Nested Ethical Reversals 1. Prohibition: Practicing torture by United States Citizens is illegal, and is considered to be immoral and below the dignity of a person who is a free and dignified citizen of the US of A.
2. Permission: the US must show to those bastardly Arabs who it is really that calls the shots; so a select bunch of sadistical US citizens have been recruited to perpetually torture a number of Arab detainees in some island location outside the United States' own lands.
3. Prohibition: a US president made a promise to end this unconscionable sadistical practice by dignified US citizens.
4. Permission: the US president did not follow through with this promise, for some to me unknown reason. — god must be atheist
This one is more along the lines of what I've been considering, in that I posed it as a tension in the (human generated) system for and against human action.
I interpret (1) in that any action of torture by person x, a representative of the US, is illegal in its jurisdiction.
(2) then draws an exception for acts committed outside of the jurisdiction covered by non-military application of law (e.g. Guantanamo Bay). When a military officers commits an otherwise illegal offense here, it is permissible.
(3) then draws a subset via a temporal line of distinction. Acts in 2 are reflective of acts prior to T-sub-0. Acts in 3 are those after T-sub-0.
If more substance can be drawn around 4, perhaps a suit or some other situation (an imminent threat of nuclear attack where we have the guy who knows and Jack Bauer has to apply torture to get the info out of him) would work. In absence of that, it's simply a retraction of 3. Broken promises are a reflection of how the tension works in us, more than how it works in the system.
You could make it 5 by wrapping it an outer shell of actions committable by the government against lawlessness defined by a principle of permission (e.g. sovereignty).
Thanks.
[Edit: I wonder if you could make it to 7 consider the general principles of the limitation on government power]
[Edit2: On further reflection, could 4, along with 3, be posed as typical of idealism during campaigns that gives rise to pragmatism when in office, political reality, domestic realpolitik or some other common social rule of elections and politicians? 3 is never actually realized, so I may just be spitballing]