Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Commentary

January 2008
Habeas Corpus and the Detention of Enemy Combatants in the War on Terror
By James P. Terry

Since the al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the United States has been engaged in an armed conflict that rivals more traditional conflicts in its brutality and carnage.

January 2008
Rendition: The Beast and the Man
By Kevin M. Cieply

Tortured, incarcerated, and exiled, Niccolò Machiavelli swore never again to allow a throne to perish under the hand of aggression for want of action—bold, insidious action if need be.

January 2008
The Role of Targeted Killing in the Campaign against Terror
By Peter M. Cullen

Targeted killing is "the intentional slaying of a specific individual or group of individuals undertaken with explicit government approval."

January 2008
The International Criminal Court: A Concept Whose Time Has Not Come
By James P. Terry

In this issue of JFQ, Commander Brian Hoyt, USN, presents a thoughtful argument that U.S. policy on the International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002, should be changed.

6 December 2007
Gitmo Goes to Court
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

The judiciary has no business managing how we fight wars abroad.

19 November 2007
The Rights of Guantanamo
By James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.

The assault on justice continues at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — and it has nothing to do with the trial of enemy combatants accused of war crimes.

13 July 2006
Rights Are Wrong: Dealing with Terrorists
By James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.

Sure, terrorists may want to blow up your kid's school and decapitate you. But never forget that they have rights. And they'll have even more if some in Congress have their way.

11 September 2006
A Tour of Guantanamo Prison Shows America at Its Best
By Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D.

At least two detainees at the holding facility here skipped lunch today because they're on a hunger strike. Which is a pity for them -- the food was delicious. By contrast, the steady stream of news about "Gitmo" tends to leave one with a bad taste.

6 October 2006
Myths of Guantanamo
By James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.

Guantanamo Bay isn't run by the CIA, the FBI or private contractors. It is run by men and women in the armed services. They are the guards, the administrators, the doctors, the engineers, the lawyers and the chaplains. They're the ones in charge. And their work is hardly hidden: The Pentagon has invited a steady stream of reporters, politicians, human-rights groups and the representatives of other governments to visit the detention facilities -- and judge what is being done there for themselves.

4 October 2006
Congress protects rights, preserves national security
By James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.

When Congress passed the law that will govern how terrorist suspects can be tried in military tribunals, it acted just like the Founding Fathers would have wished. It stuck fast to principles, the bedrock of values and beliefs that this nation stands for -- and it compromised on particulars.

27 July 2006
Trying talk on terrorist trials
By James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Attorneys cite that famous line, uttered by would-be revolutionaries in Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part II," as proof of their critical role in keeping "a nation of laws" from devolving into anarchy. Those less enamored of the legal profession cite it as proof that lawyers often serve the interests of the elite at the expense of the general public.

24 March 2006
Embrace the need for decisive leadership
By John Yoo

Critics of the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq charge that President Bush has infringed on the Constitution. They say it's up to Congress to approve the course of the Iraq War, the interrogation policies at the Guantanamo Bay base and the wiretap surveillance by the National Security Agency.

7 November 2005
The Torture Test
By Peter Brookes

A key factor in planning any covert operation is full consideration of "blowback" -- the painful consequences of an "op" gone bad. This time the CIA is stinging from the "blowback" of last week's revelation that it's playing warden to a string of secret overseas terrorist prisons.

26 July 2005
Don't reinvent the laws of war: Keep combatants isolated at Gitmo
By Paul Rosenzweig

Recently, Amnesty International declared that the American detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is the "gulag of our times." President Carter wants the entire facility closed, as does Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del. "I think we should end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners," Biden declared. "Those that we have reason to keep, keep, and those we don't, let go."

16 June 2005
Gitmo is No Gulag
By Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.

Perhaps she was blinded by a hatred of U.S. policies. Maybe she was seeking to shift attention from terrorist crimes. But one thing's certain: When Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Zubeida Khan called the Guantanamo Bay detention facility the "Gulag of our times" (reportedly adding, "Ironic that this should happen as we mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz"), her words sprung from either deep ignorance or deliberate deception.

27 July 2003
Take Moussaoui to Court: A Military Court 
By Glenn Sulmasy

The latest controversy in the case of the alleged "twentieth highjacker," Zacharias Moussaoui, highlights why we should be using military tribunals, officially known as "military commissions," for terrorists captured during the war on terror.