Rendition, Extraordinary Rendition, and Leftist Hypocrisy

It's a sure sign of political hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy: The more feverishly the left works to discredit and spin the news that the Obama administration will continue the Bush-era policy of terrorist renditions, the more close real world events have shown their messiah to be a normal politician who campaigned on a bill of falsehoods and ethereal platitudes.

Scott Horton's going on the offensive, for example, alleging that Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times got punked. Apparently, there are "renditions," then there are "extraordinary renditions," and never the twain shall meet:

There are two fundamental distinctions between the programs. The extraordinary renditions program involved the operation of long-term detention facilities either by the CIA or by a cooperating host government together with the CIA, in which prisoners were held outside of the criminal justice system and otherwise unaccountable under law for extended periods of time. A central feature of this program was rendition to torture, namely that the prisoner was turned over to cooperating foreign governments with the full understanding that those governments would apply techniques that even the Bush Administration considers to be torture. This practice is a felony under current U.S. law, but was made a centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism policy.

The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system. It did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture. There are legal and policy issues with the renditions program, but they are not in the same league as those surrounding extraordinary rendition. Moreover, Obama committed to shut down the extraordinary renditions program, and continuously made clear that this did not apply to the renditions program.

This is pure bull of course. Not even Hilzoy's painstaking attempt to deflate the issue can hide the key point: Barack Obama will preserve a central anti-terrorism tool that served as the key antiwar cudgel to demonize the Bush administration as the reincarnation of the Third Reich.

It does not matter what it's called: The ideological left - on principle - considered torture AND enemy rendition as one and the same. For the past seven years the nihilists have excoriated the "evil BushCo" regime for its state-sponsored terror-regime, but now that the policy shoe's on the other foot, it's time for the left to parse and twist itself out of hypocritical jam. Andrew Sullilvan's the worst. In a post last year, two days after Obama was elected, he cites Alex Massie, who is quoted saying:

The Iraq War was ... unpopular across much of the world, but its Guantanamo and rendition and secret CIA prisons around the world that have done far more damage to the United States' reputation.

To the left, it's obviously all of a piece, which is why the hordes of the nihilist fever swamps, as noted, are working overtime to square the new administration's policy with the Democratic campaign's outlandish promises from all last year.

As QandO shows (citing Progressive Justice), Human Rights Watch, the leading progressive NGO for international human rights, called for a blanket abolition of the Bush administration's policy of enemy rendtions. The group called on the U.S. government to "repudiate the use of rendition to torture as a counterterrorism tactic and permanently discontinue the CIA's rendition program ..." But according to Greg Miller's report at the Times, Human Rights Watch now says under "limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions.

The problem is that those "limited circumstances" are in essence simple assurances by the Obama administration that the U.S. will not render suspected terrorists abroad if the possibility for coercive interrogation exists. It's a classic double standard. CIA Director Michael Hayden guaranteed in 2007 that the U.S. was not rendering suspected terrorists to foreign governments for torture. He said renditions were being conducted "lawfully" and "responsibly," which is now what leftists say the Obama administration will do with its continuation of the previous government's policy.

Andrew Sullivan, who has gone through fits of hysteria over the Bush adminstration's "torture" policies, pulls a play out of Hayden's book when he says:

What some on the far right seem not to grasp is that opposition to torture is not about being soft on terrorism. It is about being effective against terrorism - ensuring that intelligence is not filled with torture-generated garbage, that we retain the moral high-ground in a long war against theocratic violence, and that we can better identify, capture, kill or bring to justice those who threaten our way of life. Rendition and temporary detention are tools in that effort - tools that now need to be as closely monitored and assessed as they were once recklessly abused.

These people are not only hypocritically bankrupt, but their comprehensive program of leftist relativism is designed to destroy this country. Now that Barack Obama's in power the left can do no wrong. Bush hatred has been transformed to Obamessianism. Those on the "far right" will be demonized and ostracized for their previous policies, facts and logic be damned. Meanwhile, previously reviled policies will be continued.

It's a shameful situation we're in with the Democrats, but to be expected after the most dishonest media-enabled Democratic presidential campaign in history.