After a spectacle featuring senior Obama administration officials prostrating themselves before the United Nations “Committee Against Torture,” the controversial UN body released a scathing report last week accusing U.S. authorities of widespread violations of what it calls “international law.” Among other concerns, the global panel cited everything from “police brutality” by state and local officials domestically to the actions of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies abroad. Other criticism directed at the United States focused on immigration policies, deportations, prison conditions, Guantanamo Bay, the terror war, and more.
In response to the UN committee’s findings, the panel called on federal officials to alter U.S. laws to comply with its demands — including abolishing the death penalty, reforming deportation procedures, and more. The report also called on the U.S. government to pass new federal laws defining torture in accordance with the UN Convention. In the same section, it lashed out at the U.S. government’s “interpretation” of the global “torture” regime, saying that “under international law, reservations that are contrary to the object and purpose of a treaty are impermissible.”
In other words, the dictator-dominated UN, rather than the U.S. Constitution, purports to be the arbiter of what is or is not “permissible.”
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The UN bureaucrats on the committee — one comes from Morocco, another from Communist China, and one more from Communist Nepal — also called on U.S. authorities to amend “laws and regulations” to be in compliance with the global agreement. In addition, the UN committee said it “encourages” the U.S. government to ratify other global agreements purporting to bind the American people and their elected officials to globalist demands rather than the U.S. Constitution. Finally, the document is packed with calls for the federal government to go beyond its constitutional limitations in commandeering state and local governments.
All across the report, the UN also offered instructions to the Obama administration on everything from indefinite detention without charges or trial to releasing information on post-9/11 atrocities allegedly perpetrated by various agencies within the U.S. government. Among other demands, the UN experts called on the Obama administration to “cease the use of indefinite detention without charge or trial” — something that constitutes a serious crime against the U.S. Constitution, regardless of what the UN and its oftentimes brutal member governments claim regarding their planetary torture regime.
Moreover, the White House should release information on numerous instances of CIA “human rights violations, including torture, ill-treatment and enforced disappearance of persons suspected of involvement in terrorism-related crimes.” In addition to the CIA, the U.S. military and its policies — ranging from the treatment of detainees to its policy manuals — came under severe criticism in the document. Of course, virtually all of the UN’s complaints should be considered moot, because the U.S. Constitution, which established the federal government in the first place and granted it a few limited powers, already prohibits such schemes.
Separately, in an open letter to Obama, a UN group of self-styled “human rights experts” with bombastic titles also called on the administration to release a U.S. Senate report on CIA “interrogation” practices. “As a nation that has publicly affirmed its belief that respect for truth advances respect for the rule of law, and as a nation that frequently calls for transparency and accountability in other countries, the United States must rise to meet the standards it has set both for itself and for others,” the UN “experts” declared.
According to the UN “human-rights” operatives, victims of torture and human-rights defenders around the world would be “emboldened” if the Obama administration — widely described as the most secrecy-obsessed, least transparent in U.S. history — would support transparency. “On the contrary, if you yield to the CIA’s demands for continued secrecy on this issue, those resisting accountability will surely misuse this decision to bolster their own agenda in their countries,” the open letter continued.
As The New American has reported on multiple occasions, in addition to the draconian secrecy, the Obama administration has also improperly worked to protect George W. Bush administration officials from prosecution for the myriad alleged crimes they perpetrated under color of law. “The Committee expresses concern over the ongoing failure to fully investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment of suspects held in U.S. custody abroad, evidenced by the limited number of criminal prosecutions and convictions,” the UN torture committee said in its report about the United States, the first such “periodic review” since 2006.
In light of the overseas torture (such as water boarding) carried out by U.S. officials, the UN called for “prompt, impartial and effective investigations” to “ensure that alleged perpetrators and accomplices are duly prosecuted, including persons in positions of command and those who provided legal cover to torture.” If found guilty of the charges, the criminals in government should be punished with serious penalties “commensurate with the grave nature of their acts,” the UN said. Victims of U.S. government torture should also be compensated and rehabilitated, the panel said.
On law enforcement, which is a power generally reserved for state and local government by the U.S. Constitution, the UN also expressed a wide array of concerns. “The Committee is concerned about numerous reports of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officials, in particular against persons belonging to certain racial and ethnic groups, immigrants and LGBTI individuals, racial profiling by police and immigration offices and growing militarization of policing activities,” the report said, citing Chicago’s police department as particularly alarming.
Despite the UN’s lack of credibility and its well-deserved reputation as the “dictators club,” there are, of course, many valid concerns highlighted in the UN report. In fact, The New American magazine has spotlighted many of the same issues: torture by U.S. officials, federally funded militarization of local police forces, impunity for serious crimes committed by government functionaries, the lack of transparency, indefinite detention without charges or trial, and much more. Other areas of concern — the Obama administration’s outlandish claim that it can extra-judicially murder anyone in the world without so much as criminal charges — were not addressed in the UN report.
Throughout the document, though, the UN panel reveals a profound misunderstanding of the U.S. Constitution, federalism, and the proper role of the federal government — if not outright disdain for those principles. For example, despite the fact that the Founding Fathers and even the Supreme Court have acknowledged the obvious — treaties cannot trump the Constitution or grant new powers to the federal government — the UN insists over and over again that Washington, D.C., must force sovereign state governments to obey its demands on everything from juvenile justice to the death penalty. In reality, the federal government has no such power, regardless of whether it signs on to a UN “convention.”
The Obama administration, however, continues to play along with the UN’s demands and usurpations of power, pretending they are legitimate. “We are reviewing the Committee’s concluding observations,” said Obama National Security Council spokesman Ned Price in response to the report. “In our presentation before the Committee earlier this month, U.S. officials reaffirmed our deep and abiding commitment to the obligations enshrined in the Convention Against Torture, to which we are a party, and engaged in a robust dialogue with the Committee. We will continue to work with our partners toward the achievement of the Convention’s ultimate objective: a world without torture.”
However, if ending U.S. government crimes, torture, and lawlessness is the goal, the UN, if anything, is worse than counterproductive. UN troops are perpetrating atrocities worldwide, and many of the UN’s member regimes are run by mass-murderers who torture with impunity — including many that are a party to the UN torture convention. Virtually every one of the UN’s legitimate concerns, meanwhile, is already a violation of the U.S. Constitution, federal law, and state law. Americans have absolutely no need for a UN “torture” regime — especially one that includes such paragons of human rights as the communist barbarians enslaving China and Cuba — even if the global body behind the scheme was not composed of brutal and in many cases mass-murdering regimes.
Indeed, UN “human rights” bureaucrats released another “human rights” report earlier this year that revealed far more about the global body’s true view. Among other assaults on the United States, the UN “human rights” report attacked America’s constitutional system of self-government and even Americans’ unalienable, God-given rights — including the rights to self-defense, as well as the right to keep and bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment. The UN’s entire notion of “human rights,” in fact, is completely at odds with genuine individual rights endowed on every person by their Creator, as the Declaration of Independence puts it.
In the UN “universal declaration of human rights,” for instance, the autocrat-dominated global body absurdly claims “rights” come from government, can be limited by “law,” and may in “no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” In other words, under the UN’s vision, people have no rights — only revocable privileges bestowed on them by their rulers. The United States has no business participating in such an outfit, much less funding and legitimizing the fraud, and should promptly withdraw from the UN and defund all of its tentacles.
The U.S. Constitution already specifically prohibits cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment. So the proper remedy for the real and imagined problems identified by the UN is not UN demands and surrendering U.S. independence to a global regime dominated by despots, but forcing U.S. politicians and officials to uphold the oath of office they swore with their hand on the Bible. Rather than ending torture and impunity by American officials because a UN committee claimed “international law” requires it, U.S. officials must do so because the oath they swore to the Constitution and their humanity demand it.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected]
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