Guantanamo Bay Vs 9/11

After the 2001 September 11th attacks, the Bush administration needed a secure place to keep its enemies captured in the “war on terror”. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had already established “black sites”, or secret detention centres, all over the world. However, the Bush administration needed a location outside of international law so they could keep detainees indefinitely while interrogating them without legal intervention. They also needed a location that would not become a target for another terrorist attack. Guantanamo Bay was the ideal location, as it is an American Navy base that is under American control but is not under American sovereignty and is far enough from American territory that a terrorist attack would not be a
For example, in response to the 9/11 attacks the United States created the National Security Strategy of 2002. This allowed the United States to take preemptive action to protect national security while “differently interpreting” (that is, disregarding) international law. This method of interpreting international law differently was important in justifying the “enhanced” interrogation policies in Guantanamo Bay. Despite having signed and ratified the UN Torture Convention, which clearly underlines that torture is never justified regardless of emergency situations, the US Department of Justice argued that self-defense and national security justified the President’s powers (without checks and balances) to give permission to the officials at Guantanamo to torture enemy detainees for
Instead of calling the alleged Taliban and Al-Qaeda detainees “prisoners of war”, the Bush administration called them “unlawful enemy combatants”. By doing so, the Bush administration denied the detainees all rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. If the detainees at Guantanamo had prisoner of war status, they would be protected under the Third Geneva Convention against the inhumane treatment and the forceful extraction of information they faced in the detention camp. By interpreting the Third Geneva Convention in a literal manner, the Bush administration justified their decision to name the detainees at Guantanamo “unlawful enemy combatants”. According to the Bush administration and American lawyer John C. Yoo, because the Taliban was a “failed state”, its militia was not entitled to protection under the Conventions. In addition, because Taliban and al-Qaeda soldiers did not wear uniforms in combat they were not prisoners of