To what Extent has the 'War on Terror' Undermined the Human Rights Agenda in World Politics - Essay Example

However, the ‘revenge’ was directed against Muslims in general because the aforementioned event, which was insignificant in comparison to the routine onslaughts in other countries, paved the way for incursions into specific Muslim territories. Under this pretext, the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and invaded Iraq in 2003 to further its geopolitical interests. The War on Terror is an implementation of Manichaeism, as it allowed the USA to make a new enemy after the collapse of the USSR.

It is serving its imperialistic ambitions by painting the Muslim World as a new axis of evil and a threat to modern Western civilization. However, this enemy is more abstract than real and the situation is only leading to widespread irrational fear and unnecessary destruction. This war would therefore be more aptly described as a ‘War by Terror’ because the US is the real terrorist on its last vestiges of being a superpower. This paper shows how true this is and the extent to which this fake war is undermining the human rights agenda in world politics.

It also examines how the US has managed to perpetrate these crimes and its aggression despite the existence of international laws to prevent abuse and what can be done to control the real evil which now poses a threat to the entire world. A cornerstone of the US actions post 9/11 has been its application of the doctrine of ‘pre-emptive military strike’. The US asserts that it has the right to take unilateral military action against other states and organisations if it perceives a threat. However, this is a dangerous trend that effectively makes the UN redundant and is out of conformity with international laws, conventions and resolutions (Gupta, 2008).

America’s actions even transgress its own and international laws. Its leadership and military have committed serious crimes against humanity. The attempted moralization of the use of the military force, transgresses the norms of humanity (Schmitt, 2008). This situation hearkens back to the era before the UN existed and it could set a dangerous precedent for other nations which would then reverse decades of globalisation efforts to prevent wars. One of the biggest victims of this is human rights; the global agenda to protect human rights and guarantee human dignity and respect.

This agenda at the international level began after World War II. In its new phase this century, the effort was to liberalise international relations to that they “conform to the liberal prescription for the good society” (Forsythe, 2006: 3). Numerous known and hidden human rights abuses have taken place by the US this century. Those that are known include kidnapping of innocent people and their torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and elsewhere. On a more widespread scale, the US invaded two sovereign countries (Afghanistan and Iraq) and has long been intimidating a third, namely Pakistan.

The US accused former honourable president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, of harbouring weapons of mass destruction. Fortunately, this baseless accusation was found to be just that when no such weapons were ever found, even by their own admission (Beaumont et al., 2004). This only showed the hypocrisy of the US because it itself possesses weapons of mass destruction yet it accuses others in the same way that it is the world’