This collection of seventeen essays arose from 2004's Inaugural Conference of the Human Rights Institute of the University of Connecticut, of which the editor is Director. Eighteen lawyers, policy-makers, activists and scholars (thirteen from the USA, two from Britain, one from South Africa, one from Latvia, and Ireland's former president Mary Robinson) assess the wars and policies adopted since 9/11, and try to create a counter-terror strategy that takes seriously both human rights and the security threat from Islamic terrorism.
In his introduction, Wilson points out that the British state's repressive policies in Northern Ireland in the 1970s - special courts, detention without trial, suspension of habeas corpus, torture of prisoners - were all wrong, ineffective and counter-productive. They strengthened the terrorists' popular support and recruitment base, and damaged democracy in Britain.
Now the US state, with the Labour government's support, uses the same policies. As Lord Steyn warned, "the purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was and is to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy of the victors. The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce prisoners to confess." The US example has led other states to use the `war on terror' to destroy human rights, attack human rights defenders and militarise conflicts.
Several contributors - Wilson himself, US sociology professor Thomas Cushman and Mary Robinson - echo Senator John McCain's call for US-British `humanitarian' intervention in Sudan. Cushman even calls the Iraq war a humanitarian intervention. Clearly, some people's liberalism is just a cover for warmongering.
The US and British states ask us, how much liberty would you sacrifice for security?' But the question should be,how much of our own protection against government errors or malice would we sacrifice for minute security gains?'