Obama Didn’t Ban Torture

[The Straight Story]

David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s chief political advisors, has echoed this argument. During a speech on Monday before the Religious Action Center, Axelrod reiterated the substance of the Obama’s statement, saying that the president’s response should “not become…a forum for re-litigating these issues apropos to the last administration and some of the policy makers there,” and that “there would be a different case” to be made if Obama had not “banned” torture (referring to President Obama’s Executive Order from January 22, in which he contravened the Bush Administration’s legal justifications for torture).

In fact, the President has not “banned” torture. Torture was illegal before President Bush came to office, through our incorporation of the Geneva Convention into domestic law. (This is to say nothing of centuries of American custom and tradition holding that torture is unconscionable and morally abhorrent.) Members of the Bush administration did not somehow “unban” torture; they simply chose to ignore the law. Torture has not become any more or less legal since Obama took office. Rather, he has chosen not to pretend it is legal, and his indication that he is open to prosecutions or investigations against the architects of the Bush administration’s torture policies is a sign that all is not lost for those who want the law to be followed. But however he proceeds, the idea that he has “banned” it, and we can thus moves on, ignores both the severity of the crimes committed by those who tortured, and the grotesque abuses perpetrated upon terrorism detainees—both those who are innocent and those who are not.



http://www.campusprogress.org/opinions/3942/obama-didnt-ban-torture