Abstract
America’s “war on terror” and its related policies on human rights have been subjects of intense global controversy since 9/11.1 The conventional wisdom is that US policy changed radically after the attacks, significantly damaging international human rights. To many observers, these changes reflect a characteristic American exceptionalism, a pattern of arrogance, hypocrisy, and double standards that typifies US attitudes and behavior on human rights (see Ignatieff 2005a). A disturbingly broad range of examples — regularized torture, the unsigning of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the suspension of the Geneva Conventions, detention without review in Guantanamo, “preemption” — supports this view.
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© 2011 Michael Goodhart
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Goodhart, M. (2011). Reverting to Form: American Exceptionalism and International Human Rights. In: Goodhart, M., Mihr, A. (eds) Human Rights in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230307407_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230307407_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-32797-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-30740-7
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