Genocide, torture, and terrorism : ranking international crimes and justifying humanitarian intervention / Thomas W. Simon

We are understandably reluctant to "rank" moral atrocities. What is worse, genocide or terrorism? But our refusal has consequences. In this book, Thomas W. Simon argues that politicians use our discomfort to manipulate our sense of injustice to serve their interests. He argues that while genocides such as the Holocaust and Rwanda are universally recognized as the worst crimes imaginable, The War on Terror has distorted our sense of atrocity by minimizing torture and exaggerating terrorism. Universal prohibitions of genocide and torture revive natural law theory. Simon advocates for an international criminal code with clearly defined and ranked injustices that would rehabilitate humanitarian intervention and replace an impotent duty to protect with a committed duty to act.