1 For a quick survey, see Michael L. Gross, Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassinations, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010.

2 Ibid. , p. 14; For a discussion of the ethics of asymmetric tactics from a consequentialist and deontological point of view, see David Rodin, “Ethics of Asymmetric War”, in Richard Sorabji and David Rodin (eds), The Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different Traditions, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006.

3 M. L. Gross, above note 1, p. 19; D. Rodin, above note 2, pp. 155–156.

4 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds), The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance, Cambridge Studies in International Relations, No. 126, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013.

5 We borrow this term from constructivism, to identify actors that propose normative changes. See Sikkink, Kathryn and Finnemore, Martha, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change”, International Organization, Vol. 52, No.4, 1998 Google Scholar.

6 Kathryn Sikkink, “The United States and Torture: Does the Spiral Model Work?”, in T. Risse, S. C. Ropp and K. Sikkink (eds), above note 4.

7 Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2005, pp. 140 ff.

8 The administration correctly argued that these combatants are not entitled to receive POW status and the full protections of the Third Geneva Convention; see William J. Haynes II, “Enemy Combatants”, Council on Foreign Relations, 12 December 2002, available at: www.cfr.org/international-law/enemy-combatants/p5312 (all internet references were accessed in December 2015). However, it failed to add that they are protected by the Fourth Convention and the relevant provisions of Additional Protocol I. For a detailed legal analysis on this point, see Dörmann, Knut, “The Legal Situation of ‘Unlawful/Unprivileged Combatants’”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 85, No. 849, 2003 Google Scholar.

9 See Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 1465 UNTS 85, 10 December 1984 (entered into force 26 June 1987), Part 1, Art. 1, available at: http://hrweb.org/legal/cat.html.

10 See United States Code Title 18, para. 2340(1) and (2), available at: http://uscode.house.gov/.

11 A definition of “enhanced interrogation techniques” was given by then CIA director George Tenet in “Guidelines on Interrogations Conducted Pursuant to the [redacted]”, which he issued on 28 January 2003, available at: www.aclu.org/files/torturefoia/released/082409/olcremand/2004olc12.pdf. In this document, these are techniques that “do [emphasis added] incorporate significant physical or psychological pressure beyond standard techniques”. These guidelines followed the 2 December 2002 Department of Defense memo summarizing approved forms of interrogation, available at: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.12.02.pdf. This memo talked instead of “counter-resistance techniques”. However, it is the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” that has become more popular in public discourse as an alternative, euphemistic way of talking about torture: this is discussed in more detail later in the article.

12 K. Sikkink, above note 6, p. 156. While there has not been any official disclosure of the number and identity of foreign countries involved in the US government's secret detention and extraordinary rendition programs, an Open Society Justice Initiative report mentions the participation of fifty-four governments in such operations. See Open Society Justice Initiative, “Foreign Government Participation in CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition”, in Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition, Open Society Foundations, New York, 2013, available at: www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/globalizing-torture-20120205.pdf. High-profile court cases have exposed individual countries. See European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), “Secret Detention Sites”, Factsheet, July 2014, available at: www.echr.coe.int/documents/fs_secret_detention_eng.pdf; and ECtHR, Nashiri v. Poland, Case No. 28761/11, Judgment, 24 July 2014. Among the many serious consequences for US society is the role played by psychologists and the conduct of their professional association, the American Psychological Association, in the CIA's torture programme. A comprehensive discussion of this issue can be found in Steven Reisner, “CIA on the Couch: Why There Would Have Been No Torture without Psychologists”, Slate, 12 December 2014.

13 John Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and Robert J. Delahunty, Special Counsel, “Re: Application of Treaties and Laws to al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees”, Memorandum for William J. Haynes II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, Washington, DC, 9 January 2002, available at: www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.01.09.pdf.

14 Jay S. Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, “Re: Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340–2340A”, Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, Washington, DC, 1 August 2002, available at: news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/doj/bybee80102mem.pdf.

15 Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence, “Subject: Counter-Resistance Techniques in the War on Terrorism (S)”, Memorandum for The Commander, US Southern Command, Washington, DC, 16 April 2003, available at: www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/03.04.16.pdf.

16 Apart from a variety of public statement made by legal scholars, we mention two important criticisms of torture: Georgetown professor of philosophy and law David Luban made his arguments against torture in “Liberalism, Torture and the Ticking Bomb”, Virginia Law Review, Vol. 91, No. 6, 2005 Google Scholar; and Phillipe Sands, professor of international law at University College London, discussed the issue in Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008.

17 Two confidential reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), The Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation (published in February 2004) and The Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody (published on February 2007), have been published without the consent of the organization. See “Report by the ICRC on the Coalition Forces' Treatment of Persons held in Iraq”, News Release 04/35, 7 May 2004, available at: www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/5yrl67.htm.

18 To mention a few: the Center for Constitutional Rights has been consistently engaged in representing victims of torture at Guantanamo and various rendition sites as well as prosecuting US officials in the Bush administration in foreign courts (see: https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/issues/torture-war-crimes-militarism); Human Rights Watch sought to investigate detention facilities in Afghanistan as early as 2002 and continues to monitor, report, denounce abuses and lobby for accountability (for the most recent position, see Laura Pitter, Senior National Security Counsel, “Delusion of Justice on CIA Torture”, The Hill, 14 December 2015); and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been particularly effective in its use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to gain access to documents and in its efforts to build coalitions with other human rights groups in order to ask for accountability.

19 Scathing reports by media that used the term “torture” to describe how prisoners were interrogated in detention facilities at several sites – from Afghanistan to Iraq and Cuba, to name the largest – began to appear as early as December 2002. Dana Priest, Barton Gellman and Rajiv Chandrasekaran at the Washington Post, and Tim Golden and Carlotta Gall at the New York Times, investigated the issue. An international “scandal” on the abusive treatment of detainees in the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib exploded when CBS's 60 Minutes aired graphic photos on 28 April 2004, and a few days later the New Yorker published Seymour Hersh's report on the same story. Jane Mayer at the New Yorker and Mark Danner at the New York Review of Books have contributed important investigations. At least two documentaries have investigated detention abuses: the 2007 Academy Award winner Taxi to the Dark Side, by Alex Gibney, and the 2008 film Standard Operating Procedures, by Errol Morris, a recipient of the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.

20 In her excoriating indictment of the Bush administration's policies after 9/11, Elaine Scarry also provides an interesting overview of the perhaps little-known resistance of towns and cities against the Patriot Act. See Elaine Scarry, Rule of Law, Misrule of Men, Boston Review Books, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010.

21 This is not the place to list all the internal dissent, and we will only give a few examples. It is understood that even among CIA interrogators there were critics of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, for example John Kiriakou, the officer who first publicly revealed the practice of waterboarding and was later sentenced for leaking classified information. At the Defense Department, General Counsel of the Navy Alberto Mora led a campaign opposing the use of coercive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay. For these efforts, he was honoured in 2006 with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Now at Harvard, Mora is leading a three-year research programme investigating the foreign policy and military consequences of the United States' use of torture following 9/11. To mention one of the high-ranking US Army officers who refused to abide by the Bush administration policies on interrogation, General Martin Dempsey, current joint chief of staff, prohibited maltreatment of prisoners while commanding the 1st Armored Division in Iraq from 2003 to 2004. See Douglas A. Pryer, The Fight for the High Ground: The U.S. Army and Interrogation during Operation Iraqi Freedom I, May 2003–April 2004, CGSC Foundation Press, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2009, p. 68.

22 See US Supreme Court, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 US 507 (2004); and Boumediene v. Bush, 553 US 723 (2008). The Court held that the US Constitution also guaranteed the right of habeas corpus in Guantanamo. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 US 557 (2006), the Court ruled that the military commissions set up in Guantanamo violated both the US Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and mentioned in this regard Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions.

23 The complete study, Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program, 3 December 2014, is available at: www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-113srpt288/pdf/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf.

24 Ibid. Limiting the following references below to the “Findings” section of an otherwise monumental document, see Finding 11, on the unpreparedness of the CIA to operate its detention and interrogation programme six months before being granted the authority; Finding 12, on the deep flaws of the programme, including the lack of training and experience among interrogators; and Finding 15, on the lack of a comprehensive and accurate account of the number of detainees.

25 Ibid. In Findings 3 and 4, the Senate Committee concluded that interrogation techniques and detention conditions had been much harsher than was represented by the CIA. Knowing it was overstepping the legal boundaries set up by the administration memos, the Agency asked for a “necessity defense” to be included in the memos in order to “avoid prosecution of U.S. officials who tortured to obtain information that saved many lives” (Finding 5, emphasis added).

26 Ibid. According to its own review of the programme, the CIA knew it had not been effective (Finding 1) but still claimed that it had been (Finding 2).

27 For a short assessment of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's study, the executive summary of which alone is 500 pages long, see Mark Danner and Hugh Eakin, “The CIA: The Devastating Indictment”, New York Review of Books, 5 February 2015.

28 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program: Minority Views, 20 June 2014, available at: https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/28132; CIA, Comments on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Former Detention and Interrogation Program, 27 June 2013, available at: www.cia.gov/library/reports/CIAs_June2013_Response_to_the_SSCI_Study_on_the_Former_Detention_and_Interrogation_Program.pdf.

29 Executive Order 13941, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations”, 22 January 2009, available at: www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/EnsuringLawfulInterrogations/.

30 Goldsmith, who served in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, argues that while President Obama was initially critical of Bush counterterrorism policies, he embraced them later because the pushback from the courts, the media and human rights groups had already altered and legitimated them by the time he took office. Jack Goldsmith, Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency after 9/11, W. W. Norton, New York, 2012. According to Sikkink, it was the Obama administration, more sensitive to domestic and international pressure, that took steps to reverse Bush's policy on torture and other policies early on, but it decided not to “pursue accountability for past violations, and some of its initial efforts, for example, to close the detention center at Guantánamo, have failed”. K. Sikkink, above note 6, p. 162.

31 See “Statement by NSC Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan on the U.S. Presentation to the Committee Against Torture”, November 2014, available at: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/12/statement-nsc-spokesperson-bernadette-meehan-us-presentation-committee-a.

32 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Zeid: Landmark U.S. and Brazil Reports Highlight Need to Eradicate Torture on 30th Anniversary of Convention”, 10 December 2014, available at: www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15405&LangID=E-sthash.LjaLVZeE; and United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Feinstein Report: UN Expert Calls for Prosecution of CIA Officers and Other US Government Officials, Geneva, 9 December 2014, available at: www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15397&LangID=E.

33 Mark Danner, “After September 11: Our State of Exception”, New York Review of Books, 13 October 2011, available at: www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/oct/13/after-september-11-our-state-exception/.

34 Blum, Gabriella and Heymann, Philip, “Law and Policy of Targeted Killing”, Harvard National Security Journal, Vol. 1, 27 June 2010, p. 151 Google Scholar.

35 For the latest comprehensive treatment of this, see Mark Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army and a War at the Ends of the Earth, Penguin Books, New York, 2013.

36 Ibid. , pp. 218–219. For President Obama's legacy on rights and counterterrorism, see Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch, “Obama & Counterterror: The Ignored Record”, New York Review of Books, 5 February 2015.

37 According to a March 2013 Gallup Poll, 65% of Americans approve of the use of drones: Gallup, “In U.S. 65% Support Drone Attacks on Terrorists Abroad”, 25 March 2013, available at: www.gallup.com/poll/161474/support-drone-attacks-terrorists-abroad.aspxp. On activism, see Medea Benjamin, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, Verso Books, London, 2013, pp. 165–200. Among the recently published US books on drones, see Brian Glyn Williams, Predators: The CIA's Drone War on al Qaeda, Potomac Books, Washington, DC, 2013; Lloyd C. Gardner, Killing Machine: The American Presidency in the Age of Drone Warfare, The New Press, New York, 2013; Shahzad Bashir and Robert D. Crews (eds), Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012; M. Shane Riza, Killing Without Heart: Limits on Robotic Warfare in an Age of Persistent Conflict, Potomac Books, Washington, DC, 2013; P. W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, Penguin Books, New York, 2009; Sarah Kreps and John Kaag, Drone Warfare, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2014.

38 Editor's note: the normative framework governing the legality of such practices can differ and the consideration as to whether or not the incident in question is norm-breaking, in addition to factual considerations, would heavily depend on whether it is judged from the standpoint of international law or from the perspective of relevant domestic law.

39 S. Kreps and J. Kaag, above note 37, pp. 133–135; Michael L. Gross, “Murder, Self-Defense, or Execution? The Dilemma of Assassination”, in M. L. Gross, above note 1, pp. 100–121.

40 Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and Force in International Relations, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, and London, 2001, pp. 147–179.

41 For Wesley Clark's comments on the force of moral constraint, see ibid., p. 168.

42 On “distant suffering”, see Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999.

43 W. Thomas, above note 40, pp. 171–172.

44 A good discussion of the role of “booted lawyers” can be found in Ariel Colonomos, The Gamble of War: Is It Possible to Justify Preventive War?, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2013, pp. 112–116 (first published as Le pari de la Guerre: Guerre Préventive, Guerre Juste?, Denoël, Paris, 2009).

45 See Doyle, Michael, “The Costs and Consequences of Drone Warfare”, International Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 1, 2013, pp. 1–29 Google Scholar. Minimizing civilian casualties is stated as a priority in the 2006 US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual, as success is gained by protecting the populace, not the military. See also statements by US generals such as that of Stanley McChrystal, following civilians death in Afghanistan due to an airstrike, available at: www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/22/87352/us-concedes-air-strike-killed.html.

46 See the widely publicized June 2011 comment by John Brennan, currently CIA director but then Obama's top adviser on counterterrorism, that there had been no collateral civilian deaths in the drone programme: Scott Shane, “CIA is Disputed on Civilian Toll in Drone Strike”, New York Times, 11 August 2011, available at: www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/world/asia/12drones.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

47 International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, Stanford Law School, and Global Justice Clinic, NYU School of Law, Living under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan, September 2012, available at: http://chrgj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Living-Under-Drones.pdf.

48 Boyle, Michael J., “Is the US Drone War Effective?”, Current History: A Journal of Contemporary World Affairs, Vol. 113, No. 762, 2014 Google Scholar.

49 Kretzmer, David, “Targeted Killing of Suspected Terrorists: Extra-Judicial Executions or Legitimate Means of Defence?”, European Journal of International Law, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available at: www.ejil.org/pdfs/16/2/292.pdf.

50 Major General Charles J. Dunlap Jr., US Air Force, “Lawfare Today: A Perspective”, Yale Journal of International Affairs, Winter 2008, available at: http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5892&context=faculty_scholarship.

51 In April 2014 a federal district court in Washington, DC dismissed the case of Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta (US District Court, District of Columbia, Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta, Civil Action No. 12-1192 (RMC), 2004), in which the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights charged that the 2011 killing of three US citizens by drones in Yemen violated the Constitution's fundamental guarantee of due process of law. In the same month, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a January 2013 district court decision, and held that the government must disclose a memo relating the targeting killing of a US citizen. In March 2013, a federal appeals court reversed a previous ruling and held that the CIA could no longer deny its interest in the government's targeted killing programme, given the numerous public statements made by CIA and administration officials. In the FOIA request on civilian deaths at Al-Majalah, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights requested information about a December 2009 US missile strike in Yemen that killed dozens of civilians, including at least 21 children. The US government has yet to release basic information about the strike. In 2010, a federal court dismissed the challenge to the government's authority to carry out targeted killings of US citizens located far from any armed conflict zone (Al-Aulaqi v. Obama, 727 F. Supp. 2d 1, 52–54 (DDC 2010)).

52 David J. Barron, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Assistant Attorney General, “Re: Applicability of Federal Criminal Laws and the Constitution to Contemplated Lethal Operations Against Shaykh Anwar al-Aulaqi”, Memorandum for The Attorney General, Washington, DC, 16 July 2010, available at: www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/2014-06-23_barron-memorandum.pdf. The release was preceded by a leak to the media of a white paper derived from the memo: NBC News, Department of Justice White Paper: Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa'ida or an Associated Force, available at: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf.

53 Supreme Court of Israel, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) et al. v. The Government of Israel et al., HCJ 769/02, 11 December 2005, available at: www.haguejusticeportal.net/Docs/NLP/Israel/Targetted_Killings_Supreme_Court_13-12-2006.pdf.

54 Ibid. , “D. A Third Category: Unlawful Combatants?”, para. 28.

55 Ibid. , “C. Civilians”, para. 26.

56 A. Colonomos, above note 44.

57 Kasher, Asa and Yadlin, Amos, “Military Ethics of Fighting Terror: An Israeli Perspective”, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2005 Google Scholar; Kasher, Asa and Yadlin, Amos, “Assassination and Preventive Killing”, SAIS Review of International Affairs, Vol. 25', No. 1, 2005 Google Scholar.

58 A.Kasher and A. Yadlin, “Military Ethics of Fighting Terror”, above note 57, p. 28.

59 Ibid. , p. 4.

60 Ibid. , pp. 13–14.

61 Walzer, Michael, “Response”, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2007 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 This formulation is in A. Kasher and A. Yadlin, “Military Ethics of Fighting Terror”, above note 57, p. 18. Writing with Avishai Margalit, Michael Walzer strongly criticizes the elevation of the lives of soldiers above those of enemy civilians in a non-occupied territory, for the ethical implications that it has. See Avishai Margalit and Michael Walzer, “Israel: Civilians and Combatants”, New York Review of Books, 14 May 2009.

63 From the Court opinion, see PCATI, above note 53, “F. The Third Part: ‘For Such Time’”, para. 40.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid.

66 See Nils Melzer, Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law, ICRC, Geneva, 2009, Part I, ICRC Recommendation VII, available at: www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/icrc-002-0990.pdf.

67 See Ben Emmerson, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, Third Annual Report, UN Human Rights Council, 28 February 2014, available at: http://justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Special-Rapporteur-Rapporteur-Emmerson-Drones-2014.pdf.

68 Ibid. , “D. Achieving a Consensus on the Applicable Legal Principles”, para. 71.

69 Joint letter by eleven human rights and civil rights organizations: American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Center for Human Rights & Global Justice and Global Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law), Center for Civilians in Conflict, Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Clinic (Columbia Law School), Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists and Open Society Foundations, Joint Letter to the UN Human Rights Council on Targeted Killings and the Use of Armed Drones, 18 September 2014, available at: www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/18/joint-letter-un-human-rights-council-targeted-killings-and-use-armed-drones.

70 PBS, “Convicted Former CIA Contractor Speaks Out about Prisoner Interrogation”, 20 April 2015, at: www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/convicted-former-cia-contractor-speaks-prisoner-interrogation/.

71 David Bromwich, “Euphemism and American Violence”, New York Review of Books, 3 April 2008, available at: www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/apr/03/euphemism-and-american-violence/?page=1.

72 Bandura, Albert, “Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control”, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 46, No. 1, 1990 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Castano, Emanuele and Giner-Sorolla, Roger, “Not Quite Human: Infrahumanization in Response to Collective Responsibility for Intergroup Killing”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 90, No. 5, 2006 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, available at: www.newschool.edu/uploadedFiles/Faculty/NSSR/Castano_GinerSorolla2006_1.pdf.

73 Roger Giner-Sorolla, Bernhard Leidner and Emanuele Castano, “Dehumanization, Demonization, and Morality Shifting: Paths to Moral Certainty in Extremist Violence”, in Michael A. Hogg and Danielle L. Blaylock (eds), Extremism and the Psychology of Uncertainty, Wiley-Blackwell, London, 2011.

74 Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo, Einaudi, Torino, 1981.

75 E. Castano and R. Giner-Sorolla, above note 72.

76 Leidner, Bernhard, Castano, Emanuele, Zaiser, Erica and Giner-Sorolla, Roger, “Ingroup Glorification, Moral Disengagement, and Justice in the Context of Collective Violence”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 36, No. 8, 2010 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Haidt, Jonathan and Graham, Jesse, “When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Not Recognize”, Social Justice Research, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2007, p. 98 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Harm morals demand that people do not harm others, and fairness commands people to treat others fairly and justly. In-group/loyalty morals reflect a tendency to see something as moral to the extent that it benefits one's in-group. The moral foundation of authority consists of values related to subordination, such as duty, obedience and conformity to in-group norms, while that of purity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination, concerns itself with defending purity from possible contaminants – e.g., maintaining the purity of the “Aryan race”. Clearly, depending on which of these moral foundations is applied to decide upon the morality of a specific behaviour, the behaviour can appear as moral or immoral.

78 “Accessibility” is a psychological term that refers to the extent to which a certain concept is available for use in a person's mind, at the forefront of their perception and cognitive processes. The more accessible a concept is, the more likely it is that it will affect our interpretation of the word around us, and thus our decision-making and behaviour.

79 Leidner, Bernhard and Castano, Emanuele, “Morality Shifting in the Context of Intergroup Violence”, European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2012 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.846/abstract.

80 This is particularly true among “high glorifiers” – that is, those individuals who tend to see their group, in this case the United States, in superior, aggrandizing terms.

81 Multi-National Force – Iraq Commander's Counterinsurgency Guidance, 15 July 2008, p. 1, available at: www.rs.nato.int/images/stories/File/COMISAF/15%20July%202008%20MNFI%20COIN%20Guidance.pdf.

82 Ruti Teitel, Humanity's Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011.

83 Beth A. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009.

84 R. Teitel, above note 82, p. 133.

85 R. Giner-Sorolla, B. Leidner and E. Castano, above note 73.