America, Beacon of Freedom or Supporter of Systemic Discrimination?

America, globally referred to as the World's police force, doesn't necessarily stand up to the scrutiny and standards of the international Human Rights Watch organization. The Deputy Executive Director Carroll Bogert gave a lecture this past week outlining a good number of things the US does right, but also a lot of different ways the US fails to protect human rights on a global scale. She brings to the light the question as to what degree the US can truly be a leader on human rights, and to what degree the US is obliged to act globally, if at all. We can address these questions from a moral framework, seeing as they are questions of ethics and evaluation rather than cold hard facts. Afterwards we can move forward to acknowledge the other questions Bogert's presentation raises and what we should think about when asking them.

Before we discuss the content of the argument itself, it is important to acknowledge why answering these questions are important. In doing so we will also begin to shed light on how we arrive at our conclusion in this post as well. The United States is one of the world's most powerful hegemons, exercising its influence wherever it pleases, and stating its opinion on global issues. The world looks the US as a leader in times of crises, times in need of resolution, and times in need of protection. Though the US has made its enemies along the way, America ultimately is one of the most historically influential nations and carries one of the biggest global impacts today. When we discuss human rights the relevance of our influential status is only magnified. This country is built on the basic premise of freedom and human rights. The founding fathers escaped what they believed to be an unjust society to build one where rights would be secured. We have prided ourselves on the image of being an international beacon for safety and freedom. If our policies reflect violations of the core ideals of our country's creation, or if our policies only selectively give access to what we claim to spread and protect, then we are failing the initial reasoning and justification of our foundation. We undermine our legitimacy as a nation and overall can hinder our status as a hegemon in the long-term.

The Human Rights Committee of the United Nations has recently released an evaluative report on the status of human rights violations the United States commitsⁱ. It finds that as of March 2014 there are 25 violations of human rights being committed in the status quo, ranging from accountability of previous leaders misjudgments to the death penalty. Bogert touches on a wide assortment of these, however I intend to focus on two topic areas in specific. The first issue I will address is general failures to protect human rights on a domestic level, while the second is our international foreign policy in protecting national security. I will then compare the implication for each of these and how they affect our global status as a world leader.

Many of the domestic human rights violations cited by the UN report are related to our justice system. The violations range on every level from incarceration, to use of excessive force, to the penalties distributed at sentencing in the court room. The violations also have a wide scope of nature from systematic prejudice and oppression of certain races to unfairly processing minors and subjecting them to non-consensual psychiatric therapy. Other violations listed include the criminalization of homelessness, the high level of gun-related violence, NSA surveillance, and the use of solitary confinement. These violations are indicators of broken systems within our nation, but not necessarily the nation itself failing to protect human rights. In fact the report notes in multiple incidences that our country is attempting to address many of our violations, but they are ingrained into a system and thus are hard to solve. It commends our efforts, though acknowledges that effort is not an excuse for allowing a problem to grow into an ingrained part of society. Ultimately our recent efforts to address issues of injustice, both social and legal, are reflective of a country that actually attempts to protect human rights on a domestic level for the most part. With such a large nation and so many different bodies deciding law (both on the state and federal level), our evolution is one that is slow but certain.

The international violations brought against the US are slightly more alarming when examined. Though there are not nearly as many of these violations, it is arguable that their impact is noticeably more severe for multiple reasons. What the US does to another country gets reported globally because it is international affairs and thus the world's business. What a country does domestically usually will not be reported or examined under the same lens because the scope of its impact is limited to our own nation. Moreover it makes countries question what the US would be willing to do in the name of national security and securing its global presence. The two stand-out violations in the UN report are that of torture (specifically at Guantanamo Bay) and drone strikes. Closely examining these actions, we see that we unfairly set-up a group of people to be denied basic rights we hold dear as citizens of this country. We firmly believe in a right to fair trial as it is written in our Constitution, however if we torture our prisoners not only do we not give them a right to fair trial, but it also implicitly assumes the party in question is guilty. If we truly believed in even the potential of innocence of a human being who is incarcerated, we would generally not torture them as it would coerce a confession of information that is unreliable and can ruin lives. With detainees we deem a threat to national security, we set up a system that turns a blind eye on the destructive physical and mental abuse those individuals endure and hold them indefinitely until conviction. Worse off are our drone strikes, where we don't even consider bringing individuals into a court room. Before discussing the policy we have with drone use, it is important to note the skewed statistics we have presented by the government. Jo Becker and Scott Shane wrote a piece on our drone policy in May of 2012 after 15 Al-Quaeda suspects were named, two of which were teenagers. In it they provide the government definition of militantⁱⁱ.

[The definition of militant] in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. 

We suspect, investigate, try, and eliminate people in drone strikes without them even knowing they were ever suspected terrorists. Our drone strike program has such a high efficiency rate of killing militants because the teenage male who is held hostage by the terrorist cell is considered a militant if his body is found in the wreckage. Targeted killings end lives before one even knows they are being investigated, and there is no opportunity for defense or innocence. It assumes the target is guilty, even if the information their guilt is based on is attained through unethical channels such as torture. This policy is one of our most grandeur human rights violations on the global scale.

Our international violations carry significantly more weight in their impact on our global image than our domestic violations. On an evaluative scale of quality of life, it can be argued that if citizens felt the human rights violations in America were on balance worse than the benefits we receive from accepting the way America is run and living within it, people would leave or retaliate. The diversity of America's federal system allows people to live in states with different laws, and if they cannot find comfort and safety in the 50 states they have access to they can speak out openly or utilize their freedom to move to another country they deem more morally just. Our intentional violations host a lot more problems and and indicative of our opinion of global human rights as a country. Our policy in the Middle East and the atmosphere in our country post-9/11 demonizes individuals from muslim countries. Though we have made efforts in recent years to reconcile the muslim image in a social context our military policy does not reflect the same interest. We violate the sovereignty of nations such as Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and eliminate their citizens strictly based on location and arguably race. We target a certain group of people and then further cause destabilization in the area and surrounding countries through invasions (Iran & Afghanistan) and through the support of unstable regimes (Syria both before and during their civil war, and Egypt's murderous new dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi). It is acceptable that there is no Eutopia with no human rights violations, and thus domestic violations are almost inherent in every nation. Our policy and conduct in the global scale doesn't seem to be concerned with human rights for all, but only for our allies, and only when its convenient. This is why we can truly never be a leader on human rights. We assert our global dominance through military and political prowess, and if we deem a nation beneficial or useful we will grant them our protection and access to the human rights we provide.

Is this really bad though? There does not seem to be any obligation of the United States to another country to protect its human rights. The US seems to host a policy of "survival of the fittest" and if a country cannot defend itself or provide for itself, it is of no concern to the United States. And if this is the outlook should countries look the US for leadership on human rights? On one hand, leading by example can encourage other countries to build up and fend for themselves, which can both be good and bad for the US depending on the relationship between the countries. On the other hand, some countries are incapable of doing such feats, and our acceleration further hinders their ability to keep up with our development. These issues all come to mind when discussing human right issues, but as it sits now, the US shouldn't be deemed a leader of human rights, just a hegemon of the world.

iHuman Rights Committee. "Concluding observations on the fourth report of the United States of America" United Nations. March 28, 2014. http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1097784/un-human-rights-final.pdf

iiBecker, Jo. Shane, Scott. "Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will" New York Times. May 29, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&pagewanted=all