Human Rights in the ‘War on Terror’

Extract

Human Rights in the ‘War on Terror’, Richard Ashby Wilson, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. xv, 347.

Given this book's title, I assumed that it would consist mainly of elaborations of already over-rehearsed debates about the “trade-offs” between “liberty” and “security.” And while it does include plenty of this, several chapters in this volume offer thoughtful, nuanced analyses which challenge the dichotomous rhetoric of the day, and force the reader to rethink not just the future, but also the nature, of contemporary human rights and security.