Brandon Jones

Dr. Kawar
POLS 4260
April 21, 2015
Guantnamo
After reading this past weeks articles about detainees stationed at Guantnamo, I
have found that the individuals incarcerated at Guantnamo have little to no rights. I have
come to the conclusion that, in order to gain rights for these detainees, there needs to be
an expansion to international law to include enemy combatants. Drawing on prior
course readings, I argue that there needs to be an all-inclusive movement that focuses on
human rights discourse to improve the situation for these detainees.
In her article, Where is Guantnamo?, Amy Kaplan spells out what legal rights
enemy combatants have. Kaplan mentions how Rasul v. Bush ruled that prisoners at
Guantnamo have the right to petition for habeas corpus. However, Rasul v. Bush does
not bring about change for these detainees. Court decisions made on Rumsfeld v. Padilla
and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld tell a different story about the rights of the detainees incarcerated
at Guantnamo. With Rumsfeld v. Padilla, the Court ruled that the protections of the
U.S.s domestic law do not extend to the four corners of the earth. When talking about
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Kaplan states: The ruling accepted the administrations position that
such enemy combatants are not entitled to the protections either of the Geneva
Conventions on prisoners of war or to full due process rights accorded to criminal
defendants in the U.S. courts (851). Altogether, these cases blurred the lines of whether
Guantnamo falls under domestic law or international law. The Court essentially ruled

that Guantnamo is domestic for some purposes and international for other purposes, thus
removing any accountability the U.S. might have toward detaining enemy combatants
at Guantnamo.
In her article, Guantnamo Limbo, Judith Butler argues how international law
needs to be revised to include these enemy combatants. When talking about the Geneva
Conventions, Butler states: Instead of asserting an entitlement to protection against
degradation and violence and rights to a fair trial as a universal right, the Geneva accord
on POWs applies a selective criterion to the question of who merits protection and who
does not, and it clearly privileges those prisoners in wars between recognizable states
(22). According to Butler, the Geneva Conventions have legitimized state-affiliated
violence, while de-legitimizing those who commit violent acts that are not state-affiliated.
Essentially, the Geneva Conventions have split violence into the haves and have nots.
The Geneva Conventions need to be revised to include the detainees at Guantnamo.
Prior readings in the class are useful when looking at how the detainees at
Guantnamo can achieve their rights to be included in the Geneva Conventions. In the
Adelaide Villmoare article, Villmoare talks about how the womens rights movement
should be an all-inclusive movement that focuses on the everyday narratives of the
people involved. The movement to get rights for the detainees at Guantnamo could take
a similar approach. The movement could focus on the everyday struggles that the
detainees have to face. For example, there could be a focus on someone who is
inhumanely tortured while incarcerated, or on someone who was incarcerated based off
of hearsay.

By having an all-inclusive movement for those incarcerated at Guantnamo, the

detainees and everyone else in the movement can unite to help get the detainees included
in the Geneva Conventions. Once included in the Geneva Conventions, the detainees at
Guantnamo would no longer be subjected to the inhumane treatment that they used to
receive while incarcerated.