that happens to them they deserve," is the argument, "We are at war."

Who is to determine who is a terrorist? Who has the final say as to whether some cab driver in New York City is an illegal alien or an American citizen of foreign birth. Who decides if someone traveling through a combat area in Iraq is a combatant or a journalist? Is it the President? Is it a policeman? Is it a soldier on the battle field?

The law says these decisions are to be made by a court or tribunal after a hearing in which evidence is presented and the accused is given a chance to show that the government is wrong. Only then is a judgment made based upon evidence. The law does not cease to exist because we are at war.

Wars and crisis test our commitment to principals. If, at the first sign of trouble, we throw out our commitment to treating people with dignity, if we ignore our commitment to search for truth, if we embrace means counter to our national essence, we lose our moral foundation. Our existence is reduced to an egocentric pursuit of raw power.

There are laws that govern wars. People who violate those laws may be held accountable in a court. National existence or important national goals are often at stake during a war. People get killed. To say we are in danger is not a justification to ignore the laws governing war.

This past spring we were confronted with stories of American troops and contract workers mistreating prisoners captured in our war against terrorism. There are too many stories to accept without question the Defense Department's claim that they are treating prisoners well or that prisoner abuse during questioning is isolated. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld admitted that some of the methods used to coerce information from prisoners were approved by him.

The story that opened this article is a dramatization based upon an incident which occurred in November of 2003. An Iraqi general suffocated during questioning by two American intelligence officers. The two American officials are being charged with homicide.

Although apologists in the Defense Department claim the questioning methods authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld are harmless, a number of prisoners have died during questioning. Their deaths may not be as dramatic as the execution of our soldiers by extremists, but the end result is the same. A prisoner soldier who was entitled to humane treatment is dead. The deaths of our soldiers were at least quick. The same cannot be said of those who died under questioning. Questioning methods that result in death are not harmless. The International Committee of the Red Cross has properly voiced its concern.

The law of war arose from a series of international treaties. In ancient times, the winner of a war killed all the males, including old men and infants, on the losing side. The women would be enslaved. The city would be looted, then destroyed. The Romans took a step forward. They only killed the leaders of the defeated nation. They looted but did not usually destroy a captured city. They enslaved enemy soldiers but allowed the rest of the conquered nation to live subject to their rule.

The current law of war developed in Europe. Warring parties realized that destroying things of no military value made it harder to restore peace. Disease and economic collapse caused by war impacted even the victor nations. The sufferings of common soldiers and their families did not advance war interests but led to long standing resentments which became the cause for the next war. There is a practicable aspect to treating captured soldiers with respect. Soldiers who expect to be mistreated on capture do not surrender. They fight to the death.

Our Constitution provides that treaties adopted by the United States have the same force as laws passed by Congress. A violation of a treaty is a violation of domestic law. At the end of World War II, we tried and executed German and Japanese leaders for war crimes. Today, there is a standing international court that conducts war crimes trials. The international court is the latest development in a long and evolving history.
Some of the most important provisions of the laws of war govern the treatment of prisoners. The treaties provide that all prisoners are entitled to be treated humanely. Neglect, mutilation, cruel treatment, torture (there are no grades of torture), outrages on personal dignity, humiliating and degrading treatment, and passing sentence upon prisoners without giving them a trial in which basic rights are granted, are all illegal under both international and domestic law.

Prisoners of war are entitled to food and housing, medical care, religious freedom, and their personal property (excepting military equipment that could be used to cause harm). Things such as clothing, helmets and items issued to soldiers to protect the soldier, may be retained by the soldier. Prisoners of war are entitled to write and receive mail, including packages with food, clothing, educational or recreational material. Each camp may have a prisoner's representative who is normally the senior officer in the camp. A list of prisoners should be given to a neutral power so that the families can be told what has happened to their loved ones. A prisoner of war may be held until the end of hostilities at which point he must be repatriated
United States Army teaches soldiers their rights and obligations if captured as follows:

What information must be given to our captor? The 1949 Geneva Prisoner of War Convention provides that a prisoner of war must give only his full name, rank, date of birth, and service number. This is all the information our captor may demand. No method of torture, mental or physical, may be used to obtain even this information from us, and certainly may not be used to obtain any additional information.
If a prisoner of war is accused of a crime, he is entitled to a trial. He may be confined in an area separate from other prisoners. He is still entitled to care. He may still send mail and receive a relief parcel. These rights are being denied to many of the prisoners we are holding.

By international law, anyone taken on the battlefield under arms is assumed to be a prisoner of war until a judicial body, normally called a tribunal, determines otherwise. Civilians who take up arms in defense of their country, if they fight openly, are entitled to prisoner of war status so long as they follow generally the rules of war. People who shoot rockets at our troops, if captured, are probably prisoners of war. People who shoot rockets into a civilian market place are criminals. People who take prisoners and execute them are war criminals. Regardless of what they have done, however, they are entitled to a trial.

The treaties also require humane treatment of enemy civilians or non-combatants. Enemy civilians who are inside the country of a warring power at the outbreak of hostilities must be given the chance to leave the country. If they do not voluntarily leave, they can be expelled or interred. They have the right to challenge their confinement before a court or administrative board. If interred, they have many of the same rights as prisoners of war. They have the right to work, earn money, participate in recreational activities, participate in camp administration, and communicate with their families outside the camps.

If a power occupies another county, the occupying power has certain obligations. It cannot forcibly remove individuals or groups of individuals from the occupied country. The occupying power is obliged to assume the functions of government in the area occupied. This includes maintaining order. Wrongful acts committed by local authorities in the occupied country are deemed to be the acts of the occupying power. That is, the occupying power cannot use some other entity to do its dirty work to escape accountability. The civilian population is entitled to be humanely treated and protected from all acts of violence and threats of violence. No physical or moral coercion may be exercised against protected persons to obtain information from them.

There is no allowance for torture or humiliation of prisoners under any set of circumstances. Justifying a little torture is like saying rape is alright as long as the victim suffers no permanent injury.

There are no persons without status. A person is either: a civilian in the United States subject to the civil courts; an enemy alien protected by international law with a right of access to the civilian courts; an enemy prisoner of war who has access to military tribunals to determine his status and who cannot be denied treaty rights; an unlawful combatant whose status must be determined by a tribunal and who cannot be punished except by military court; a civilian in occupied territory who can not be imprisoned except by court action; a neutral civilian who can not be confined without access to the courts; or a common criminal who has a right not to be confined without trial. All of these people are protected by our own laws from torture, humiliation, and abuse.

We must ask ourselves, "What are we at war for? What is it that our enemy wants to destroy?"

For most nations, the concept of nationality is equivalent to ethnicity. Thus, Germans are ethnically Germanic. People from Ireland are ethnically Irish. There are few multi-ethnic nations in the world. Most of them were created artificially after World War I or were the product of invasion and domination. These nations often have severe ethnic strife as their people think of themselves in terms of ethnicity rather than as part of the larger county.

The United States is one of the few countries of the world where ethnicity is not part of nationality. What binds the United States is our concept of human rights, our dedication to the nobility and dignity of all peoples. This sentiment is expressed in our Declaration of Independence. Our country was born with declared commitment to the basic human rights granted to all people by God.

To say that only American citizens are entitled to human rights is to deny that human rights are the gift of God. To say that only American citizens in the United States are entitled to the protection of the courts through due process of law is to say that our civil rights are the creation of government rather than an extension of natural law which applies to all mankind. Our government wanted the right to create a place to which the damned are sent indefinitely without recourse to the law, without review, without hope. This totally ignores our history and culture.

What are we fighting for? We are fighting to preserve our way of life. What are the terrorists fighting for? To destroy our way of life. They hate and fear our dedication to an open society. They despise our system of laws and respect for individual rights. If the terrorists cause us to abandon our values, if they cause us to become a police state, they have won.

Today the crisis is terrorism. Tomorrow it will be something else. There is always a good excuse to expand government at the expense of individual rights.

What is at stake in this war against terrorism is our soul. This is the battle of good against evil. The devil is whispering in our ear, "If you do a little evil you will achieve security." The belief that good may be achieved by doing evil is an illusion. It is the excuse for all kinds of excess. Indeed, it the rationalization used by the terrorists. We must not copy their amoral behavior.

"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" -Matthew 16: 26.