Circular Jerkality As A Concept In International Law
Former constitutional lawyer, New York Times bestselling author and self-adulator Glenn Greenwald interviews the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture about U.S. treaty obligations regarding the non-armed conflict that for purposes of discussion we’ll call “the fight against terrorism.” Rather, that’s what they’re calling it. For purposes of discussion.
The discussion is a waste of time, not least because the UN torture guy has no authority to do anything but bloviate, and Greenwald, who bears a strange resemblance to Gumby, is uninterested in doing anything but offering up Bush-bashing slow pitches. But I wasted my time so you don’t have to waste yours. A couple of noteworthy points. UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak, who was an Austrian professor before he became a worthless international busybody on our dime, does not believe the Global War on Terrorism actually exists.
I do not consider this so-called “war on terror” as an international armed conflict. This was the paradigm of President Bush in order to justify certain practices under the assumption that human rights law would not apply, but of course human rights law applies.
This is interesting, in light of his closing remark, one of several in which he refers to “fighting terrorism” or “the fight against terrorism,” as something that “has to be fought.”
But on the other hand, the fight against terrorism, even global terrorism of the type of al-Qaeda, has to be fought, in a democracy in particular, within the rule of law, within international human rights obligations, and that includes also, if things went wrong, to take the right measures of reparations, and that includes also criminal justice.
Sounds like the UN jerk’s “armed conflict” poo-pooing just circled back on itself. It’s all semantic anyway, given that all this guy is is a rapporteur, special or not. But if words are supposed to mean anything, a more substantive matter is that the closing remark includes the interview’s sole utterance of “al Qaeda.” All references to war crimes, crimes against humanity and people being tortured in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo are hypotheticals in which he talks about how American soldiers, CIA agents and contractors might be prosecuted and what their responsibilities would have been in various unspecified situations. Nowak also explains his job is to go around the world establishing rapport with governments regarding torture. Nowak doesn’t get into it, but presumeably some of most heinous known examples of torture in our time, involving power drills, blowtorches and dull scimitars,* that have been practiced on American soldiers and civilians of various nationalities, are of no interest to him because they were practiced by non-state actors who must be fought under human rights laws but are not part of any conflict. Those practices are someone else’s problem. His problem is ensuring that none of the people who practice those things get dunked, or that they be compelled to listen to the Barney song repeatedly, whether it prevents the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents or not. Nor does Greenwald show any interest in how the non-state actors might be held accountable by Nowak or anyone else, especially given the lack of a legitimate conflict. Which is what gives this conversation a circular jerkality** that is helpful to understanding the larger picture … that Nowak represents a body that is largely interested in pleasuring itself at the expense, quite literally, of the United States.
* Not to mention the violation of the human rights of tens of thousands of people by means of box cutters, explosive vests, car bombs and airliners as part of extreme Islam’s non-conflict against Iraqis, Afghans, Americans, assorted Europeans, etc.
** Some might argue that “reach-arounditude” is more appropriate, seeing as there are only two of them, but we’re looking at their interaction as a metaphor for the larger phenomenon.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:36 pm on Sunday, April 26, 2009
8 Responses to “Circular Jerkality As A Concept In International Law”
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April 26th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Remind me again why this great nation of ours sends money to, and remains a member of, such a worthless Ricco-imitating piece of crap as the UN?
I whole-heartedly endorse the idea of moving the UN physically to Tehran, since it’s politics and ethics moved there some time ago.,
April 26th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Normally I wouldn’t waste my eyes on anything Greenwald publishes, but I went to check out the circular jerkality just to see if I could make sense of what Special Rapporteur (uh-what?) Nowak was trying to say. I still didn’t, a lot of it was just the usual UN boilerplate bushwa, but something he did say struck me as odd:
the territoriality principle, the nationality principle, but even the universal jurisdiction principle, because one wants to make sure that perpetrators of justice have no safe haven wherever they are.
Buh? ‘Perpetrators of justice’? Is this his way of saying that the UN frowns on the concept of justice? Of course, we already know they frown on the concept of self-defense, so it only makes sense.
April 26th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Waterboarding a couple of terrorists is a travesty; murdering tens of thousands of civilians is a statistic.
April 26th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
rapporteur
n : a recorder appointed by a committee to prepare reports of
the meetings
In other words, he talks to others and then feeds their words to some UN committee.
Greewald
n : a sniveling coward more interested in elevating his opinion of himself
In other words, a nothing speaking to another nothing about nothing.
April 26th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
[...] good friend and one of the best conservative members of the blogosphere, Jules Crittenden, analyzes Glenn Greenwald’s interview with “the UN’s torture guy.” Go read [...]
April 26th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
“I do not consider this so-called “war on terror” as an international armed conflict.”–some worthless ratbag U.N. bureaucrat
And, I don’t consider waterboarding totrture.
And, I’m right and you’re wrong.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Thank you for doing a job this American won’t do.
I suspect Liberal Democrats consider terrorism as roughly equivalent to a tax.
It may be annoying, but someone’s got to pay for it. A little terror here or there is less expensive than eliminating it by force, which competes with plans and programs for their domestic utopia.
April 30th, 2009 at 2:18 am
Jules, One of your arguments here is “others tortured, so does he why pursue Americans?” Being in pursuit of evil people does not justify being evil (it does change the rules of engagement, but some things remain evil)
U.S. forces are pursuing Iraqi and al-Quaeda torturers and terrorists, which is good. The U.S. should also reject and actively oppose torture by Americans.
Ronald Reagan on the “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”:
“It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.”
Of course Nowak works for the U.N. Human Rights Council, a farce recently chaired by Libya, so you can’t expect him to criticise anyone except Israel and the West.