The war against al-Qaeda is over
By Kenneth Roth, WashPost
Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is on Twitter: @KenRoth.
What stops the U.S. government from declaring war on a person it perceives as a security threat and summarily attacking and killing him? The fact that doing so would violate the target’s right to life and fundamental due process, you might say. But in war, killing an enemy’s combatants is permitted. So can the United States declare war and designate as a combatant such perceived threats as a drug kingpin in New York, a Mafia don in Chicago or even Julian Assange or Edward Snowden?
More than moral revulsion militates against such abuse of war powers. There are also legal limits on who is properly viewed as a combatant and when war is an appropriate response to a threat. Those limits are rarely discussed, but nearly 12 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with U.S. involvement in the traditional civil war in Afghanistan winding down, it is time to apply those limits to the global “war” against al-Qaeda and its armed affiliates.
President Obama recognized the problem in his May 23 speech at the National Defense University. He warned that “a perpetual war . . . will prove self-defeating, and alter [the United States] in troubling ways.” Quoting James Madison, Obama warned: “ ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ ”
But the president did not take the next step of declaring an end to the war with al-Qaeda or even explaining how citizens will know when it is over. International law provides guidance. The standard for when a legally recognized “armed conflict” exists between a state and an armed group appears in the protocols and official commentary to the Geneva Conventions and has been fleshed out by various international tribunals. An armed conflict requires a certain level of hostilities — judged by factors such as the number, duration and intensity of individual confrontations; the use of military weaponry; the number of participants in the fighting; and the casualties and displacement caused. It also requires the antagonists to possess armed forces under a command structure with the capacity to sustain military operations.
(More here.)
Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is on Twitter: @KenRoth.
What stops the U.S. government from declaring war on a person it perceives as a security threat and summarily attacking and killing him? The fact that doing so would violate the target’s right to life and fundamental due process, you might say. But in war, killing an enemy’s combatants is permitted. So can the United States declare war and designate as a combatant such perceived threats as a drug kingpin in New York, a Mafia don in Chicago or even Julian Assange or Edward Snowden?
More than moral revulsion militates against such abuse of war powers. There are also legal limits on who is properly viewed as a combatant and when war is an appropriate response to a threat. Those limits are rarely discussed, but nearly 12 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with U.S. involvement in the traditional civil war in Afghanistan winding down, it is time to apply those limits to the global “war” against al-Qaeda and its armed affiliates.
President Obama recognized the problem in his May 23 speech at the National Defense University. He warned that “a perpetual war . . . will prove self-defeating, and alter [the United States] in troubling ways.” Quoting James Madison, Obama warned: “ ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ ”
But the president did not take the next step of declaring an end to the war with al-Qaeda or even explaining how citizens will know when it is over. International law provides guidance. The standard for when a legally recognized “armed conflict” exists between a state and an armed group appears in the protocols and official commentary to the Geneva Conventions and has been fleshed out by various international tribunals. An armed conflict requires a certain level of hostilities — judged by factors such as the number, duration and intensity of individual confrontations; the use of military weaponry; the number of participants in the fighting; and the casualties and displacement caused. It also requires the antagonists to possess armed forces under a command structure with the capacity to sustain military operations.
(More here.)
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