I think that it is safe to say that my favorite TV show is “Law & Order,” especially its SVU spin-off. I was watching it a couple nights ago and as the opening scenario unfolded, I realized that I had never seen this episode before.
I was in heaven.

Saving all the messy details about the episode, in the end a doctor was arrested for criminal neglect homicide. A murdered girl who had worked for a Blackwater-ish company in Iraq and had taught troops in a camp her own flavor of torture, which she claimed did not cause long-term psychological or physical harm. Her form of torture, some of which involved prisoners sitting in a stress position whilst blindfolded in a cold room for days on end, had been inflicted on this innocent 32 year-old Iraqi. He had died of heart failure in New York City because of the damage this torture had done on his cardiovascular system.

An ethical debate quickly developed about the veracity of this doctor’s argument for her actions. She had a son in Iraq and believed that she had a “skill” that could help counter terrorism. She claimed that torture was one of the few weapons in the war that the U.S. had against terrorists and felt her actions were entirely justified.

I was completely taken aback by this argument. It was not until later in the show, when the coroner confronted her, that I felt that Dick Wolf, the writer and producer of “Law & Order,” had a real message to send to the American people: People are people, no matter which country you are in and no matter what the circumstances.

The coroner argued that she, like the doctor on trial, took the Hippocratic Oath, the oath that all doctors take stating that they are to do no harm to their patients, no matter who the person and no matter what the situation. She said that doctors are always accountable to that oath, arguing that it was written especially for times of conflict so that the humanity of every person is always upheld.

As the end credits rolled, I sat back and reflected on everything that I had just witnessed in the past hour. I arrived at the reality that terrorists may be people with bad intentions, but they are humans nonetheless and, as humans, they must be treated with dignity.

Criminals in the United States, whether they are rapists or bank robbers, all have the right to be treated with human dignity. Confessions cannot be beaten out of them. We can’t throw them in prison without any evidence. Our Constitution forbids it. Why, then, are the same guidelines absent when dealing with terrorists or prisoners of war? I do not believe that the prisoners of Abu Ghraib were treated with the dignity they deserved as human beings. Nor do I believe that the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay have been given fair and speedy trials.

Do you really believe that rights and freedoms accorded to us in the Constitution should be exclusive to those within the United States borders? When the Constitution was written more than 250 years ago, the writers were not just outlining the things that they thought their new country should have, they were reflecting on what, as human beings, we are entitled. They defined those rights and freedoms that they believed every person should be granted.

We fight so hard for freedom and democracy around the world because we believe that what we have in the United States is special, because it is special. There is absolutely no reason that we should not be treating every single human being with the same dignity that we are entitled to through our Constitution. Rapists are humans. Bank robbers are humans. Terrorists are humans. Their actions may be abhorred, but when delivering justice, no matter where on Earth, perpetrators are still human beings.

As for the trial against the doctor, the jury was divided, six to six. I think that we, as a country, are divided. In our minds, we weigh the threats to our security against the measures we use to safeguard against those threats. Some people will argue that our actions are necessary to keep our country safe, but at the end of the day, all is not fair in war. Killing is killing. Torture is torture. People are not any less human because they are not US citizens and the sooner we adhere to that principle, the sooner we will truly be called a country that fights for freedom and human dignity.

George Caputa is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences.