No, President Obama - There Can't Be Any Exceptions In The Matter Of Torture

Following up on today's earlier post ...

This illustrates precisely the point:

AP: Obama Team Debating Violating UN Convention On Torture

Via Talk Left, this disconcerting news:

President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques by ordering the CIA to follow military rules for questioning prisoners, according to two U.S. officials familiar with drafts of the plans. Still under debate is whether to allow exceptions in extraordinary cases.

[...] Obama's changes may not be absolute. His advisers are considering adding a classified loophole to the rules that could allow the CIA to use some interrogation methods not specifically authorized by the Pentagon, the officials said. They said the intent is not to use that as an opening for possible use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning.

As Glenn Greenwald points out, such a "loophole" would constitute a violation of the UN Convention on Torture, codified as a crime under US law.

Big Tent Democrat:

If the AP is correct in its story, the incoming Obama Administration is contemplating committing crimes under US and international law. If this is what Obama plans to do, may I recommend that he first withdraw the United States from the UN Convention on Torture and ask for the repeal of US law that codified the Convention. Thus, while Obama may be engaged in barbarous actions, at least he will not be commiting a crime under US law.

It looks like this is what we have come to and what we truly are:

The increasing erosion of our constitutions, civil rights and democracies as they are being gradually subjugated by Authoritarian Security Surveillance States. The bloating no-fly lists and terrorist watch-lists. The continuing inhumane and barbaric renditions, "enhanced interrogations" and indefinite detentions - of children, teenagers and adults alike. The continuing standing of Military Commissions, which are nothing more than politically-driven, rigged, kangaroo courts. The seemingly unending wars of choice and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq - both based on lies to justify a vengeance operation for 9/11 and the securing of foreign oil resources. The ever mounting toll of civilian deaths, displaced refugees and soldier casualties.

This is the overall state of things today with regards to our so-called "Western civilization" - especially with regards to the U.S.A., the U.K. and Canada.

Through it all, much of the currently occurring discourse and debating on these above-mentioned, self-evident evils deal largely with semantics and quaint legalese gymnastics in order to defend and justify not only their perceived necessity, but to actually establish, maintain, or cement, their legality as well.

Or, to put it another way:

In these days when torturing is conveniently justified as a matter of necessity, when debate about torture is more than ever about the effectiveness of torture versus the "ineffectiveness" in following the rule of Law, when torture is apparently no more a cause for tarnishing reputations of countries and governments, when military commissions rule at whim (one more example here) over the rule of civil and human rights, when prosecuting torturers and torture promulgators becomes something to be actually requiring debate, when promulgating/instituting torture is no more a criminal matter but rather one of "good faith" but "misguided/wrong" policy-making, or misguided interpretation of laws or merely a matter of proper "spin", when black holes of human decency and justice have become acceptable, when torture has become nothing more than a "mere legal term" and something done casually that is not to be feared or condemned, but in fact to be made money from, trivialized or joked about ...

Then more than ever, we have lost any semblance of human rationality and grace - consequently rendering the Universal Declaration of Human Rights naught but empty words to make us feel noble, good, principled and civilized - allowing us to conveniently forget however much the deluded, hypocritical, savages and barbarians that we truly are.

Yes, President-elect Barack Obama recently renewed his pledge to end the practice of torture - and yet, what are we to make of calls for him to keep pro-torture Bush appointees in his administration-to-be, of those potential alternatives floated around and those other "torture-is-necessary" elected representatives (like this fatuously-reasoning barbarian) so far?

In other words: it remains to be seen whether hypocritical, quaint rationalizations (like this, or that, or this, or that) to justify torture will be at last dumped in the trash bin of history of savagery, so that the barbarian practice of violating human and civil rights will be abandoned once and for all ...

(...) .. and we have quite a long way to go in order to finally make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights not only a reality, but an absolute, unalienable standard of what it means to be human and civilized.

For indeed, there can't be any exceptions where torture is concerned (emphasis added):

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

To paraphrase Glenn Greenwald:

Those who argue that the U.S. was right to torture because it's the U.S. that did it are expressing a repugnant form of exceptionalism.

Or, as yours truly prefers to put it:

There is no going deeper into the pit of savagery and perversion here, folks. This is the very bottom, the lowest of the lowest, level of inhumanity.

No civilization allowed here - when the debate is about the efficiency and validity of torture in getting solid intelligence and confessions, as things are now, instead of being about the inherent immoral nature of torture, then you know you have lost any semblance of human rationality and grace.

Case in point.

And just to make things very clear:

(...) I humbly assume that I will be forgiven if I do not appreciate the "courageous" work done over the last seven years by the Bush administration and its cheerleading supporters - because from where I stand, they have spat upon and irreversibly sullied every precept of human dignity, of human respect, of Humanity, which used to be held as unassailable and uncompromising, sacrosaint values.

And it doesn't matter however much they try to justify/legalize/spin their actions - for indeed, nothing justifies indefinite detention, secret tribunals and torture.

Nothing.

Period.

Every single one of these fear- and hate-driven incompetents have pushed us from the moral high ground of justice, freedom and human rights into the bottomless precipice of barbarous and savage injustice.

As I wrote just last week:

We still wallow in our self-centerism and selfishness, while hypocritically congratulating ourselves at being "good guys" who walk on the bestest of moral high grounds.

(...)

Overall, such rank hypocrisy on our part, such repugnant self-delusions about our grandeur, our goodness, our moral high ground, borders on the pathological.

We have a long way to learn the simple truth that holding on to noble principles is worth nothing unless we steadfastly hold them closer to our hearts and minds whenever we are tempted to ignore them - regardless of the reasons, the justifications or the opportunities, to dismiss them.

Claiming the moral high ground means that you stay on said moral high ground - through thick and thin, through rain or shine, through beautiful or stormy weather.

Then again - as long as intellectual sloth, the constant search for instant gratification and overall incompetence will continue to rule supreme in our societies, all that we have lived just in 2008 alone - from political hypocrisy and incompetence to unfettered, unchecked and encouraged corporate greed, from wars of choice to genocide, and everything in between - we will continue to experience time and time again.

And so we'll keep on getting right back where we started - until that fateful day when the house of cards we so proudly call "civilization" comes down crashing hard on our bewildered, dumbfounded, hypocritical and deluded collective heads ...

... despite a well intentioned (but apparently quite misguided) Obama Presidency standing at the helm.

Any questions?

(Cross-posted at TWWL)