This NYT report on the Italian case in which a number of CIA agents have been indicted for kidnapping a cleric suspected of involvement in terrorism has one item of particular relevance to Australia.

In addition to their objections to the American rendition policy [sending suspects overseas for torture], European counterterrorism officials also partly blame a lack of access to terrorism suspects and information held by the United States for their failure to convict a number of their own high-profile terrorism suspects.

The acquittal on most serious charges of Abu Bashir, spiritual leader of the Indonesian terrorists responsible for the Bali bombing was due primarily to the fact that the operational chief Hambali was not a witness, since the US Administration which holds him would not hand him over, even temporarily.

The Hambali case completely undermines for the official rationale for the US policy of rendition. In theory, the claim is that terrorists suspects, wanted in their own countries, are transferred there. But here’s a case of a leading Indonesian terrorist, wanted by Indonesia for crimes committed in Indonesia, and the US Administration won’t hand him over.

The demands of justice in relation to the Australian victims of the Bali bombing were similarly ignored.

It seems likely that Bashir will be released soon, and the operation of the rendition policy is largely to blame for this travesty of justice.

A piece by Noam Scheiber in The New Republic , prompted me to get to work on a piece I’ve been meaning to write for ages, not so much because I have new and original ideas, but because I’d like to clarify my thoughts, with the help of discussion. The piece is subscription only, but the relevant quote is a point that’s been made before

The problem with [criticism of Bush’s handling of the Iraq war] is that there’s a difference between expecting the administration to fight a war competently and expecting it to fight an entirely different kind of war than the one you signed onto.

My starting point, then, is the observation that, in the leadup to the Iraq war there were numerous different cases for war, some publicly avowed at different times, and some not. These included WMDs, the War on Terror, humanitarian intervention, democracy promotion, the strategic importance of Iraq’s oil and simple vendetta. It might seem that the more reasons for war, the stronger the case, but the problem is that different cases for war imply different strategies for the war, and especially for the postwar period.

The ostensible basis for the war, WMDs, implied the need to act fast, since Saddam might use his weapons at any time, and implied a simple success condition: once the WMDs and the supporting infrastructure were found and destroyed, the US could withdraw and leave the Iraqis (minus Saddam) to sort own their own problems. Roughly speaking, this was the war we were sold, and this was the war we got, at least until it turned it there were no WMDs, and an early exit wasn’t really feasible.

Although the Iraq war seems to involve this problem to a high degree, it arises all the time. For example, there are a lot of different reasons for supporting reform of the House of Lords in the UK (the old structure was anachronistic, inefficient, anti-democratic, biased against Labour and so on), but they imply different kinds of reform.

Concern with democracy suggests an elected House, more representative than the Commons, where the first-past-the-post system turns minorities into majorities. By contrast, the main motive for the reforms around Blair seemed to be that hereditary legislators were bad for Britain’s image and occasionally obstructed Labour PMs – hence the preference for a weak upper chamber with appointed members.
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