Torture is bad. That shouldn’t be controversial

Glenn Greenwald reported yesterday that an appeals court has accepted the Obama Justice Department’s argument that alleged torture victim Binyan Mohamed’s lawsuit against a government contractor cannot proceed because it would violate “state secrets.”
This is both bad and shameful.
Bad because torture is bad. It’s illegal under U.S. law, military law and international treaties that we’ve signed (and treaties are the law of the land—they aren’t optional, despite government claims to the contrary). It’s also immoral; as one judge put it, the torturer “is the enemy of all mankind.”
I’ve read plenty of arguments that in the classic ticking-bomb situation—there’s an imminent attack and the only way to prevent it is to torture your prisoner—torture is the only rational act. But that ignores that we’ve never been in that situation during the war on terror; the Bush administration claimed torture provided a lot of information, but even they never claimed it stopped an imminent terrorist strike.
And outside that situation, it’s unacceptable. Even within that situation I no longer accept it because there’s no way it will be restricted to the ticking bomb situation. It’ll be used exactly the way it’s been used in the war on terror: Because there’s going to be a terrorist attack eventually, and the person in custody might know something and torturing him might provide answers and the higher-ups are demanding answers—so why not?
It’s easy to understand in some circumstances. When Bush authorized torturing prisoners right after 9/11 (as he’s admitted—although he doesn’t consider it torture), the government was convinced another attack was on the way. So we tortured prisoners. Only there was no attack in the works, which means we tortured people for information they couldn’t possibly have given us. There’s no way that’s justifiable.
And if it were, then it applies to every other nation in the world: Iran, China, Russia, they’re all justified in using “harsh interrogation” if we are. Even if it’s on our own people. Suppose Iran decides to use extraordinary rendition, take a few spec-ops people out of Iraq and find out what our government is planning against them. Would it be that different from what we do?
(Note: I do not want this to happen. There is no poetic justice in torture, no sense that anyone deserves it just because their side did it first. But I’ve yet to hear a good explanation on why our torture is justified and ethical and our enemy’s is not).
Obama decried Bush’s torture policies and executive secrecy when he was running for office; now he’s embraced an even more stringest secrecy doctrine. And while he hasn’t signed off on torture (that I’m aware of) he’s refused to investigate it (and authorized the assassination without trial of American citizens tied to terrorism, which I also find unacceptable).
Why cover up for the last administration? Some possibilities:
•He really does want to look bipartisan and knows the Washington press will shriek about “witch hunts” and giving in to “the base” if he doesn’t (the press loves bipartisanship as long as Democrats are in power).
•He doesn’t want to ruffle too many feathers. Washington’s a small company town and he’s looking out for fellow citizens.
•He doesn’t want to give up any of the extravagant presidential powers Bush claimed. Few presidents want to see the office’s authority shrink, at least while they occupy it.
•He’s the president. Having the ACLU and other left-wing groups tell him how to run things is a challenge to his authority, even if they’re right.
Or maybe it’s something else altogether.
Obama should be ashamed of himself for refusing to let the case even be heard. But I doubt he is.