In mid-2013, Obama announced that the war on terror was over. He proceeded to redefine it: “We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘Global War on Terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”
What is war? “War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities.” (See here.) What are political communities? They are as the world currently stands “defined as those entities which either are states or intend to become states.”
The U.S. is a state and the terrorists it has been fighting since 2001 either have aspirations of becoming states or were identified, even if mistakenly, as being congruent with states, as in the cases of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The U.S. has also identified Iran and Syria as terrorist states. The U.S. has had the intention of armed conflict with these political communities, with IS now heading the list, but al-Qaeda affiliates remaining on the checklist. It has had the actual conflict, which the dead silently testify to and the injured and displaced can affirm. The armed conflict has been and remains widespread, covering half a dozen or more countries.
The war on a tactic may be mis-named, but it has been and still is war. Is the war on terror over? Not at all. Obama’s announcement was superficial puffery lacking substance. The war won’t end until either one side wins or both sides agree on terms of peace. The prospects for either of these over the next 4-8 years under a new president and new Congresses are as dim as they can be. The war on terror goes on at this moment and will continue to go on.
8:02 am on November 1, 2014
