U.S. to continue extraordinary rendition to continue: why?

Aerothorn on 25/8/2009 at 05:31

So, TTLGers, maybe you can help me figure out the decision to (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/us/politics/25rendition.html?_r=1&ref=global-home) continue extraordinary renditions. Now, I get that this program is theoretically cleaner, no torture, etc. But what's the point? I thought that the point of shipping prisoners off to third-world countries was that you could interrogate them and treat them in ways that would be clearly illegal in the USA. If they aren't going to do that anymore, why not just hold them here? It doesn't make much practical sense for me, and I can't imagine this will score Obama any points on the political level. Thoughts?

Morte on 25/8/2009 at 05:51

Quote Posted by Aerothorn

If they aren't going to do that anymore, why not just hold them here?

That's the question, isn't it? I can't see any point other than circumventing the regulations for detainee treatment. So basically, they're still going to torture them.

Starrfall on 25/8/2009 at 15:24

If it's got to do with whiny stupid ass states not wanting to take them, I wish they'd just try a way to force it on those states. It's not like our prisons don't already hold ACTUAL terrorists.

However at the same time I am not prepared to completely scorn progress that comes in baby steps for the sake of a dream of a perfect world.

Kolya on 25/8/2009 at 15:51

Quotes from your law exam?

Morte on 25/8/2009 at 17:15

Quote Posted by Starrfall

Well, clearly McCain was horribly unfit for the job, and the less said about Palin being vice president the better.

However, I'm not so sure how much progress Obama actually represents here.

Bush was intolerable. What's more, he was *obviously* intolerable, and he lacked the ability to sell anyone but his lunatic base on anything he did.

Obama on the other hand is likeable, reasonable and well spoken. And so far seems completely unwilling to do anything that upsets the normal state of affairs. The Bush administration committed fucking war crimes, and there's a hell of a lot of people that seem to be implicated in it. It's a giant black turd in in the heart of Washington, and you can't do anything about it without upsetting and threatening a whole lot of people. But he's charismatic enough that his look-forward-not-backward bullshit might sprinkle enough powdered sugar on it to sell it to enough people. And then you have a precedent.

Take this recent bit of news about Holder only prosecuting people who exceeded the mandates in the memos.

"We're only going to do something about the murders. Beating people to death was obviously going too far. Threatening to rape and murder people's families perhaps wasn't too cool either. But repeatedly almost drowning someone? Someone was told to write a bullshit legal memo authorizing that! How could people have known it was illegal?

No, we're only going to charge the bad war crimes."

It's almost worse than doing nothing at all, because now you're giving what was previously intolerable a patina of legitimacy.

I could be wrong, of course. Maybe he's just slowly moving into position for a sucker-punch. I'm not holding my breath though.

demagogue on 25/8/2009 at 18:03

Quote Posted by Aerothorn

It doesn't make much practical sense for me, and I can't imagine this will score Obama any points on the political level. Thoughts?

Well, let's just start with the political logic first, then think about ethics.

I don't know any inside story, but the intuitive political logic might be like this. It starts with the US and Obama both being most politically vulnerable over Guantanamo and the secret CIA camps; so the first priority is to shut those down. Then rendition gets packaged into that because (1) if we can't keep the detainees in US camps, and it's practically very hard and very (politically) risky to absorb them into the US criminal system (i.e., takes a long time), rendition is one of the few ways we can actually get those camps closed in a reasonable time; and you can't shut down the camps until they're dealt with; and then (2) it's impossible not to notice the political resistence Obama has had to shutting those camps down; retaining rendition is a way to get the political capital to actually push it through ... it's throwing a bone and giving an out for his opposition to be much more flexible. The reason why he can get away with it is that, if rendition continues Americans will (unfortuantely!) be as apathetic as ever; but if Guantanamo stays open people will be up in arms both in the US and abroad. He would have had a much easier time stopping rendition if people hadn't been screaming for blood so loudly to get GTMO shut down ASAP.

Then he talks about beefing up "diplomatic assurances" and having more oversight to make sure prisoners aren't sent to people with records of torture... but that strikes me more as just part of the packaging for selling it domestically, since diplomatic assurances has a poor track record, and there's only so much oversight can do over the behavior of foreign sovereigns.

The ethics question will have to wait for another post, but I've always been worried about rendition and trying to think of ways to ease the pressure on the gov't to resort to that, and how to get the political capital to reduce it.

Starrfall on 25/8/2009 at 18:17

My complaint is more that Obama is unquestionably better on this stuff and yet he is treated worse from BOTH sides either because he isn't filling the world with unicorns and rainbows or because he's trying to.

And I think the trend of saying YOU DIDN'T DO ENOUGH YOU SUUUUCK rather than "that's good but we can and should do better" actually discourages progress (because what is the incentive to take any further steps if the only consequence is getting shit on?) and as such I strongly disagree with it.

To use a somewhat goofy analogy it's like training a dog by beating it when it does something wrong instead of rewarding it when it does something right.

It also smacks of the old "republicans and democrats are the same" thing and we all know how well THAT line of thinking has served us in the past. Poorly. Very poorly.

(I don't mean you guys personally, it was more of an excuse to complain about the current political discourse in general)

edit: and in all fairness I think the same sort of thing happened to Bush a few times, like on immigration, and it was aggravating then too. And now the result on immigration is that we have the same shitty status quo only it's getting worse.

heywood on 25/8/2009 at 18:47

You have to pick your battles.

Closing Gitmo is proving to be a lot harder than Obama thought. If he tries to force the Gitmo detainees into places where they're not wanted, he's going to face a political backlash that will weaken his party and make it harder to get other priorities done. That's why we've been paying off other countries to take in some of the detainees. Continuing the renditions for now will prevent this problem from growing bigger.

Basically, he could sacrifice his agenda for the sake of the prisoners or pass off the prisoners for the sake of his agenda. Right now, with health care reform and cap & trade bills stalled and public opinion weakening, fighting for the rights of terrorism suspects is not a good use of political capital.

Ostriig on 25/8/2009 at 19:10

Quote Posted by Starrfall

To use a somewhat goofy analogy it's like training a dog by beating it when it does something wrong instead of rewarding it when it does something right.

Not to argue with your general point, but your analogy isn't so much goofy as it is simply poor - best way to train a dog is to do both. Same with children, actually, though probably not in the same manner.

As for the point itself, is it that unreasonable that some people, particularly those who may have voted him with this issue in mind (among many others, naturally), are upset over this? I don't know, it wasn't a subject to interest me, but that NYT article quotes Obama, prior to his election, on how this particular policy should end. That he may be doing well in other areas, or that there may even be solid (from a pragmatic standpoint, at least) reasons, that's one thing, but I think you may be coming down a little bit to harsh on what could well be a mass of disillusioned supporters. I mean, TTLG holds itself in high regard, collectively, and yet you can easily dig up GenGaming for how "Ken Levine LIED to us!!1".

Starrfall on 25/8/2009 at 19:38

Oh come on I'm not being that harsh.

I'm not saying it's not reasonable to be upset, I'm saying a reaction born of a failure to see the bigger picture can be self-defeating in the long run.