Less "Extraordinary" Than It Should Be…

We've written before here on the case of Maher Arar and the appalling practice of "extraordinary rendition"—handing folks suspected of involvement in terror groups over to goverments unencumbered by such procedural niceties as effective bans on torturing people in your custody. Jane Mayer's piece in the current New Yorker is an excellent lengthy treatment. For the Cliffs Notes version, see Bob Herbert's New York Times column today.

Comments

[gaius marius]

what is there left to say? to save civilization, they will destroy it.

[rob]

Call me heartless and totally unsympathetic to the aims of Amnesty International...

But can someone explain to me why I, as a US citizen, should care what some other country's government does to its citizens?

Actually, it's not that I don't sympathize with those who have suffered under brutal governments, but I find it hard to see what's wrong with deporting someone to their home country, especially if they were apparently in my country to do harm to me and mine.

Tho I'm against the idea of my gov't executing it's own citizens for any reason, I'm not sure that I'm opposed to simply executing saboteurs/terrorists.

[pincerboy]

>But can someone explain to me why I, as a US
>citizen, should care what some other country's >government does to its citizens?

This is a Canadian citizen, seized in the US by US authorities and forcibly transferred to a third country to avoid inconvenient US conventions restricting confinement and interrogation.

The referenced articles rather clearly point out that this is an extremely stupid thing to do for a number of reasons.

First, it's not something that decent people want done to anyone, much less US citizens. Second, it accomplishes very little. The tortured person falsely confesses to anything. Third, it reduces respect for the US, tarnishes our image. Finally, it's plain wrong, something that should not be done.

[rob]

pincerboy,
You could be right that we shipped him off to the wrong country, but that's a bit ambiguous in the article.

It says in the article that the guy's family immigrated to Canada, but strangely omits the country that they immigrated from. That suggests to me that perhaps he wasn't a Canadian citizen, but the fact that the Canadian gov't interceded on his behalf leads me to believe that he WAS a Canadian citizen.

If the US is extraditing people to countries that they aren't citizens of, that does seem wrong. But as long as we're sending them home - even if their gov't treats them badly - it doesn't seem wrong to me.

"Second, it accomplishes very little. The tortured person falsely confesses to anything."

While I agree that torture is wrong, I wonder whether the second claim is true. If you don't know anything, you might invent things. But if you know something real, it seems likely to be one of the primary or secondary pieces of information you'd give up (depending on how tough the tortured person is).

"Finally, it's plain wrong, something that should not be done."
Then again... Put me in a room with a killer who has my family in a room without enough oxygen to last the hour, "a pair of pliers and a blowtorch" and the temptation to cross the line might be too much for me. Perhaps I'm a bit too callous about torture... but MAYBE in extreme situations the ends sometimes do justify the means.

[Ball of Confusion]

rob,

It doesn't seem wrong to you to be purposefully outsourcing torture? Do you think we turn these people over not knowing what's going to happen to them, indeed not COUNTING on it? If torture's wrong, then why is it OK for us to cause it as long as we're not the ones actually doing the brutalizing in person? Heck, why not save the jet fuel and do it here? Same results, less cost. And do you really trust the accountability-free CIA to be making those "extreme situations" judgments for you? Pretty sure they're going to think the moral dilemma through long and hard?

[Ray]

The article says right at the beginning that he was a Canadian citizen. What exactly is "ambiguous" here?

[Seamus]

"But as long as we're sending them home - even if their gov't treats them badly - it doesn't seem wrong to me."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Solzhenitsyn, but the INS has decided to return you to the Soviet Union."

[rob]

Seamus: My argument would be more accurately represented as this: "Mr. Solzhenitsyn, we've decide to return you to the Soviet Union for 1) being in our country illegally and 2) we've got a pretty good idea that you're aiding and abetting the sort of nasty people who keep trying to commit acts of terrorism against our citizens." But that would be kind of silly - as silly as the light you put my statement in - because Solzhenitsyn wasn't trying to help terrorists kill US citizens.

Ball Of Confusion: Like I said, I don't think torture is a good thing. But what happens after we turn people over - even if we're counting on it, isn't our responsibility. Unless you're advocating invading every country in the world so that we can make everyone a US citizen.

Ray: Ambiguous at first read. My mistake. If everything in the article is correct, then we obviously severely screwed a Canadian citizen who was originally born in Syria by sending him to Syria. Someone should at least get fired over this, but I know from personal experience that travelling to other countries involves risk, including that you can get diverted to a country you don't want to go to. Again, what happens in some other country is not within the US's jurisdiction unless we've invaded them. Still, if all of the article is true and correct, an official whose salary we paid REALLY screwed this guy. Thank God he survived to tell the tale.

[Tony]

After reading the article, I found that we have the word of a Syrian-born Canadian citizen that is suing our government for large amounts of money for a crime that only he says happened. We further read statements from anonymous sources or FORMER members of various organizations that cannot possible know what is currently happening in their FORMER organizations. Further, the article in the NEW YORKER was written by Jane Mayer. If you would take a look at her other works, you will see that everything she's written has taken an anti-American stance and very few of her "facts" are verified or supported. Just thought I'd put in my two cents.

[rob]

Interesting point, Tony.

I still think that if the story is true, then it's heinous and it needs to get corrected.

But these days, I guess it's best to go the X-Files route: "Trust No One."