This launch was normal and expected crew rotation, they just kicked a few people off the mission so that there would be open seats on the way back.
That’s neither normal nor expected!
Go back to the age of exploration. A crew’s ship strands them on an island. Another ship was due to come anyway in 6 weeks, and the crew have enough food to last them that interval. They use witches to tell the coming crew of their problems, and that ship agrees to lighten its load to make room for the stranded.
This is a rescue! It’s an easy rescue. But so was, like, pulling my puppy out of the neighbor’s pool when it went under the cover.
If you had said that they were left at an outpost with other people for six months it somewhat loses it's "rescue" vibes.
When a country pitches into instability and nations evacuate their citizens, are they not rescuing them?
I suppose I’d invert the question: why does framing the mission as a rescue bug you?
"SpaceX capsule used to retrieve astronauts stranded on ISS by malfunctioning starliner."
Arguable because everyone has a way back already, the modification to the crew rotation mission just provides a somewhat safer way back.
Edit: And the distinction here matters. A rescue mission would be an expensive unexpected endeavour. The regular crew rotation is an expected operating cost. The modification to the details of the plan for the crew rotation haven't significantly impacted the mission goals - i.e. for the same cost there are still the same number of fresh qualified crew members up there for the same duration, just a slightly different set of people.
I like this.
Nit: it’s not a normal mission. Normal missions don’t leave two seats for folks trained on a different spacecraft. It’s a scheduled mission.