1 The questioner, Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, asked ‘Today Senator Patrick Leahy announced that he wants to set up a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush administration. He said that before you turn the page, you have to read the page first. Do you agree with such a proposal, and are you willing to rule out right here and now any prosecution of Bush administration officials?’ In what would become an almost clichéd response by his administration, Obama parried on the question by claiming he was ‘generally speaking […] more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards’. Available at: {http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/PressConferencebythePresident/}.

2 24 April 2009, {http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Briefing-by-White-House-Press-Secretary-Robert-Gibbs-4–24–09/}.

3 One set of 2002–2004 Office of Legal counsel memos released in April of 2004 by the Obama administration revealed that insects, waterboarding and sleep deprivation were used during interrogations conducted in 2002. See ‘Barack Obama releases Bush administration torture memos’, {http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/16/torture-memos-bush-administration}. Another set of memos were released 24 August 2009. A summary of the interrogation techniques revealed in those memos can be found in David Cole's article, ‘The Torture Memos: the case against the lawyers’, New York review of books, {http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23114}.

4 Ed Hornick, ‘Obama reverses course on alleged prison photos’, {http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/12/prisoner.photos/index.html}.

5 Ibid.

6 In many ways, I'm going in the opposite direction of Hedley Bull. If readers recall, at the end of his second chapter of The Anarchical Society, Bull posited ‘three weaknesses’ in the idea that states can not form a society because of anarchy (Columbia University Press, 1977, chap. 2). I am arguing that even in the domestic realm, the chances for accountability when it comes to abhorrent foreign policies is difficult to even initiate, let alone adjudicate or enforce.

7 Morgenthau, Hans, Politics Among Nations, seventh edition (New York: McGraw Hill, 2006 [1948])Google Scholar , chap. 16.

8 Lang, Anthony F., Punishment, Justice and International Relations (New York: Palgrave, 2008), p. 48Google Scholar .

9 Nardin, Terry.‘Introduction’, in Nardin, and Williams, Melissa (eds), Humanitarian Intervention. (New YorkUniversity Press, 2006)Google Scholar . See also, Lang, Anthony, ‘Humanitarian Intervention’, in Hayden, Patrick, (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Ethics in International Relations (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 133–150Google Scholar .

10 Bellamy, Alex, Just Wars from Cicero to Iraq (London: Polity, 2006), pp. 122–123Google Scholar .

11 Heinze, Eric A., ‘Private Military Companies, Just War and Humanitarian Intervention’, in Heinze, and Steele, (eds), Ethics (2009), pp. 123–150, 133Google Scholar .

12 Booth, Ken and Wheeler, Nicholas, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Trust and Cooperation (New York: Palgrave, 2008), p. 200Google Scholar , fn. 1.

13 Hollis, Martin and Smith, Steve, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (London: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 175Google Scholar .

14 Brown, Chris, International Political Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)Google Scholar .

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17 For example, note the scepticism inherent in the jus ad bellumcriterion of ‘right intention’. One way to read this felicitous phrase is that there are good intentions and bad intentions – as a normative judgment. The other reading emerges from a particular scepticism – how do we ever know what the true intentions are?

18 Wheeler, Nicholas, Saving Strangers (London: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar .

19 Frost, Mervyn, Ethics in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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24 This moves us in the direction of double-effect, which explicitly incorporates intentions whereby the loss of civilians or ‘the innocent’ is justified if the attackers’ intentions were ‘good’. On double-effect as formulated by Aquinas, Vitoria, and Grotius, see Bellamy, Alex, Just Wars: from Cicero to Iraq (Cambrdige: Polity, 2006)Google Scholar .

25 The July 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah is a good example where global and national agents used this ‘double-move’. See recent studies by Lowenheim, Oded and Heimann, Gadi, ‘Revenge in International Politics’, Security Studies, 17:4 (2008), pp. 685–724CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Steele, Brent J. and Amoureux, Jacque L., ‘“Justice is Conscience”: Hizbollah, Israel and the perversity of Just war’, in Heinze, Eric and Steele, Brent J. (eds), Ethics, Authority and War: non-state actors and the Just War tradition (New York: Palgrave, 2009), pp. 177–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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27 Robert Jerrvis, Hypotheses on Perception and Misperception.

28 A third issue, as it relates to the conduct of war, arises out of some of Singer, P. W.'s observations in an age where we are Wired for War (New York: Penguin Press, 2009)Google Scholar . The machines may take on a life of their own and as he discusses in that book, humans actually trust the machines more than their own judgment. Whose intentions do we go after here?

29 Morgenthau, , Scientific Man v. Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), pp. 183–184Google Scholar .

30 Ibid., p. 185.

31 Ibid., pp. 185–6.

32 Lang, Anthony F., ‘Morgenthau, Agency, and Aristotle’, in Williams, Michael C. (ed.), Realism Reconsidered (London: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 28Google Scholar , emphasis added.

33 Grant, Ruth and Keohane, Robert‘Accountability and Abuses of Power in world politics’, American Political Science Review, 99:1 (February 2005), pp. 29–43, 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

34 Grant and Keohane, ‘Accountability’, pp. 31, 33, emphases added.

35 Ibid., p. 31.

36 O'Donnell, Guillermo, ‘Horizontal accountability in new democracies’, Journal of Democracy, 9:3 (1998), pp. 112–126, 113CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

37 Transcript of Bush Interview (16 January 2005), {http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12570–2005Jan15}.

38 Steele, Brent J., ‘Ideals that were never really in our possession: Torture, Honor and US Identity’, International Relations, 22:2 (2008), pp. 243–261, 244CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

39 ‘The Religious dimensions of the torture debate’, Pew (29 April 2009), {http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=156}.

40 Pew, ‘Religious dimensions’. Yet even more recently, the support for torture, or at least indefinite detention, extends to even wider sections of the American electorate, with almost 2–1 majorities opposed to the closing of the key detention centre of Guantánamo Bay. Several polls were taken in the spring of 2009 when the Obama administration announced that it was planning to close the detention centre. The results of those surveys can be viewed at: {http://pollingreport.com/terror.htm}.

41 See summary in Martin, Lisa, ‘Neoliberalism’, in Dunne, Timothy, Kurki, Milja, and Smith, Steve (eds), International Relations Theories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 109–126Google Scholar .

42 Grant and Keohane, ‘Accountability’, p. 31.

43 Ibid., p. 32.

44 ‘Cheney defends War on Terror's morality’, Washington Times (18 December 2009), {http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/18/cheney-defends-morality-of-war-on-terror/?page=2}.

45 Grant and Keohane, ‘Accountability’, p. 31. The irony of course is that if agents with the most ‘superior expertise and judgment’ on the issue of interrogations had been consulted by the Bush administration, they would have informed them of the dubious utility (at best) of the information provided by torture. Take for example the account that Ron Suskind (2006), p. 115 relates regarding the treatment of Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydah is a terrorist suspect and detainee who was waterboarded some 83 times by interrogators, beaten, and told of ‘his impending death’. Under such conditions, Zubaydah told his CIA interrogators that shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems and even nuclear plants were targets of Al-Qaeda plots. Suskind writes: ‘Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target […] Where would they start sniffing? No idea. Start with […] everywhere’, The One-Percent Doctrine (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006) pp. 115–6, emphasis in original. Information on Zubaydah's waterboarding in Stephen Bradbury, Memorandum for John A. Rizzo, Senior Deputy Counsel, CIA, re: application of US Obligations under article 16 of the Convention Against Torture to Certain techniques that may be used in the interrogation. Office of Legal Counsel (May 2005).

46 ‘Just War Theory and Enhanced Interrogation’. I might also note, in further evidence of the embracing of torture by some in the US polity, that at the time I last accessed this article at: {townhall.com}, 25 September 2010, there was an advertisement for ‘conservative t-shirts’, with a picture of a woman modelling one shirt which stated, ‘I'd rather be waterboarding.’: {http://townhall.com/columnists/GaryBauer/2009/08/28/just_war_theory_and_enhanced_interrogation__how_christians_can_think_about_the_unthinkable}.

47 Barbé, , Domingos, , ‘The spiritual basis of nonviolence’, in McManus, P. and Schlabach, G. (eds), Relentless Persistence (Philadelphia: New Society, 1991), pp. 266–281Google Scholar . It might be noted here that the first Christians rejected self-defence, and actually first prioritised the use of force not to save themselves but rather only act ‘in the defense of others’ because ‘to kill an attacker in self-defense implied that the individual in question preferred earthly life to a spiritual relationship with God’.Bellamy, , Just Wars, p. 24Google Scholar .

48 ‘Polls show support for torture among Southern evangelicals’, {http://pewforum.org/news/rss.php?NewsID=16465}, and ‘The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate’, {http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=156}.

49 Steele, ‘Ideals’, pp. 252–3.

50 Some scholars, in addition to Wendt, are quite up-front about this. Lang states that ‘states are clearly persons that can act in their system’, Lang, Anthony F., ‘Crime and Punishment: Holding States accountable’, Ethics and International Affairs, 21:2 (2007), pp. 239–257, 243CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

51 Lang, ‘Crime and Punishment’, p. 239.

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58 Lebow, Richard Ned, The Tragic Vision of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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60 Such a distinction by Niebuhr shows how inaccurate Jean Bethke Elshtain was by invoking Niebuhr in her Just War against Terror volume. As Zehfuss, Maja notes, Elshtain invokes Niebuhr by reference to floods in canyons. ‘A tragedy, then, is marked by a lack of intentionality and will, possibly even of human agency, therefore removing it, significantly for Elshtain, from the realm of punishment.’‘The Tragedy of Violent Justice: The Danger of Elshtain's Just War against Terror’, International Relations, 21:4 (2007), pp. 493–501, 493CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Yet such a situation for Niebuhr was not tragic, but pathetic: a situation which ‘elicits pity’, Irony, p. xxiii.

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63 Following Zizek, Debrix describes such a moment as ‘exist[ing] and matter[ing] as a haunting mark, a scarring piece of reality that denotes something that refuses to hide the gaping wound left by the initially terrifying sight’, Tabloid Terror, p. 138. Zizek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology (New York: Verso, 1989)Google Scholar .

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68 This might also explicate the rather ambiguous frustration levelled by Americans across the political spectrum during 9/11 anniversaries regarding the delays in providing a replacement tower at the site.

69 The picture was posted to several blogs during this time, including Andrew Sullivan's, where it can be accessed at time of writing (December 2010): {http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/01/face-of-the--18.html}.

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76 Ban Ki-Moon, ‘Preventing genocide is a collective responsibility’, Message on the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide (7 April 2009).

77 Federal Bureau of Investigation, ‘Prosecutive Report’ (2007), p. 6, available at: {http://foia.fbi.gov/till/till.pdf}.

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80 And indeed, in his research on the topic Rubin found that one juror actually tried to get a hung jury – voting twice for conviction before eventually giving up, Rubin, ‘Ghosts’.

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85 The video, which requires an age verification due to graphic content, can be viewed at: {http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?&next_url=/watch%3Fv%3DOjQxq5N--Kc}.

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90 One very recent example of this comes from Michigan, where an anti-abortion activist was shot and killed while holding a sign which showed the image of an aborted foetus, see: {http://www.detnews.com/article/20090914/METRO/909140325/Obama-deplores-killing-of-activist}.

91 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing me to this particular limitation/possibility.

92 Anderson, Craig, Gentile, D. A., and Buckley, K. E., Violent video game effects on children and adolescents: theory, research and public policy (London: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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96 Thus why I have chosen the phrase ‘naughts’ to refer to the now-ended decade. The term has been making the rounds in popular culture and thus my use of it is somewhat colloquially mimetic. I use it as it has been invoked, as in the decade that was ‘all for naught’.

97 Rorty, Richard, Achieving our country (Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 168Google Scholar . Brasset, James, ‘A pragmatic approach to the Tobin Tax campaign: the politics of sentimental education’, European Journal of International Relations, 15 (2009), pp. 447–476, 456CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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99 Rorty titles ‘sentimental education’, an education that ‘concentrate our energies on manipulating sentiments […] That […] sufficiently acquaints people of different kinds with one another so that they are less tempted to think of those different from themselves as only quasi-human.’ {http://www.usm.maine.edu/bcj/issues/three/rorty.html}.

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