Is the U.S. at war with al-Qaeda, or not? Barack Obama (January, 2010) said “We are at war, we are at war against al-Qaeda.” This is his basic rationale, and Eric Holder’s, for saying that if an American is in combat against the U.S., here or abroad, killing them by drone is legal under the rules of war and under certain conditions associated with those rules. Wars in the modern age, when not civil in nature, have been among nations and done by states. If al-Qaeda never has been a state, and it never has, how can the U.S. possibly … Continue reading Is the U.S. at War with Al-Qaeda?