by hilzoy
FEINSTEIN: Will the CIA continue the practice of extraordinary rendition by which the government will transfer a detainee to either a foreign government or a black site for the purpose of long-term detention and interrogation, as opposed to for law enforcement purposes?
PANETTA: No we will not because under the executive order signed by the president, that kind of extraordinary rendition, where we send someone for the purposes of torture or for actions by another country that violate our human values — that has been forbidden by the executive order.
“Rendition, detention, and interrogation practices and policies of the Intelligence Community should fully comply with the U.S. Constitution, U.S. statutes, and the policy set by the President. On January 22, 2009, the President issued an executive order directing all U.S. agencies to use Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions as the baseline for the treatment and interrogation of persons detained in any armed conflict. The executive order also states that agencies must notify the International Committee of the Red Cross of such detainees and provide the Red Cross with access to them. The intelligence community must follow the executive order. With respect to renditions, the intelligence community must comply with U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, including Article 3 prohibiting the rendition of a person to a country where it is more likely than not he will be subjected to torture.”
The mis-spelling of Lane was intentional, right?
So if I call it to your attention, will you fix it?
Moe asked me today if there was anything he could do for me. Maybe I should suggest that he patch it up with hilzoy;)
“Moe Llane”. Heh.
I may be frustrated over the stimulus, though I need to remember not to forget the forest for the trees. But this is why I voted for Obama, and believed in him.
David: I like Moe. Always have. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to make up. He may feel differently.
The misspelling is like my description of Michael Ledeen as ‘her’. It was prompted by his adding an asterisk saying that it had been pointed out to him that he got the name wrong, but not correcting it.
“It was prompted by his adding an asterisk saying that it had been pointed out to him that he got the name wrong, but not correcting it.”
I saw that — that’s why I asked if you’d correct his name if it were pointed out to you.
So, good-natured ribbing, then. I was seeing something more petty. I apologize for that. I’ve had a terrible day and shouldn’t have posted.
It was prompted by his adding an asterisk saying that it had been pointed out to him that he got the name wrong, but not correcting it.
Actually, if you look at the copy of that post on his personal site, it looks like the second “l” is struck through. It’s really easy to miss, though. (And I haven’t checked the version over at Bizarro World.)
that kind of extraordinary rendition
The other kind of extraordinary rendition, however, will still be used by the US in its “war on terror”. And it’s still illegal under international law.
novakant,
I’m wondering if you could respond to my observations at the end of the changes thread. To try and tie them to your above observation (which I don’t totally disagree with), the construct of international law is based on a notion of a Westphalian nation-state that fails to capture the mobility and potential multiple memberships of people. Thus, you are making an argument that as long as it is territorially bound, might does make right.
lj, Firstly on the question you posed in the other thread, article 3 of the UN Convention against Torture is very clear on this:
1. No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
Secondly, even though, to my surprise, I seem to be in the minority here, it is not the case that I am proposing some extreme or naive viewpoint when I insist on adherence to international law, cf. e.g. Amnesty International at my first link:
Amnesty International believes that these practices are illegal because they bypass any judicial or administrative process such as extradition. Under international law, it is illegal to transfer people from one country to another without any kind of judicial or administrative process.
Cf. also the various treaties quoted at my second link which should it clear that extraordinary rendition violates human rights and several fundamental principles of international law.
As for your “might makes right” argument: yes, international law doesn’t prohibit people from breaking it, but then neither do our domestic laws. The fact that there are thousands of people committing all sorts of crimes every day and thus imposing their will on innocent people, doesn’t justify the police or the government breaking the law while pursuing them. We hold these laws dear and adhere to them in the face of those who choose to ignore them because they define us as moral human beings. Similarly, international law isn’t something to be easily discarded whenever it doesn’t happen to suit our immediate goals. That way madness lies.
LMAO Hilzoy. You are suggesting someone else needs to write a correction on the topic of renditions????
A week ago you went nuts on the LA Times for suggesting that despite his orders, Obama may have left the door open for renditions.
Less than a week later, his CIA nominee, in his confirmation hearings no less, now states that renditions will continue.
“I will seek the same kind of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely”
This being the legal loophole required in order to continue the practice, which has solicited the same results under the previous 2 administrations. Tortured and tortured to death detainees.
And this apparently is your followup post to the one where you said you would “wait and see” on the topic of renditions.
You waited. You saw him say renditions would continue. Then you ignored that admission yourself and suggested the people who predicted this should instead be the ones to make amends.
What a thoroughly disingenuous and intellectually dishonest person you are.
Sorry, novakant, I missed your reply. As I said, I don’t completely disagree with you, but there are a few pragmatic problems with arguing from the UN convention on torture. First of all, as you are well aware, the US has not yet ratified the convention.
Second, you don’t address the situation that arose in the Balkans, and will probably continue to arise in places like Rwanda and other places experiencing civil war, especially as asymmetrical warfare becomes the norm.
Furthermore, your argument that international law somehow guarantees minimum human rights for all people is an overly optimistic reading of the current state of affairs. In this sense, you are like the person arguing for total non-violence. I can see how philosophically such an argument can be made, but I do not see how it can be practically applied.
As I noted, Arar’s extraordinary rendition was simply the process of him attempting to enter the US, stopped and, because he held a Syrian passport, he was sent there. I choose this example to underline that a process that we can all (I hope) agree on was wrong emerges naturally from the notion that he held a Syrian passport. While Amnesty argues that it is illegal to transfer people from one country to another without any kind of judicial or administrative process, I fail to see how it is illegal to return someone to a country they hold a passport for, especially in the absence of ratifying the treaty. I agree that it is immoral and the failure to truly consider the consequences of returning someone is horrifying. But I think you are confusing what is moral with what is legal. International law can not be considered a complete system, and people are still subject to the laws of the nation-state to which they are a member.
Again, I’d emphasize that I agree with you morally, but legally, the devil is in the details. International law makes no provision for someone to claim statelessness, statelessness occurs only with either the absence of a state or with the decision of a state to repudiate the citizenship of a person. And with the existence of both failed states and places like northern Cyprus and the coast of Somalia that exist in a no man’s land between actual states and figments of the imagination, I find it very difficult to imagine renouncing the ability to take specific actions. I would like to be optimistic and believe that we would not need any action and therefore, we should renounce it as an option. But given the patchwork quality of international law and the inability to accept the jurisdiction of an international court, I don’t see how that ability can be realistically renounced.
your argument that international law somehow guarantees minimum human rights for all people is an overly optimistic reading of the current state of affairs.
I’m not saying that. Just as our domestic laws don’t guarantee that people won’t be robbed, raped or murdered, international law does not guarantee that human rights won’t be violated.
As for the Maher Arar case, this was simply a failure of applying the above quoted article 3 of the Convention against Torture, which the US has signed and ratified, constituting the supreme law of the land according yo the supremacy clause. Additionally the 5th amendment was violated, as there was no due process. Adherence to these laws is not optional.
lj: there are a few pragmatic problems with arguing from the UN convention on torture. First of all, … the US has not yet ratified the convention.
This is not correct, and I’m very surprised to find an ObWi regular making such an assertion, given the number of times the Convention has been discussed in threads on torture and renditions.
The U.S. Senate ratified the Convention Against Torture in October 1994, with some reservations; it entered into force on November 10, 1994. The U.S. Congress passed several implementing statutes over the next few years, which are well explained in a 1999 U.S. report to the UN — summarized in plain English Q&A here, which includes excerpts of that report.
LJ, maybe you are you thinking of the International Criminal Court?
Just as our domestic laws don’t guarantee that people won’t be robbed, raped or murdered, international law does not guarantee that human rights won’t be violated.
But in all the former cases, there is a process and an authority I can go to demand some sort of justice. While the Convention on Torture does set up a way for individuals to file complaints, thru the Committee on Torture, it is not like 911. I mean, it meets 2 times a year. The fact that there is no group that can tell the US that it misread the Convention is the glaring hole, I think.
Also, you and Nell are both right that the US has ratified the Convention but it has not accepted the Optional Protocol. This is why the Bush admin argued that waterboarding wasn’t torture, by giving a legalistic reading of what torture entails. When there is no authority that one can go to, claims that there is a system don’t really carry much weight.
Japonicus,
Just to jump in with a related comment, I agree with you when you say, “The fact that there is no group that can tell the US that it misread the Convention is the glaring hole,” but I would call it a glaring hole.
The other biggest problem I see is that there is no EPW definition in the Geneva Conventions that accurately describes the people the US actually fights in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. I make that argument in this lengthy post.
I was an interrogator in Iraq in 2004-5 and I can tell you that among military commanders and intelligence officers, the main question was always, “do they meet the criteria for EPW status or not?” The answer, if you read the GC, can reasonably be argued to be, “no.” That’s the loophole Bush drove a truck through, and what he’ll claim to any future Grand Jury.
If the prisoners in the GWOT had been declared EPWs from the beginning, a lot of the abuses would not have happened because there would have been no legal cover for the officer who authorized rough treatment. As long as the GC doesn’t have a category to describe a bomb-maker who freelances, the door will be open to torture.
screwed up the html. Here’s my post.
Hi Decline and Fall,
unfortunately, your link doesn’t work. I think this is what you are referring to, though. At any rate, lots of interesting stuff at your site.
lj, again, the supremacy clause establishes treaties ratified by US as the “supreme law of the land”. Thus international law becomes US law and that includes the UN convention against torture. There have already been cases being brought against the US on that basis. And the new AG will have to investigate torture authorized by the Bush administration, if there is any respect for the rule of law.
But the question is, at least as I see it, rendition and not torture. I thought that we have already stipulated that we would set torture aside.
I believe I understand where you are coming from, but it seems like it is ‘here is my moral conclusion, so therefore, the laws reflect that’ I agree that the laws _should_ reflect it, but, because almost all rights can be assumed (and again, I hope this will change in the future) to flow from the state and its monopoly of force, there is a chicken and egg conundrum here.
Obviously, the whole question of what citizenship is and how it plays out is something that I’ve probably spent too much time thinking about, but in saying that rendition still has a place, I’m not defending all examples of rendition, just as a person who argues that the police have a right to pursue someone across state lines or enter a residence without a warrant in certain situations does not mean that I support all examples of that.
lj, you brought up torture in your last post, that’s why I responded explaining how torture is against US law. My whole point was all along that banning torture is not enough and that extraordinary rendition without torture is also illegal. I have provided sources to substantiate that claim and there are several cases brought against the US based on e.g. violations of due process. Here’s a link to someone arguing along the lines of my position (the guy from the center for constitutional rights).
I’m not sure why you say I brought up torture. I took the example of Arar because I wanted to make clear that I’m not defending rendition, I’m showing how it flows from the fact that most people are citizens of some country. In fact, in the link you give, Ratner says this
It really means, to me, going into a country, violating the sovereignty of that country, oftentimes having to use force and violence to get that person, putting that person into some way of getting them out—and we’ve had experience with that in a Mexican case, Alvarez-Machain. They put a guy in a coffin to get him out of Mexico into the United States. So that’s rendition.
Thus, he is arguing that sovereignty is violated. So, by extension, a nation’s sovereignty is what protects a person. But, if the person is not under the authority of that country or the country has sovereignty in name only, what precisely is being violated? You might say ‘the person’s individual rights’. Yet those rights are still in a state of flux. I recognize that you are taking the line Ratner is, but this started out with you being horrified that hilzoy is taking a line that matches Horton. As long as there are sovereign borders, and situations short of war (and I would suggest that these situations will increase rather than decrease in the future), citing the sanctity of borders merely avoids dealing with the problem
In fact, those liberals who opposed invading Iraq were primarily opposed not because they felt that Bin Laden had some sort of sovereign protection but because it was unfair to the people of Afghanistan to pay a price for the leadership of their country sheltering him. This is not to suggest that this is a decision that is made correct by a majority, but I think it is the majority opinion because it is felt that one’s country can such take the steps. The day has long passed when countries would declare war over the treatment of its citizens. What replaces that? I’m not really sure, but I think that something must.
lj: those liberals who opposed invading Iraq were primarily opposed not because they felt that Bin Laden had some sort of sovereign protection but because it was unfair to the people of Afghanistan to pay a price for the leadership of their country sheltering him.
“who opposed invading Afghanistan“, you mean?
Since I was one of that rather small group (very few of whom were or are “liberals”), I’m in a position to know why I opposed it, and to say that this argument is massively beside the point. None of us viewed the U.S. invasion as a police action aimed at capturing Osama bin Laden in order to return him to the U.S. to be tried for the attacks of September 11, but as the excuse for a string of bases and a wider war in Central Asia and the middle east. Given the conduct of the U.S. military and CIA in Afghanistan before, during, and since, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone able to maintain with a straight face that it was a “rendition operation”, or that it was ever seriously intended to be that.
So we opponents of the Afghan war weren’t parsing the difference between the violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty and the scale of the suffering that our invasion might cause the Afghan people. We objected to both. The Bush clique clearly had no intention to negotiate with the Afghan government, the popular mood was for vengeance, and the relatively weak legitimacy of the Taliban government and the frightening spectacle of the engraged hegemon made most of the world uninclined to press the legal issues.
But we antiwar types were in fact concerned about the further, serious erosion of international law that the U.S. invasion represented. It was one more ugly precedent, creating a unilateral, lawless environment that could easily foster other horrors. No accident that we were the ones who expected the worst when Bush declared the Geneva Conventions wouldn’t apply, and raised the possibility of torture when Guantanamo opened.
It seems odd for you to be the one accusing novakant of supporting the idea that might makes right, when your position is the one that seems to be that international law isn’t quite real, or that we’ve managed to exempt ourselves somehow through failure to ratify, reservations, and legal weaseling.
Whatever rationalization or supposed legal principle you come up with to justify our government’s kidnaping someone who’s committed crimes against U.S. citizens is going to have to apply to other governments and the war criminals we’re sheltering. If we don’t try George Bush for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and the torture of thousands (as well as of Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemenis…), then the government of Iraq would be justified in mounting an operation in which he is bundled off to Baghdad to face trial.
Of course this is highly theoretical, which is why it’s so important to come up with some figleaf of legal justification for our government’s behavior. Pure might assures it will not happen to us, so the legal theory can be expansive.
Decline and Fall: If the prisoners in the GWOT had been declared EPWs from the beginning, a lot of the abuses would not have happened because there would have been no legal cover for the officer who authorized rough treatment.
The fault is not with the Geneva Conventions, but with George W. Bush and his clique choosing to disregard them. Many military and legal authorities argued in 2001 and early 2002 that any prisoners taken in the course of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan were covered by the GC.
The Bush clique’s “war on terror” is not a real or legitimate war but a limitless use of force, forever justified by past attacks and continuously generating more “enemies”, operating outside the framework of U.S. or international law.
The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with stopping terror attacks on the United States or bringing to justice anyone responsible for them, so the breach in U.S. military practice opened by Bush and Rumsfeld’s illegitimate abandonment of the Geneva Conventions shouldn’t have extended to Iraq at all. But they pushed the big lie, and three-quarters of the military believed it, that “Iraq is the central front in the war on terror”, and that there was some connection between Saddam’s Ba’athist government and al Qaeda.
Nell, you are right, Afghanistan is what I meant to type. I’m certainly not going to argue with your personal reasons, but my memory is not of the objection to violating Afghan sovereignty, but of punishment of the many for the acts of a few. In fact, neo-cons often tried to suggest that liberals were uninterested in the problematic aspects of the Taliban regime and a number of liberals took issue with that.
And I’m not accusing novakant of taking a position that might makes right. I am saying that taking a position that sovereignty is the ultimate decider, while it may protect smaller countries from stronger ones, it does nothing for the individual rights and ends up with a de facto might make right position.
I agree that this is highly theoretical, but in the link novakant gives, Rattner assumes that extraordinary rendition is solely the US entering a country, snatching someone and taking them to third country, yet the program that has been left in place is not snatch and grabs, but when American military, in the course of conducting operations, capture people who have citizenship in a third country. No state of war exists between the US and the third country, and the third country is eager to have that person precisely because of his participation in the current conflict. Arguing that sovereignty applies only in terms of territorial boundaries and not in terms of citizenship means that he goes free or some sort of court that does not yet exist be set up to judge himw. That seems strange to me. Either you acknowledge that sovereignty is when state control extends to its citizens or you argue that a state has no right of control of its citizens.
It is not that international law is unreal, but like the notion that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, a law code doesn’t translate to an effective force unless there exists the means to enforce it. The law is always going to favor the more powerful, it is inevitable, but it is going to favor the powerful even more if it lacks a means of enforcement.
Also, if Bush or Cheney or others, like Pinochet, went to an EU country and a second EU country decided to hold them responsible, a la Pinochet, are you saying that this is wrong? I could be wrong, but I feel relatively certain that you and others didn’t claim that Pinochet had some sort of sovereign immunity. If you argue that it is simply territorial and that he was only subject to prosecution because he entered a place where he was subject to it. Holding to that notion suggests that rights are territorially based rather than universal. At some point, you have to let go of that notion, and arguing that sovereignty is the way by which we prevent us going down this slippery slope seems backwards to me.
lj: Amnesty International and FWIW myself are in favour of universal jurisdiction and support the ICC, but are against extraordinary rendition. There is no contradiction in holding both of these positions, since supporting the former doesn’t imply supporting the latter. Indeed efforts to strengthen the former would be greatly undermined if there was any suspicion that its implementation involved breaking international law, which extraordinary rendition does by definition. One cannot rely on international law to indict and break it to apprehend the perpetrators.
Novakant,
We’ll just have to agree to disagree, though I do support the ICC and I think that believing that borders are not sancrosanct and acepting the jurisdiction of the ICC is less contradictory. A commitment to justice does not, to me, mean that you tell victims of crimes that they can’t always get what they want. It does not say that the sovereignty of borders is inviolable but rather recognizes that people should be subject to justice all over the world. As Nell pointed out, this discussion has become highly theoretical, which is probably why Amnesty has chosen to commend Obama for the executive order rather than condemn him for not making it go far enough.
lj, it is obvious that we disagree, but to me the most frustrating aspect of the discussion on this blog has been that the arguments by supporters of extraordinary rendition such as yourself have been confused, ill-informed and erratic, sometimes to the point were it is unclear if the aim wasn’t to intentionally muddy the discourse in order to cover up the shortcomings of Obama’s policies so far.
My apologies for your frustration. I dare say that I have thought a lot longer and harder about what citizenship means in the context of the modern world and am much more familiar with the problems of citizenship today. I’ve discussed the historical origins of extraordinary rendition and broken it into three categories and you’ve conflated all those categories, focussing on the idea of extraordinary rendition as a planned snatch and grab and transfer to a third country and then claimed that this is only what is at issue. You’ve cited someone who argues that borders are sancrosanct yet you refuse to see the ramifications of such a stance. You’ve gone back and forth between invoking a notion that the majority of people agree with your argument and expressing shock that the majority of people here have not come to the same understanding as you. I don’t think that Amnesty, despite your argument that they take you position, condemned Obama’s policies. In fact, this whole point began because a representative of HRW may have said something accepting the need for rendition in certain cases. Perhaps this is realpolitik considerations of taking a half loaf, but I believe that Obama’s policies are crafted with an eye to look at all possible situations, and taking your position would have meant that the US would not have been able, as Charleycarp notes, to invade Vichy France during WWII.
Ideas have consequences and continuing to maintain that a nation should have complete and total control over what goes on inside its borders such that arguing that victims have no recourse but to be told that they can’t always get what they want strikes me as problematic. Failing to acknowledge that there will more likely be situations that are war-like, but have no controlling authority or even identifiable sides strikes me as unrealistic. You shift between legal and moral arguments, with the assumption that legal reasoning is a smaller subset of moral reasoning. It is not, it is, at best, an area that overlaps moral reasoning, but leaves segments that are not moral, yet necessary for its implementation. Failing to understand that has led you to argue for an overly broad approach, I think.
One problem with your position, lj, is that once again the US and its favored allies get to go in and snatch people, but small countries don’t get to come in and snatch people here. I think Bush and Cheney should be at the top of any list of people who deserve rendition, unless we get around to prosecuting them ourselves. And if we can’t even prosecute our own home-grown war criminals and certainly won’t allow someone else to come here and snatch them, then rendition for the US but not for others boils down to “might makes right”.
lj:
I’d personally be more than a little reluctant to support any argument regarding national sovereignty with an example citing the sovereignty of a nation who was under military occupation at the time the violation of sovereignty occurred. It doesn’t exactly seem like a particularly clear case by which to support your position, particularly given that the invader and the occupier were in a state of open war.
One problem with your position, lj, is that once again the US and its favored allies get to go in and snatch people, but small countries don’t get to come in and snatch people here.
Whereas arguing that national borders are sancrosanct is going to not provide the US with an advantage. If we totaled up all of the people who were ‘snatched’ and compared that to all the people who were killed because the US and its allies argued that national borders prevented them from intervening, I’m thinking that the list would be a tad imbalanced.
NV, my take is that when you argue how the law is written(and I believe, given the Machain decision, the legal apparatus for ignoring how a person is brought to trial is in place, so the ability for Obama to renounce it is limited), you don’t get to add common sense exceptions, especially if you argue that the US should respect national borders as unvioable.
Sorry, that first comment is probably too sarcastic. My feeling is that the notion of national borders is something that can be seen in opposition to universal human rights. Obviously, the challenge of the future is to find a way to continue to acknowledge national borders while moving towards a concept of universal human rights that inhere within every individual.
Nell: The fault is not with the Geneva Conventions, but with George W. Bush and his clique choosing to disregard them. Many military and legal authorities argued in 2001 and early 2002 that any prisoners taken in the course of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan were covered by the GC.
Yes, most legal authorities argued that GWOT detainees deserve EPW status. But read qualifications in the GC (too long to post here, so read them at my blog).
Like it or not, a fighter who claims no allegiance to any flag-flying organization, i.e., every single person we’ve fought in the GWOT, can be reasonably argued to not meet the qualifications for EPW status. That doesn’t make it right to deny EPW status, but it might make it legal.
I say, if the law doesn’t fit changed circumstances (insurgencies like Iraq’s, composed of perhaps hundreds of disjointed groups fighting each other and a foreign invader, were probably something the GC authors couldn’t imagine in 1949), then update it. I would sleep more soundly knowing that America’s legal obligation to not torture were not reversible by Executive Order.
“Whereas arguing that national borders are sancrosanct is going to not provide the US with an advantage. If we totaled up all of the people who were ‘snatched’ and compared that to all the people who were killed because the US and its allies argued that national borders prevented them from intervening, I’m thinking that the list would be a tad imbalanced.”
LJ, your sarcasm doesn’t anger me–it’s your position that angers me. I’d say there’s more people dead because the US intervened than because it didn’t. We’ve just spent 6 years creating chaos and death on a massive scale by intervening in Iraq and you’re talking about the need to ignore borders on behalf of human rights as though Iraq, not to mention our countless interventions in the Cold War never happened. And anyway, international law might be in favor of intervention when there is an ongoing genocide, as in Rwanda in 1994. And you totally ignored my point anyway–if there’s such a crying need for rendition, than surely Bush and Cheney are at the top of the list of people who need to be arrested if the US doesn’t have the integrity to do it. Why are you going on and on about international borders and the US right to cross them to arrest bad guys in some other country when we’ve got some pretty big war criminals right here at home who ought to be at the very top of the list? And if you mean what you say then do you support the right of other countries to send special forces into the US to arrest Bush and Cheney if we won’t do it ourselves? That’s not a rhetorical question.
Donald, in the debate that you have taught me the most about, Israel has utilized varoud definitions of national borders and sovereignity to disenfranchise. And US interventions have more often been claims of protecting the integrity of a particular state then they have been arguments that a particular state’s borders should not be considered as protective.
As for the Hobson’s choice you give, if you take the same line as novakant, than you argue that Bush and Cheney are completely innocent of crimes until the moment they step out of US territorial borders. Because I don’t argue that national borders are an unbreakable fence, while I might not advocate that Bush and Cheney be rendered now due to very real considerations of power and politics, situations may change so that it could be accepted. The opposite position claims that the only time they are legally responsible is if somehow, the American people were somehow convinced that they were to be held to account. Would you hold this standard for Hutu politicians, or the war criminals of the Balkans?
While I am sympathetic that given the history, the US should avoid telling any country what to do, US forces will be involved in other peace-keeping missions and nationals of a third country will be picked up. If you argue like novakant that rendition will never ever take place, you are left with only two choices, that the US claim jurisdiction to try them or that they be released. I don’t want to be accused of coming up with a ticking bomb scenario, but I think the range of possibilities mitigates against a blanket ban on rendition.
The idea of national borders is fundamentally inimical to the idea of universal human rights. You can argue that strengthening national borders might create a point in time when they will be no longer needed, but you will need to explain how a notion that national borders cannot be violated can suddenly give way to the idea that people’s rights are not dependent on such borders.