Reply #11: Not as a routine matter

[gratuitous]

If the U.S. is going to withdraw from a treaty, it has to go through the same legislative, executive and judicial rigamarole that amending the constitution requires. They don't have the votes or the political capital to pull the U.S. out of the Geneva Conventions, and they know it. What they're hoping is that the American people don't know it.

It's the same sort of political ledgerdemain that goes into the rhetoric about "making the tax cuts permanent." The tax code will always be fiddled with; there's no way anything about it is "permanent" in any real sense of the word. But it makes the GOP sound fiscally responsible to mouth those words, and the media are largely content to play along. I don't know why.