ABSTRACT
No academic citations are necessary to make the point that one of the most frequently repeated mantras since 11 September 2001 is that human rights have been one of the most prominent casualties of the war against terror and of the more visible realities of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is an easy case to make. The sights and sounds of war themselves resonate with human suffering. The plight of those detained by the US at Guantánamo Bay (for a recent general account, see Rose 2004) – graphically (if not strictly speaking accurately) described as a legal black hole (Styen 2004) – and the revelations of the treatment of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad speak for themselves. 1 Daily news bulletins and newspapers bring stories of suffering into our homes. 2 One of the consequences has been to undermine the credibility of the US and the UK as exemplars and advocates of respect for human rights, and this has been reinforced by the introduction of draconian legislation ostensibly aimed at furthering the protection of the people from further acts of terror but which also challenge many of the well-entrenched orthodoxies of the civil rights movement and well-established safeguards against the misuse of authority. Another consequence has been to let loose a debate about the legitimacy of torture and ill-treatment of detainees in quarters where, even five years ago, it would have been thought unthinkable. Does all of this mean that the era of human rights, ushered in by the horror of World War II, is in retreat?
