Has War on Terror Resulted in Abuse of Human Rights?

Has war on terror resulted in abuse of human rights?

Currently, everyone is acquainted with the word terrorism and its impact on general public. Terrorism is the use of pugnaciousness and violence to threat and force someone for achieving religious, political or other socio-economic objectives. Human rights are the basic rights, which should be granted to a human, such as, right to life, security, free speech, equal opportunity, etc. There is huge heated debate whether or not the war on terror abused the human rights. Despite the opposing views, I believe the war on terror somehow neglected the human rights and in turn resulted in its abuse.

Some of the Americans believe that war on terror is not about cruelty to human beings and torturing or killing them but to bring those criminals who were behind the killing of more than 3000 innocent people in 9/11 tragic episode and may propose such appalling commencement of hostilities in future. The 2009’s announcement, in which the Obama administration read out that five more terrorists would be brought to justice in courts, is a proof for the aforementioned phenomenon. Moreover, most of Americans believed that a hard-hitting and tough action was needed in response of attacks on America to prevent U.S citizens from further antagonistic incidents and take revenge of what already has been done. For example, president G.W.Bush’s famous doctrine “You are with us or against us” towards other countries after the attack, was a signal of the U.S’s tough response to the terrorism. In addition, some political thinkers believe it is in nation’s interest to torture terrorists to save millions of lives from next tragedy and capture its masterminds. Treatment of prisoners in Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay prisons is an example of such ideology. Finally, majority of Americans believed that the war on terror was not against a particular sect of society and was not based on racism. President Bush’s quote is an evidence to this quo when he said, “The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics; a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.”

It is unquestionable that the 9/11 grievous occurrence was a disaster and its perpetrators should be brought to justice, however, statistics shows that about 8,800 Americans have been killed and 54,800 wounded in war on terror, which include both soldiers and civilians. As we can observe that the mortality and casualty rate is higher in war on terror than of those attacks. Furthermore, an estimated 20,000 to 49,600 afghan civilians have been killed in invasion of spring 2002. More than 7000 Somalions lost their lives in war on terror. Iraq has been the deadliest of all which sacrificed about 62,570 to 1,124,000 of its civilians. Other countries, such as, Turkey, Pakistan, Zaire, Chad, Indonesia, Peru, Chile