Harold Hongju Koh on Human Rights

[W]e now fail to tell the full truth about our human rights conduct, or that of our allies in the War on Terror. Increasingly, we avoid application of universal standards: whether the rules against torture and cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. But the United States cannot lead the world with moral authority unless we hold ourselves to the same high standards that we demand from others. The U.S. has put its own human rights practices center stage by promoting double standards for our allies, and arguing in favor of “law-free zones” (like Guantanamo), “law-free practices” (like extraordinary rendition), “law-free persons” (who are dubbed “enemy combatants”), and “law-free” courts, (like the system of military commissions, which have failed to deliver credible justice and are currently being challenged in our courts for the recent stripping of the writ of habeas corpus). Through these misguided policies, the administration has shifted the world's focus from the grotesque human rights abuses of the terrorists to America's own human rights misconduct, leaving other, equally pressing issues elsewhere ignored or unaddressed.

—Harold Hongju Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mar. 29, 2007