Reports of Obama's Ending the War on Terror Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

A few days after Obama's inauguration, the Washington Post's Dana Priest wrote that Obama effectively ended the war on terror--excuse me, Bush's "war on terror"--by signing executive orders to close Gitmo and CIA prisons and limit interrogation methods.

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the "war on terror," as President George W. Bush had defined it

Priest also informed readers that in the bad old days of Bush's war on terror, "Front companies and fictitious people were used to hide a system of aircraft that carried terrorism suspects to 'undisclosed locations' and to third countries under a little-known practice called rendition."

But lo and behold, today the New York Times reports "Obama's War on Terror May Resemble Bush's in Some Areas":

Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush's "war on terrorism," the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor's approach to fighting Al Qaeda.

In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.'s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team's arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the "state secrets" doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials. ...

During her confirmation hearing last week, Elena Kagan, the nominee for solicitor general, said that someone suspected of helping finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law - indefinite detention without a trial - even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than in a physical battle zone.

So even though spinners in the Obama administration are trying their best to call the war something other than "war on terror," the president will continue many of Bush's common sense war policies that had the left up in arms for the past seven years. In fact, contra Dana Priest, it appears the Obama administration will continue to use one of the most controversial anti-terror tools employed by the Clinton and Bush administrations--rendition. The Times reports:

Mr. Panetta also said the C.I.A. might continue its "extraordinary rendition" program, under which agents seize terrorism suspects and take them to other countries without extradition proceedings, in a more sweeping form than anticipated....

Mr. Panetta said the agency is likely to continue to transfer detainees to third countries and would rely on diplomatic assurances of good treatment - the same safeguard the Bush administration used, and that critics say is ineffective.

In 2005, Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote a piece in THE WEEKLY STANDARD arguing against rendition. It's a policy that leads to actual torture, and in all likelihood it will be relied upon more and more as the Obama administration affords legal protections to terrorists who operate outside the laws of war. Rather than outsource torture to these unreliable and undemocratic regimes in the Middle East, the Obama administration may soon come to see even the most controversial interrogation techniques of the Bush administration for the humane alternatives they really are.