Obama and rendition

The LA Times kicked up a mini storm with the Sunday piece entitled, 'Obama preserves renditions…' According to the Times, Obama is set to continue Bush’s widely abhorred rendition program wherein foreign nationals are kidnapped and then taken to a torture-friendly country and subsequently tortured for information. As others have pointed out (here, for example), the Times piece fails to distinguish between extraordinary rendition and the type of rendition program the Obama executive order makes possible. This is no small difference, since the former is known to involve torture and other extralegal interrogation techniques while the latter, given the other executive orders Obama has penned, should not—at least for now. We need the qualification since Obama left open the possibility for using techniques that go beyond the Army Field Manual. This will depend upon the findings of the task force he called for to investigate the appropriateness of the manual’s methods. We eagerly await the results of this investigation.

The shortcomings of the Times piece needed to be pointed out, but we should be concerned that Obama's policies are getting a pass owing to the necessarily favorable comparisons to Bush's.

For example, we have this nugget quoted in the Times piece, “’Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place’ for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.” Now, what is a director of Human Rights Watch doing trying to justify kidnapping? It boggles the mind that someone committed to human rights could say that it could be morally justified.

Can we think of a greater affront to liberty than government sanctioned kidnapping? The Times goes on to quote Malinowski as urging Obama to set up a system to ensure that rendered prisoners be shuffled off to a court of justice where they would receive a public hearing. To be sure, this proposal offers an outcome better than being kidnapped and tortured. But with regard to the right to liberty, it is no less of an offense.

Even Glenn Greenwald, who I admire for his characteristic moral clarity, instead of condemning the practice of rendition outright, waxes philosophical by offering a thought experiment designed to tax the minds of those who would condemn the practice.

I believe Bush did the nation at least one service by clarifying what we should be against. As Nietzsche said, “We all need our antipodes.” We shouldn’t now lose our moral compass just because someone we trust and admire is in charge of the country. Perhaps we should be even more vigilant.