security 1ac

8/13/2019 Security 1AC

1/14

1AC


2/14

Advantage 1 is Terrorism

Comparative studies prove that indefinite detention increases the motivation for

terrorism and the likelihood of an attack.

Roberts, Associate Professor of Philosophy at East Carolina University,11*Rodney, Utilitarianism and the Morality of Indefinite Detention, Criminal Justice Ethics, Vol. 30, No. 1,

RSR]

Finally, there is no evidence thatpreventive detention works . Comparative studies of terrorism

stretching back more than 20 years haveconcluded that draconian measures*such as prolonged

detention withouttrial*are not proven to reduce violence, and can actually be counterproductive .

30 Since it may contributeto the underlying factors [that] arefueling the spread of the jihadist

movement, namely, injustice and fear ofWestern domination, leading to anger,humiliation, and a

sense of powerlessness, there is a sense in whichindefinite detention can be selfdefeating*it may

increase the likelihood of future attacks .31

The threat of terrorism is a politicized concept used to spur social action

Egerton, 2009( Frazer received his Ph.D. from the Department of International Politics, University ofWales, Aberystwyth. His most recent publications are 'The Internet and Militant Jihadism: Global to

Local Reimaginings', in A. Karatzogianni (ed.) Cyber Conflict and Global Politics , London: Routledge

(2008) and (with Nicholas J. Wheeler) 'Precious' commitment or a failure in action: the responsibility to

protect after the 2005 UN World Summit, Global Responsibility to Protect 1 (1): 2009 , A Case for a

Critical Approach to Terrorism

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=a801bad751&view=lg&msg=129ae8ffac17829a)

Terrorism is a word that solicits many definitions. Schmid and Jongman (1988) note that even twodecades ago there were at least 109 different definitions of terrorism. There are certain to be far more

today. Moreover, it inspires such strong emotions that some (Sayyid, 2003) question its use while

others (Smyth, 2007) do so only with disclaimers.I do not share the same degree of apprehension here any more than I dowith the wealth of concepts whose meaning is contested and usage is political. Terrorism is a strategy aimed at producing

terror among a population who are not directly engaged in violence with the aim of securing political

ends. It should be clear from this definition that the study of terrorism that focuses on the narrow

world of state security, threatened and secured through the use of force, is wholly inadequate. Noconvincing defence can be offered for viewing terrorism as the preserve of any one actor. Nor is a sole focus on military practices appropriate.

The reciprocal bombing of innocent populations is only one form of terrorism. Other acts that must

also be categorised as terrorism would include global economic practices that condemn populations

to a life marked by desperate poverty, predatory state policies that treat citizens as dispensable spoils

of office and violent and masculinist 'cultural' rituals and practices. Many more examples might beadded.

Their impact claims of war and conflict are not objectivethey are produced by the

specific history of the observer and the drive for state security

David Grondin 2004(Masters in Political Science and Ph.D. CandidateUniversity of Ottawa,(Re)Writing the National Security State, Center for United States Studies, p. 12-17)
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=a801bad751&view=lg&msg=129ae8ffac17829ahttps://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=a801bad751&view=lg&msg=129ae8ffac17829a


3/14

Approaches that deconstruct theoretical practicesin order to disclose what is hidden inthe use of

concepts such as national security have something valuable to say. Their more reflexive and

critically-inclined viewillustrates how terms used in realist discourses, such as state, anarchy, world

order, revolution in military affairs, and security dilemmas, are produced by a specific historical,

geographical and socio-political contextas well as historical forces andsocial relations of power(Klein,

1994: 22). Since realistanalystsdo not question their ontologyand yet purportto provide a neutral

and objective analysis of a given world order based on military power and interactions between the

most important political units, namely states, realist discourses constitute a political act in defense of

the state. Indeed, *+ it is important to recognize that to employ a textualizing approach to social

policy involving conflictand war is not toattempt to reduce social phenomena tovarious concrete

manifestations of language. Rather, it isan attempt to analyze the interpretations governing policy

thinking. And it is important to recognize that policy thinking is not unsituated (Shapiro, 1989a: 71).

Policy thinkingis practical thinking since it imposes an analytic order on the real world, a world that

only exists in the analystsown narratives. In this light, Barry Posens political role in legitimizing American hegemonic power and national securityconduct seems obvious: U.S. command of the commons provides an impressive foundation for selective engagement. It is not adequate for a policy of primacy. *+ Command of the commons

gives the United States a tremendous capability to harm others. Marrying that capability to a conservative policy of selective engagement helps make U.S. military power appear less

threatening and more tolerable. Command of the commons creates additional collective goods for U.S. allies. These collective goods help connect U.S. military power to seemingly prosaic

welfare concerns. U.S. military power underwrites world trade, travel, global telecommunications, and commercial remote sensing, which all depend on peac e and order in the commons

(Posen, 2003: 44 and 46). Adopting a more critical stance, David Campbell points out that [d]anger is not an objective condition. It (sic) is not a

thing which exists independently of those to whom it may become a threat. *+Nothing is a risk in

itself;[...] it all depends on how one analyses the danger,considers the event (Campbell, 1998: 1-2). In

the same vein, national security discourse does not evaluate objective threats; rather, it is itself a

product of historical processes and structures in the state and society that produces it. Whoever has

the power to define security isthen the one who has the authority to write legitimate security

discourses and conduct the policies that legitimize them.The realist analystsand state leaders who

invokenational security and act in its name are the same individuals who holdthe power to securitize

threats by inserting them in a discourse that frames national identity and freezes it.9 Like many

concepts, realism is essentially contested. In a critical reinterpretation of realism, James Der Derian

offers a genealogy of realism that deconstructs the uniform realism represented in IR: he reveals many

other versions of realism that are never mentioned in International Relations texts (Der Derian, 1995:367). I am aware that there are many realist discourses in International Relations, but they all share a set

of assumptions, such as the state is a rational unitary actor, the state is the main actor in

international relations, states pursue power defined as a national interest, and so on. I want to show

that realism is one way of representing reality, not the reflection of reality.While my aim here is not to

rehearse Der Derians genealogy of realism, I do want to spell out the problems with a positivist theory

of realism and a correspondence philosophy of language. Such a philosophy accepts nominalism,

wherein language as neutral description corresponds to reality. This is precisely the problem of

epistemic realism and of the realism characteristic of American realist theoretical discourses. And since

for poststructuralists language constitutes reality, a reinterpretation of realism as constructed in these

discourses is called for.10 These scholars cannot refer to the essentially contested nature of realism

and then use realismas the best language to reflect a self-same phenomenon (Der Derian, 1995:

374). Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that the many neorealist and neoclassical realist discourses in

International Relations are not useful. Rather, I want to argue that these technicistand scientist forms

of realism serve political purposes, usedas they are in many think tanks and foreign policy

bureaucracies to inform American political leaders. This is the relevance of deconstructing the uniform realism (as used in International Relations):it brings to light its locatedness in a hermeneutic circle in which it is unwittingly trapped (Der De rian, 1995: 371). And as Friedrich Kratochwil argues, *+ the rejection of a correspondence

theory of truth does not condemn us, as it is often maintained, to mere relativism and/or to endless deconstruction in wh ich anything goes but it lea ves us with criteria that allows us to

distinguish and evaluate competing theoretical creations (Kratochwil, 2000 : 52). Given that political language is not a neutral medium that gives expression to ideas formed independently of

structures of signification that sustain political action and thought, American realist discourses belonging to the neorealist or ne oclassical realist traditions cannot be taken as mere descriptions

of reality. We are trapped in the production of discourses in which national leaders and security speech


4/14

acts emanating from realist discourses develop and reinforce a notion of national identity as

synonymous with national security. U.S. national security conduct shouldthus be understood through

the prism of the theoretical discourses ofAmerican political leaders and realist scholarsthat co-

constitute it. Realist discourses depict American political leaders acting in defense of national security, and political leaders act in the name of national security. In the end, whatdistinguishes realist discourses is that they depict the United States as having behaved like a national security state since World War II, while legitimating the idea that the United States should

continue to do so. Political scientists and historians are engaged in making (poesis), not merely recording or reporting (Medhurst, 2000: 17). Precisely in this sen se, rhetoric is not the

description of national security conduct; it constitutes it. It is difficult to trace the exact origins of the concept of national security. It seems however that its currency in policymaking circles

corresponds to the American experience of the Second World War and of the early years of what came to be k nown as the Cold War. In this light, it is fair to say that the meaning of theAmerican national security state is bound up with the Cold War context. If one is engaged in deciphering the meaning of the Cold War prism for American leaders, what matters is not

uncovering the reality of the Cold War as such, but how, it conferred meaning and led people to a ct upon it as reality. The Cold War can thus be seen as a rhetorical const ruction, in which

its rhetorical dimensions gave meaning to its material manifestations, such as the national security state a pparatus. This is not to say that the Cold War never existed per se, nor does it make

*it+ any less real or less s ignificant for being rhetorical (Medhurst, 2000: 6). As Lynn Boyd Hinds and Theodore Otto Windt, Jr. stress, political rhetoric creates political reality, structures belief

systems, and provides the fundamental bas es for decisions (Hinds and Windt, cited in Medh urst, 2000: 6). In this sense, the Cold War ceases to be a historical period which meaning can be

written permanently and becomes instead a s truggle that is not context-specific and not geared towards one specific enemy. It is an orientation towards difference in which those acting on

behalf of an assumed but never fixed identity are tempted by the lure of otherness to interpret all dangers as fundamental threats which require the mobilization of a population (Campbell,

2000: 227). Indeed, if the meaning of the Cold War is not context-specific, the concept of national security cannot be disconnected from what is known as the Cold War, since its very

meaning(s) emerged within it (Rosenberg, 1993 : 277).11 If the American national security state is a given for realist analys ts,12 it is important to ask whether we can conceive the United

States during the Cold War as anything other than a national security state.13 To be clear, I am not sugg esting that there is any such es sentialized entity as a national security state.14 When I

refer to the American national security state, I mean the representation of the American s tate in the early years of the Cold War, the spirit of which is embodied in the National Security Act of

1947 (Der Derian, 1992: 76). The term national security state designates both an institutionalization of a new governmental architecture designed to prepare the United States politically and

militarily to face any foreign threat and the ideology the discoursethat gave rise to as well as symbolized it. In other words, to understand the idea of a national security state, one nee ds to

grasp the discursive power of national security in shaping the reality of the Cold War in both language and institutions (Rosenberg, 1993 : 281).Anational security state

feeds on threats as it channels all its efforts into meeting current and future military or security

threats. The creation of the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National

Security Council at the onset of the Cold War gave impetus to a state mentality geared to permanent

preparedness for war. The construction of threats is thus essential to its well-being,making intelligence

agencies privileged tools in accomplishing this task. As American historian of U.S. foreign relations

Michael Hogan observes in his study on the rise of the national security state during the Truman

administration, the national security ideology framed the Cold War discourse in a system of symbolic

representation that defined Americas national identity by reference to the un-American other, usually

the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or some other totalitarian power (Hogan, 1998: 17). Such a binary

system made it difficult for anydomestic dissentfrom U.S. policy to emergeit would have

amounted toan act of disloyalty(Hogan, 1998: 18).15 While Hogan distinguishes advocates from critics of the American national security state, his view takesfor granted that there is a given and fixed American political culture that differs from the new national security ideology. It posits an American way, produced by its cultural, political, an d

historical experience. Although he stresses that differences between the two sides of the discourse are superficial, pertaining solely to the means, rather than the ends of the national s ecurity

state, Hogan sees the national security state as a finished and legitimate state: an American state suited to the Cold War context of permanent war, while stopping short of a garrison state:

Although government would grow larger, taxes would go up, and budget deficits would become a matter of routine, none of these and other transformations would add up to the crushing

regime symbolized in the metaphor of the garrison state. The outcome instead would be an American national security state tha t was shaped as much by the countrys democratic political

culture as it was by the pe rceived military imperatives of the Cold War (Hogan, 1998: 22).I disagree withthis essentialist view of the stateidentity of the United States. The United States does not need to be anational security state. If it was and is stillconstructed as such by many realist discourses, it is because these discourses serve some political purpose. Moreover, in keeping with my poststructuralist inclinations, I maintain that identity

need not be, and indeed never is, fixed. In a sche me in which to say is to do, that is, from a perspective that accepts the performativity of language, culture becomes a relational site whe re

identity politics happens rather than being a substantive phenomenon. In this sense, culture is not simply a social context framing foreign policy decision-making. Cu lture is a signifying part of

the conditions of possibility for social being, *+ the way in which culturalist arguments themselves secure the identity of subjects in whose name they s peak (Campbell, 1998: 221). The Cold

War national security culture represented in realist discourses was constitutive of the American national security state. There was certainly a conflation of theory and policy in the Cold War

military-intellectual complex, which were observers of, and active participants in, defining themeaning of the Cold War. They contributed to portray the enemy that both reflected and f ueled

predominant ideological strains within the American body politic. As scholarly partners in the national security state, they were instrumental in defining and disseminating a Cold War culture

(Rubin, 2001: 15). This national security culture was a complex space where va rious representations and representatives of the national security state compete to draw the boundaries and

dominate the murkier margins of international relations (Der Derian, 1992: 41). The same Cold Warsecurity culture has been maintained by

political practice (on the part of realist analysts and political leaders) through realist discourses in the

post-9/11 era and once again reproduces the idea of a national security state. This (implicit) state

identification is neither accidental nor inconsequential. From a poststructuralist vantage point, the

identificationprocess of the state and the nation is always a negative process for it is achieved by

exclusion, violence, and marginalization. Thus, a deconstruction of practices that constitute andconsolidate state identity is necessary: the writing of the state must be revealed through the analysis of

the discourses that constitute it. The state and the discourses that (re)constitute it thus frame its very

identity and impose a fictitious national unity on society; it is from this fictive and arbitrary creation

of the modernist dichotomous discourses of inside/outside that the discourses (re)constructing the

state emerge. It is in the creation of a Self and an Other in which the state uses it monopolistic power

of legitimate violencea power socially constructed, following Max Webers work on the ethic of

responsibilityto construct a threatening Other differentiated from the unified Self, the national


5/14

society(the nation).16 It is through this very practice of normative statecraft,17 which produces

threatening Others, that the international sphere comes into being. David Campbell adds that it is by

constantly articulating danger through foreign policy that the states very conditions of existence are

generated18.

The process of security leads to unending violence and wars against populations of

created threats

Duschinski 2009Assistant Prof of Sociology and Anthropology, Ohio University (Haley, DestinyEffects: Militarization, State Power, and Punitive Containment in Kashmir Valley. Anthropological

Quarterly, Volume 82, Number 3, Summer 2009, Project MUSE)

Patterns of war emerging in particular local worlds are tied to larger transformations in political-military

economies of violence operating on a global scale (Lutz and Nonini 2000:79). The expansion of

neoliberal market capitalism since World War II has fed the growth of permanent war economies

while also creating large surplus populations that are considered peripheral to the workings of

capitalist economies. "State armies, multilateral armed forces (IFOR, the United Nations), private

armies, militarized police, and parasitical militias have come to wage a systematic form of 'low intensity

warfare,' often against stigmatized populations 'outside the grids' of global capitalist activity and

superfluous to labor, [End Page 693]capital, and consumption markets" (Lutz and Nonini 2000:78).

These interlinked processes of neoliberalism and privatization, ethnic and racial discrimination, and

jingoism and militarism have led to the proliferation of infinite and indefinite wars that consolidate

collectively imagined national communities at the same time that they violently exclude certain

categories of people from participation in the life of the nation. As Victoria Sanford argues, national

security states are based, not on the outwardly focused defense of national territory, but rather on a

national security ideology that " is grounded in the recourse of coercionand has no room for the

participation or consent of civil society" (2003:394-395). Through such ideological work, national

security states erase the everyday realities of violence and power their shadow zones and sensitiveperipheries in the name of national integrity and cohesion and in the interest of wartime profit.This

state practice of carving out differential patterns of citizenship through the waging of perpetual warfare

leads to a blurring of boundaries between "crimes of war" and "crimes of peace," producing a

continuum of violence that scales from the routine violence of everyday social spaces, such as

emergency rooms, court rooms, prisons, detention centers, and schools, to the spectacular violence of

hot zones, such as border clashes, ethnic conflicts, and frontiers in the global war on terror(Scheper-

Hughes 2002, 2008). These sites of exclusion and concentration provide for the encapsulation and

confinement of those forms of political life that have been stripped of rights, cast into a "zone of

social abandonment" (Biehl 2005), and subjected to the brutal violence of the state. Such conceptual

tools enable us to move past distinctions between " the exception" and "the rule" and examine patterns

of militarization that define forms of social suffering for communities living in various domains of threatand "legitimate" destruction: marginalized peasants cast as indigenous rebels in the Oaxaca and Chiapas

regions of contemporary Mexico (Stephen 2000); Latino communities cast as drug runners and illegal

immigrants along the US-Mexican border(Nagengast 2002); foreign nationals cast as enemy

combatants in US military prisons in the War on Terror(Feldman 2005); Catholic nationalist women

cast as paramilitary insurgents in the prisons of Belfast (Aretxaga 1997); Black youth cast as criminals in

post-Apartheid South Africa(Comaroff and Comaroff 2006); and Puerto Rican men cast as gang

members in the barrios of East Harlem (Bourgois 2002). Comparative ethnographies of the political and


6/14

juridical [End Page 694]conditions that similarly delimit possibilities of life in these and other heavily

militarized zones leads to a better understanding of "how dominant representations of the dangerous,

the subversive, the worthless, the marginal, and the unimportant become linked to making particular

groups of people susceptible to violence abuses that allow them to be treated with less than human

respect and dignity" (Stephen 2000:823).


7/14

Advantage 2 is Torture

Now is key to set the global standard for human rights protection

Suzanne Nossel 12is executive director of Amnesty International USA, "Time for a Reset on Human

Rights," 11-7-12,www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/11/07/time_for_a_reset_on_human_rights?page=0,1, DOA: 7-

22-13, Y2K

In 2008, Barack Obama's election thrilled many human rights activists . For eight years underGeorge W. Bush,

the U.S. government hadused torture, held hundreds inlong-term detention without trial , and committed abuses atwartime prisons such as Iraq's Abu Ghraib. Rights advocates hoped -- and, based on many of Obama's election-season remarks, reasonably expected -- that the unlawful renditions,

secret prisons, and unfair trials would give way to a new American commitment the Constitution and international law. Although Obama faced

truculent political opposition in his first term, his weak record on human rights cannot be

explained away by economic exigencies or even congressional defiance. Obama now openly

embraces the concept of a global "war on terror" as grounds to override international human rights norms andreinterpret the Constitution. Osama Bin Laden's killing was not only the chief talking point of his campaign but a synecdoche for his a pproach to the terrorist threat, one in which

the administration writes its own rules. Although preventing attacks on U.S. soil represents an important human rights victory, this sh ould not overshadow the worrisome direction

of U.S. human rights policy and its long-term consequences. If the president's legacy is to include reclaiming U.S. human rights

credibility, he needs to face up to his troubling record, and fix it. The Obama administration has led in

some areas of human rights policy; examples include advancing gay and lesbian rights,

bolstering U.N. human rights mechanisms, and promoting Internet freedom . But where human

rights norms are pitted against counterterrorism tactics, it has fallen down . Blocked by Congress, Obama brokehis first-term promise to close Guantnamo. Four years later, that failure barely seems to register as a disappointment; 167 men languish in the prison, including 55 who are

cleared for release but have not been transferred. Recent weeks have revealed details of an Orwellian "disposition matrix" -- a kill list of top terrorist targets that keeps getting

longer. The administration claims the authority to kill those named, anytime and anywhere, based on s ecret information and unreviewable judgments. The administration has

declared any man killed by a drone to be an enemy terrorist, and defends such killings regardless of resulting civilian casu alties. With the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan, these

extraordinary powers are detached from any major battlefield or conventional war. The administration is now backed into claim ing that a war exists becaus e it has convinced itself

it cannot function without a broad license to kill. Short of al Qaeda suing for peace, this war may never end. The administration's reshaping of the concept of war risks undoing over

100 years of evolution of the laws of war, and the protections those laws have delivered. The next four years will define whether this

rewriting of the rules becomes a bipartisan "new normal" in the United States, and implicit permission

for the rest of the world to sidestep human rights . Absent swift progress to close Guantnamo, themen now held will likely die there of old age decades from now, since no future president is

likely to renew Obama's ill-fated pledge to close the facility. And even if the Guantnamo detainees are transferred to a U.S.prison, bringing indefinite detention onshore, it is hard to fathom the practice will not be used again to deal with future threats. The bipartisan a ffirmation of drone use will make

those weapons routine for the United States and any other government with a kill list of its own.

US is key to global human rights protection---indefinite detention undermines US

credibility.

William F. Schulz 9is Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, "The Future of Human Rights:Restoring Americas Leadership,"www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/10918.pdf,DOA: 7-

23-13, y2k

What has beenfar more problematicover the last few years than random disparities between domestic and international interpretations of human rights

law has been a fundamental disparagement of the authority of the international community itself.Such depreciation started early: in 2000 Condoleezza Rice, then foreign policy advisor to candidate George W. Bush, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine, Foreign policy i n a

Republican administrationwill proceed from the firm ground of the national interest, not from the interests of an illusory i nternational community *emphasis added+. Over the

past seven years the U.S. has repeatedly demonstrated its contempt for that allegedly chimerical community by doing such thin gs as unsigning the Rome statute of the

International Criminal Court (ICC); declaring the Geneva Conventions inapplicable to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other so-called unlawful combatants; ignoring UN findings

and resolutions in the run-up to the Iraq War; or refusing to stand for election to the UN Human Rights Council. The consequences have been

devastating for the reputations both of the U.S . , which has seen its favorability ratings drop
http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/10918.pdfhttp://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/10918.pdfhttp://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/10918.pdf


8/14

precipitously around the world,5 and , paradoxically, of human rights themselves . The U.S. has long

prided itself on being a champion of human rights and with much good reason. We would have had noUniversal Declaration of Human Rights had it not been for Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt; the U.S. pushed hard for the civil rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords, thereby

contributing to the eventual liberation of Eastern Europe; the U.S. judicial system with its wide array of due process protections has been a model emulated by newly emerging

countries around the world; U.S. diplomats have frequently intervened on behalf of political dissidents; the Kosovo War was spearheaded by an American commitment to prevent

ethnic cleansing; and the annual State Department human rights reports have long been an invaluable resource to the cause of human rights. The current U.S. administrations

commitment to battling HIV/AIDS in Africa and its outspokenness on Darfur are consistent with this tradition. But for the most powerful nation in the

world, long looked to as a model of human rights virtue, to undermine the international system

itself the very framework upon which human rights are predicated is to cause immeasurable

damage to the struggle for liberty. Backtracking on our commitments to international treaties and norms in the name of defending hum an rights is not just ironic. One ofthe consequences of the Iraq War with its latter- day human rights rationale and of the War on Terror with its oft-stated goals of defending freedom and the rule of law is that

human rights themselves have come to be identified with Americas worldwide ambitions. For human rights to be conflated with, fairly or

not, in the words of the critic David Rieff, the official ideology of American empire,6 only

exacerbates the customary suspicion in which human rights have been held by some in the

developing world who see them as a guise for the imposition of Western values. The truth is

that if human rights and the U.S.spursuit of them are discredited , American interests are put in

peril. Reserving the option to torture prisoners, denying them habeas corpus, sending them

into blacksiteprisonsall this makes it harder to defend America against the charge of

hypocrisy; t he claim that we are carrying out a war in defense of the rule of law by abandoning that very rule. Such a charge hands fodder for

recruitment to our adversaries and makes the world less safe for Americans. No country can claim

protection for its own citizens overseas (be they soldiers taken as prisoners, nationals charged with crimes, or corporations faced with extortion)

if it fails to respect international norms at home. Global relations are based in good part on

reciprocity . Nor can the U.S. offer effective objection to the human rights violations of others if it

is guilty of those same violations itself or has shunned cooperation with international allies . No

nation, no matter how powerful, can successfully pursue improvements in human rights around

the world independent of the international community. Unilateral sanctions imposed upon a country to protest human rightsabuses will inevitably fail if they lack the support of others

Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay undertook a hunger strike to protest indefinite

detention and torture. The guards are torturing and dehumanizing the prisoners by

force-feeding them while they are strapped into a chair.

Worthington 2013(Andy, From Guantnamo, Hunger Striker Abdelhadi Faraj Describes the Agonyof Force-Feeding July 18

th. http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/torture/8320-from-guantanamo-

hunger-striker-abdelhadi-faraj-describes-the-agony-of-force-feeding)

Although Ive been very busy for the last few months with a steady stream of articles about

Guantnamo and the ongoing hunger strike, I havent been able to keep track of everything that has

been made available. In terms of publicity, this is an improvement on the years before the hunger strike

reminded the worlds media about the ongoing existence of the prison, when stories about Guantnamooften slowed to the merest of trickles, and everyone involved in campaigning to close the prison and to

represent the men still held there was, I think it is fair to say, becoming despondent and exhausted.

However, it is also profoundly depressing that it took a prison-wide hunger strike to wake people up to

the ongoing injustice of Guantnamo, where 86 cleared men are still held (cleared for release in

January 2010 by President Obamas inter-agency Guantnamo Review Task Force), and 80 others are,

for the most part, held indefinitely without charge or trial. And it is just as depressing to note that,

despite making a powerful speech eight weeks ago, and promising to resume releasing prisoners,


9/14

President Obama has so far failed to release anyone.With Ramadan underway, there has been a slight

dip in the total number of prisoners on the hunger strike 80, according to the US military, down from

106, although there has been a slight increase in the number of prisoners being force-fedfrom 45 to

46.Yesterday, a judge turned down a motion submitted on behalf of three prisoners Shaker Aamer,

the last British resident, and Ahmed Belbacha and Nabil Hadjarab, two Algerians asking the court to

order the government to stop force-feeding prisoners, and giving them medication without their

consent, following a similar ruling last week in the case of another prisoner, Abu Wael Dhiab, a Syrian.

All four are hunger strikers, and amongst the 86 men cleared for release but still held.In last weeks

ruling, Judge Gladys Kessler (a Bill Clinton appointee) did not seem entirely happy that judges in the

court of appeals had tied her hands regarding jurisdiction over the prisoners, because of a previous

ruling in 2009. She also acknowledged that medical authorities describe force-feeding as torture , and

made a point of telling President Obama that he has the authority and power to deal with the hunger

strike, and the force-feeding, as Commander in Chief.Yesterday, however, Judge Rosemary Collyer (a

George W. Bush appointee) had no interest in criticizing anyone but the prisoners and their lawyers. In

her opinion, she wrote that, although the prisoners had framed their motion as one intended to stop

force-feeding, their real complaint is that the United States is not allowing them to commit suicide by

starvation. She added, The right to due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments does not

include a right to commit suicide and a right to assistance in doing so. She also wrote that there was

nothing so shocking or inhumane in the treatment that it could be regarded as raising a

constitutional concern.In response, Jon Eisenberg, one of the prisoners lawyers, said Judge Collyer was

wrong to claim that the prisoners were demanding a right to commit suicide, as the Associated Press

described it.She has misunderstood the purpose of the hunger strike. Its not to commit suicide, its

to protest indefinite detention,Eisenberg said, adding that her opinion regarding force-feeding that

it was not inhumane was not backed up by experts. Human rights advocates, medical ethicists and

religious leaders say otherwise, he said.Judge Collyers ruling and her dismissive attitude to the

force-feeding reminded me of a letter by Abdelhadi Faraj (aka Abdulhadi Faraj), another Syrian

prisoner, which was published two weeks ago in the Huffington Post. Mr. Faraj (originally identified by

the authorities as Abu Omar al-Hamawe) is one of the 86 men cleared for release but still held, and is in

need of a new home because of the perilous situation in Syria. Moreover, he is one of four mencaptured together, who were all cleared for release, although only one of them was freeda man

named Maasoum Mouhammed, who was given a new home in Bulgaria in May 2010. He is also one of

the hunger strikers, and, moreover, is one of the 46 men being force-fed.

Torture is a systematic oppression that kills agency and value to life. Its a technique of

perpetual dying.

Wolfgang 1999(German Philosopher, Anthropologist- professor at Universities of Gottingen & Erfurt.[Sofsky, "The endurance of impotence: The dynamics of persecutory violence," International

Psychoanalysis Newsletter,)

The prisoners will be incarcerated or put into camps and, not rarely, are there subjected to torture. As a

method of punitive and loyal justice, torture has a long prehistory which goes back to the early

tyrannies. However, in the 20th century, torture has been systematized as a means of national

persecution terror and been handed over to special units of the police, the military or the militia. Its

executors have invented a multitude of new methods and have freed torture from the aims of finding

the truth. Contrary to a widely held view, torture is not a means to extort confessions, information or

proofs. Whatever may be declared the official aim, torture is not an instrument of interrogation, for the

ultimate aim of torture is not to get the victim to talk but rather to silence him. The model of the duel, of

a trial of strength of the will, is a bagatellization. Torture eliminates action and breaks the person


10/14

through pain, panic and isolation. The victim is totally in the hands of the perpetrator and is at the

mercy of his whims, rage, lust and destructive will. Any part of his body, any of his attitudes or

stirrings can be used as a point of attack for the tormentors. Torture transforms the person into an

organism, into a living piece of flesh. It tests physical reactions, generates pain and forces the tortured

one to scream His insides are turned outwards, his language stifled in pain. The tortured person no

longer experiences his body as a source of his own force for action. In the frenzy of pain, his own body

itself becomes his enemy. It is his body which confronts him with the suffering from which he cannot

escape, however much he grits his teeth. The mortal enemy is within himself, rages in his inside and

destroys the final resistance. Torture is by no means restricted to external wounds. It splits the person

through the centre into two parts. Since the victim's body becomes the accomplice of the torture, it

destroys the somatic relation to himself and with it the foundation of his will, his speech, his soul, his

psyche. Torture, therefore, isnot a technique ofkilling but of perpetual dying. What torture is on a

small scale, the concentration camp is on a large scale. It is not the sudden death which contains the

meaning of this institution but the continuous presence of the torment. The camp is the central

institution of persecutory terror in the 20th century. It serves the imprisonment of political enemies less

than the transformation and extinction of those who are redundant. In the midst of society and set into

a complex mesh of political and economical institutions, the concentration camp is a cosmos at the

border of the social world, a universum of unparalleled destructivity

Dehumanization brings society to total damnation. The concentration camp is the

brutal aftermath of this oppression.

Fasching 1993 Professor of Religious Studies in the University of South Florida [Darrell J., Part II ofThe ethical challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Apocalypse or Utopia?, Chapter 4 "The Ethical

Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima to Technological Utopianism", part 4 "The Challenge of Auschwitz

and Hiroshima: From Sacred Morality to Alienation and Ethics", Ebooks]

Although every culture is inherently utopian in its potentiality, the internal social dynamic through which

its symbolic world-view is maintained as a sacred order has a tendency to transform it into a closed

ideological universe (in Karl Mannheim's sense of the ideological; namely, a world-view that promiseschange while actually reinforcing the status quo) that tends to define human identity in terms

advantageous to some and at the expense of others. Historically the process of dehumanization has

typically begun by redefining the other as, by nature, less than human. So the Nazis did to the Jews,

and European Americans did to the Native Americans, men have done to women, and whites to

blacks. By relegating these social definitions to the realm of nature they are removed from the realm

of choice and ethical reflection. Hence those in the superior categories need feel no responsibility

toward those in the inferior categories. It is simply a matter of recognizing reality. Those who are the

objects of such definitions find themselves robbed of their humanity.They are defined by and confined

to the present horizon of culture and their place in it, which seeks to rob them of their utopian capacity

for theonomous self-transcending self-definition. The cosmicization of social identities is inevitably

legitimated by sacred narratives, whether religious or secular-scientific (e.g., the Nazi biological myth ofAryan racial superiority), which dehumanize not only the victims but also the victors. For to create such

a demonic social order the victors must deny not only the humanity of the other who is treated as

totally alien but also their own humanity as well. That is, to imprison the alien in his or her enforced

subhuman identity (an identity that attempts to deny the victim the possibility of self-transcendence)

the victor must imprison himself or herself in this same world as it has been defined and deny his or her

own self-transcendence as well. The bureaucratic process that appears historically with the advent of

urbanization increases the demonic potential of this process, especially the modern state bureaucracy


11/14

organized around the use of the most efficient techniques to control every area of human activity.The

result is, as Rubenstein reminds us, the society of total domination in which virtually nothing is

sacred, not even human life.The heart of such a bureaucratic social order is the sacralization of

professional roles within the bureaucratic structure such that technical experts completely identify

themselves with their roles as experts in the use of techniques while totally surrendering the question of

what those technical skills will be used for to the expertise of those above them in the bureaucratic

hierarchy. It is no accident that the two cultures that drew the world into the cataclysm of World War

II, Germany and Japan, were militaristic cultures, cultures that prized and valued the militaristic ideal

of the unquestioningly obedient warrior. In these nations, the state and bureaucratic order became

one and the same. As Lewis Mumford has argued, the army as an invention of urban civilization is a

near-perfect social embodiment of the ideal of the machine. 37 The army brings mechanical order to

near perfection in its bureaucratic structure, where human beings are stripped of their freedom to

choose and question and where each individual soldier becomes an automaton carrying out orders

always "from higher up" with unquestioning obedience.


12/14

Plan

The United States Federal Government should require prosecution of terrorism

suspects in federal district courts within 18 months of detention.


13/14

Solvency

Congressional action solvescreates a credible regime that moderates the risk of our

counterterrorism operations.

Prieto 9(Daniel, Council on Foreign Relations, War About Terror: Civil Liberties and National SecurityAfter 9/11, February 2009,http://pubs.mantisintel.com/Civil_Liberties_WorkingPaper.pdf,RSR)

It is true that U.S. citizens hold the president ultimately accountable for national security, but it is also true that when the president

shares the burden of accountability with others, tough decisions and controversial policies gain

credibility and legitimacy and become more sustainable. U.S. policy is strongest and most effective

when it enjoys the broad support of Congress and the public. It is likely that many post-9/11

counterterrorism programs could have been strengthened by greater cooperation between the

executive and legislative branches and by enabling legislation from the outset, not as a legal

requirement, but as a prudential matter. Broader consultation, both within the administration and

with Congress, and greater independent oversight of counterterrorism programs could have

moderated the risk of overreach and errors in the realms of both detention and surveillance.

The United States should try suspects in federal district courts and transfer individuals

to US facilities

PHR 11(Physicians for Human Rights, "Punishment Before Justice: Indefinite Detention in the US,"www.judiciary.senate.gov/resources/transcripts/upload/022912RecordSubmission-Franken.pdf)

The United States government must support trials in Article III courts for individuals detained at

Guantnamo Bay and coordinate the various branches of government to ensure that civilian trials for

detainees are a policy priority.As both recent and historic prosecutions of terrorist suspects demonstrate, United States

federal district courts are well-equipped to secure convictions for terrorist activities, thus furthering thegovernments interest in and obligation to protect the country, its citizens and military personnel from terrorism while meeting its obligation

to do so in a timely manner that comports with national and international legal standards of justice. Federal prosecutors havesecured convictions against 400 individuals charged with acts of terrorismin federal courts since the attacks of

September 11, 2001, alone. The recent trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian citizen who received a life sentence for his

involvement in a conspiracy relating to the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, reaffirms that our legal

system is fully capable of, and is a legitimate forum for, trying individuals charged with acts of

terrorism. Beginning civilian trials for others currently detained at Guantnamo will end their

indefinite detention and provide justice for victims. In order to facilitate civilian prosecutions for

terrorism suspects, the United States Congress should end bans on funding transfers of individuals

from Guantnamo Bay to facilities in the United States.

Federal courts are more legitimate than military trialsinternational credibility

Hathaway and Adelsberg et al 13(Oona, Samuel, Spencer Amdur, Philireya Pitts, and SirineShebaya, "The Power to Detain Detention of Terrorism Suspects After 9/11," Yale Journal of

International Law, Vol. 38: Issue 123,www.yjil.org/docs/pub/38-1-hathaway-the-power-to-detain.pdf)

Federal courts arealso generally considered more legitimate than military commissions. The stringent

procedural protections reduce the risk of error and generate trust and legitimacy.245 The federal courts, for

example, provide more robust hearsay protections than the commissions. In addition,jurors are ordinary

citizens, not U.S. military personnel.Indeed, some of the weakest procedural protections in the military
http://pubs.mantisintel.com/Civil_Liberties_WorkingPaper.pdfhttp://www.judiciary.senate.gov/resources/transcripts/upload/022912RecordSubmission-Franken.pdfhttp://www.yjil.org/docs/pub/38-1-hathaway-the-power-to-detain.pdfhttp://www.yjil.org/docs/pub/38-1-hathaway-the-power-to-detain.pdfhttp://www.judiciary.senate.gov/resources/transcripts/upload/022912RecordSubmission-Franken.pdfhttp://pubs.mantisintel.com/Civil_Liberties_WorkingPaper.pdf


14/14

commission system have been successfully challenged as unconstitutional.247 Congress and the

Executive have responded tothese legal challengesandto criticism of the commissionsfrom around

the globebysignificantly strengthening the commissions' procedural protections.Yet the remaining

gapsalong with what many regard as a tainted historycontinue to raise doubtsabout the fairness and legitimacy of

the commissions. The current commissions, moreover, have been active for only a short periodtoo brief a

period for doubts to be confirmed or put to rest.248 Federal criminal procedure, on the other hand,

is well-established and widely regarded as legitimate.

security 1ac

Documents