“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” states “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment.” [Article 5] In a perfect world, this would not be an issue. But the world we live in is far from perfect. Each year, the United States tortures suspects allegedly associated with terrorism. All the while, the world sits back and watches as more and more people are tortured, a direct violation of said act. In my honest opinion, the U.N. needs to either enforce said act in a manner in which the U.S. is at least slightly threatened or repeal the act as a whole, it is violated without any thought each year. As a major team player in the U.N, the United States needs to abide by the rules it helped to set in place. As far as the act goes, it works quite well on paper, like many other things, but also fails in the real world.

Smaller, more proactive countries like Germany have turned to trade and commerce to run their economy, instead of military might and intimidation tactics. If the U.S. based its power off of trade and stopped policing the world, torture in this country would not be an issue. Germany is the economic powerhouse of Europe and, up until 2010, was the world’s leader in manufactured goods.

I do believe that if the United States was based off of countries that are much smaller and believe in smart money instead of war and violence, then the issue of torture would be very much irrelevant compared to the