Sunday, March 30, 2014
War on Terrorism
I was expecting Zero Dark Thirty to have a lot more torture scenes, but I’m glad it did not have as many. War has changed in the age of terrorism in the way we deal with terrorists and other captured individuals. In Zero Dark Thirty we see a bit of individuals being detained in different CIA locations where they are being interrogated for information. Although in the film not all the individuals are tortured, the individual that was tortured received one of the techniques known as water-boarding, which makes it seem as if the individual was drowning. In this war, we have heard a lot more about intense interrogations in which officials turn to torture. In the United Nations convention of 1984, the UN committees declared that torture/severe pain or suffering intentionally inflicted upon a person by a public official to gain information or to intimidate was to be banned and prevented. The UN also declared that it is prohibited to extradite an individual to a state where they believe they will be torture. Although the UN declared these laws in 1984, the U.S. currently is breaking article 3 in which it is prohibited to extradite individuals to a place knowing that they will probably tortured there. The U.S. government has several “prisons” for terrorists, but the most controversial one is Guantanamo Bay. Currently the U.S. still has Guantanamo Bay, a detention camp for detainees from the war on terrorism, is still open. The UN issued a report on Guantanamo Bay stating that the conditions of the prisoners went against the human rights act on torture established in 1984. The UN committee interviewed previous detainees, saw pictures, and their injuries from the torture tactics experienced while at Guantanamo Bay when creating their report. Torture and interrogation is a difficult subject. Personally, I do not agree with the tactics used for torture because no human should have to endure those awful conditions; however, others may argue that torture is needed to get useful information that will help us “win” the war on terrorism.
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I feel like Zero Dark Thirty presented a difficult challenge in the way it showed torture and how the CIA agents were less able to gather information after they were made to stop torturing detainees. Since the film was mostly from the CIA's perspective, it almost seemed like it was meant to make viewers question whether taking the moral high ground was worth it in this case. Personally, I found the torture scenes to be incredibly disturbing, and just imaging what those people had to go through was more than enough to convince me that torture shouldn't be used for interrogations. Perhaps by portraying the torture scenes in such a striking manner and also showing the frustration of the CIA team, the film was trying to give a take on both sides of the subject.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog Citlali! Thought it was really interesting and had many good things to say. The torture scenes kind of took me by surprise but I do think that the movie was good. I also agree that the torture tactics should not be used on any human being. It is just down right inhumane.
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