Free Essay About War On Terrorism

Terrorism is one of the biggest threats to the global security that our world faces today. It inflicts suffering and pain on many innocent people all over the world. These people, who just happen to be in the wrong place and at the wrong time, become victims of cruel terrorist attacks.
Although nobody considers terrorism a positive phenomenon, there are some questions raised concerning legal and ethical sides of the fight against terrorism. One of the main questions is whether terrorists should be treated as enemy combatants or as criminals.
As found in the dictionary, an enemy combatant is a person who was captured in an armed conflict and under the laws and customs of war cannot be entitled to the prisoner of war status (“Enemy combatant”).
At the same time, dictionary provides the following definition of a criminal: any person that has committed a crime and has been found guilty of conducting social harm (“Criminal”).
So, there is a noticeable difference between these two terms. The first term is related to an armed conflict while the second one is related to the violation of laws established in our society. Thus, a treatment towards terrorists as criminals should also be in compliance with social norms that regulate treatment of people who violated the law.
Opponents of such treatment believe that in case of such treatment, interrogating detainees for intelligence would be strictly prohibited. However, interrogation could provide the necessary information to prevent future terrorist attacks by launching drone strikes.
As terrorism attack is aimed at causing harm to a certain country, all possible efforts have to be taken by this country to protect its citizens from aggression. If terrorist has a right to a fair trial, he cannot be interrogated to gather intelligence data, and there is less probability that future attacks can be prevented.
However, terrorists do not act as citizens of a certain country and, therefore, they do not organize attacks under the national banner of that country. In this case, term ‘enemy combatants’ cannot be applied to the groups with no national affiliation.
On the other hand, in case terrorists are treated as enemy combatants and not as criminals, they are held as suspects without charge, and they do not have rights to defend themselves in court. This contradicts the common belief that all people should be entitled to equal rights and they should be able to defend themselves in court when they are suspected in breaking the law.
Thus, there are different approaches how to treat terrorists. I do agree that all people should be entitled to equal rights, but at the same time, all people have a right to life, and terrorist attacks usually result in numerous deaths of innocent citizens.
Thus, for every country, priority number one should be protecting people who live in a this country and do everything possible to ensure that no terrorists succeed in their intention to harm innocent people and country itself by organizing an act of aggression. Thus, in most cases, terrorists should be treated as enemy combatants.

Works Cited

“Are Terrorists Criminals Or Enemy Combatants?” NPR. Intelligence Debates. Web. 2 Apr. 2015. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129941946>
“Criminal.” TheFreeDictionary.com. Web. 2 Apr. 2015. <http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/criminal>
“Enemy combatant.” TheFreeDictionary.com. Web. 2 Apr. 2015. <http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/enemy+combatant>