As the United States moves closer to electing its next president, and the events of Paris and Brussels remind us of the horrors inflicted by those determined to terrorize populations, it is important that we take a breath. We must remember that hawkish sound bites about being tough on terrorism don’t solve the problem of terrorism. They also don’t free us from our responsibility to live and fight by the international standards we have agreed to uphold.
Despite the clear limitations on the conduct of war chronicled in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols, we still have prominent public figures advocating for policies and activities that are in direct contravention of these international standards. Calls from Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to carpet bomb ISIS controlled areas—without regard for the loss of civilian lives—and Trump’s support of waterboarding (or “even further”) and targeting terrorists’ family members should shock and horrify anyone who believes that the United States is a lawful country that stands behind its international commitments.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton has defended Israeli bombing of civilian areas in Gaza with the logic that Israel has a right to defend itself. Lest we believe that these views are new to the campaign rhetoric of presidential politics, we only need look back at the 2012 campaign for the Republican nomination to see that prominent candidates Michelle Bachman and Herman Cain also supported the tactic of waterboarding during interrogations of captured fighters, despite legal determinations that such actions constitute torture.
