The terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 represent the start of a new war. The Bush administration dubbed it the “War on Terror”. The problem is that this war is without borders or nations and it is becoming increasingly hard to distinguish between soldiers and civilians. So when an accused terrorist is apprehended, what laws should govern their prosecution and what rights should protect them?
The Bush doctrine established a system of military tribunals to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. The tribunals have similarities to US civilian courts, such as the accused is innocent and the burden of proof rest with the prosecution. The terrorism suspects still have access to a knowledgeable defense; there are more restrictions on who this can be however. Their initial representatives are pentagon military lawyers who can be backed up by private attorneys after they receive security clearance. Also, the accused are allowed to call fourth witnesses for their defense. The differences between the tribunals and civilian courts are necessary measures to protect national security and prevent accused foreign terrorists from abusing the judicial system. Terrorists do not have access to unlimited appeals. In order to prevent them from bogging down the tribunals with endless appeals, their cases can only be reversed by a review panel; this is similar to death row inmates who have only one shot at an appeal.(USATODAY) The most controversial issue with the Bush policy was the use of terrorism to extract information. Those critical of this policy say that the Bush doctrine violates the suspected terrorists’ rights. What they fail to realize is that these rights are only given to US citizens in the constitution. A foreign terrorist is not an American citizen and hence should not be attributed the same rights at the cost of national security.
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It is fairly well established that in any modern society certain individual rights must be limited in order for society to survive. In this case it seems that some rights of alleged terrorist, ie the right to a civil trial are being limited in order to protect society. While I would have difficulty in accepting this arguement if you were to eliminate any trial but that is not the case. So society is limiting the form of the trial and as long as that trial can be viewed as a fair trial, which is a process we are in the middle of currently, then the limitation of some individual rights should be acceptable.
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