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December 05, 2005

Unfortunate Rendition

A large part of any success the west is going to have in the war against Islamofascism is going to be the quality of our intelligence. Any war fought entirely in a reactive mode is likely to end with us losing. Sooner or later the enemy can penetrate any defense, no matter how good it is. It is therefore vital that we do what we can to hold the initiative and take the fight to the enemy. That means doing things like our takedown of Hamza Rabia in Pakistan this weekend, eliminating someone who seeks to strike at us and do us harm. These missions serve two highly valuable purposes: they allow us to at least forestall future attacks on both American forces and American soil, and they serve as encouragement for others of like mind.

Despite their rhetoric of annihilation and the glories of death, the leadership of al Qaeda and other Islamofascist groups seem to have little stomach for actually partaking of such glories. This is hardly surprising. Their agenda involves remaking the world to suit their desires, and as such they naturally want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They are, of course, willing to risk their lives to accomplish their goals, but the leadership clearly has little desire to simply throw their lives away. As long as they believe they have a reasonable hope of survival, they will continue to work to further their ends. Some will work against us regardless of how dangerous it may be, but as with all such things, there is a curve of dedication. The greater the odds of dying in their line of work, the fewer people are likely to go into that line of business. It is therefore in our best interests to kill as many people who are in that line of work as possible.

Doing that requires us to be aggressive in striking at terrorists where we find them, because we want them to realize that they are vulnerable at any time and in any place. Tracking them down requires good intelligence, which in turn requires an aggressive combination of human intelligence and interrogation of those Islamofascists we capture. All that means we need to give our intelligence agencies a certain degree of leeway in pursuing our enemies. Marquis of Queensbury rules may be appropriate for a scrap in the park, but when it comes to fighting people who would kill every American on the planet if they had that capability, we've got to be willing to bend the rules a little.

Bending the rules, however, doesn't mean ignoring them, and this report of a rendition of a man who turned out to be completely innocent is the kind of news that undermines our ability to fight the war effectively by demonstrating that our intelligence agencies lack the maturity to hold the powers they require. (This really comes as little surprise; my sympathies for libertarianism are predicated in large part on my understanding that people given power will tend to abuse that power. Still, when it comes to fighting wars, you'd like to believe people could be a little more serious. I think that's known as the triumph of hope over experience.) Case in point, this paragraph from the Post's article explaining the rationale for the rendition:

Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit "believed he was someone else," one former CIA official said. "She didn't really know. She just had a hunch."

We have two options with rendition at this point. Either we end the practice or we make a failed rendition extraordinarily painful for the people who ordered it. I'm sure I'll hear lots of protests about ending the policy, because we don't know what renditions have succeeded in stopping. That's true, and George Tenet observed in 2000 that "renditions have shattered terrorist cells and networks, thwarted terrorist plans, and in some cases even prevented attacks from occurring." On the other hand, Tenet also said the case for Iraq's WMDs was a slam-dunk, so I'm not sure how much weight to place on his claim regarding the efficacy of renditions. Conversely, it's probably true that having the ability to grab foreign nationals about whom we have reasonable evidence they're involved with Islamofascist activities. So we'll give Tenet the benefit of the doubt here. But that doesn't excuse renditions that result in innocent people going away for months.

If we're going to continue this process, then there need to be some significant safeguards against its misuse to avoid situations like this from arising again. The people who agree to hold the man without evidence should lose their jobs, at a minimum, and its arguable they should face charges for wrongful imprisonment. There has to be some kind of punishment involved in an improper rendition that will render its use limited only to truly appropriate circumstances. Defenders of the process will doubtless argue that I'm looking to hurt our own defenders, people who are only trying to do the best they can to stop terrorist threats. And I'm sure that's correct, as far as it goes. I don't think the agents who made this error did so out of malice. I'm sure they're great Americans who honestly thought their target was somehow involved with terrorism and that leaving him out on the street might put lives at risk. But as the old saying goes, he who is good with a hammer tends to see the world as a nail. Because the CIA has been given the power of rendition without any countervailing threat of consequences for its use, it is only natural that they would overuse it. It's a simple equation: if it turns out a terrorist attack succeeds because of someone the CIA chose not to render, the CIA gets crushed in the media and public opinion and people may even lose their jobs (or get a Presidential Medal of Freedom). If an innocent person is put away for months, the odds are pretty good that the consequences will be minor, certainly not enough to derail anyone's career. On which side are people likely to err, especially if they're honestly worried about protecting the lives of their fellow citizens? Only by making the consequences for error truly severe can we guard against abuse of this tool.

I sympathize with the agents of the CIA. Their job is extraordinarily difficult. Trying to fight an enemy like Islamofascism is a thankless task marked by a lot of frustration and the constant threat of catastrophic failure like the 9/11 attacks. But my sympathy cannot blind me to their errors. Faced with a seemingly impossible task, it would be surprising if the CIA didn't abuse its powers in order to serve what its agents see as the greater good. That is why it is incumbent on the Congress and the people to hold the CIA to account for its abuses and to put in place safeguards that allow the agency to do its job while still protecting the society the CIA is tasked to preserve.