AFP Photo/US Navy/MC2 Tony D. Curtis
Forget it; the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is not becoming more "democratic" -- or even transparent.
US President Barack Obama now pledges to transfer the responsibility of the shadow "Drone Wars" from the CIA to the Pentagon -- so the US Congress is able to monitor it.
Until virtually yesterday the Obama administration did not even recognize in public the existence of the shadow "Drone Wars."
The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at the Pentagon -- which would then be in charge of the "Drone Wars" -- is bound to remain secret.
And the Pentagon is not exactly yearning to retouch its definition of a "militant" -- a prime candidate to be "target-assassinated"; "any military-aged male in a strike zone" or a "Muslim" male, it goes without saying.
Obama's rhetoric is one thing. His administration's "Drone Wars" are another thing entirely.
The President now insists GWOT is no longer a "boundless global war."
That's rhetoric. For the Pentagon, the "entire globe is a battlefield."
That is the operative concept since the beginning of GWOT, and inbuilt in the Pentagon's Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine. And if the entire globe is a battlefield, all its causes and consequences are inter-connected.
The rules of the gameWhat's the difference between a British soldier (the UK is attached to GWOT via the "special relationship"), stationed at an army barracks, gruesomely hacked to death with a meat cleaver in a London street and a Syrian soldier beheaded/disemboweled/cannibalized in "rebel"-held territory by a mercenary Sunni jihadi?
The difference is that the Nigerian-British killer in London is a terrorist, and the jihadi in Syria is a freedom fighter.
What's the difference between an alleged -- never conclusively - proven Chechen-American principally responsible for the Boston bombing and a little Pashtun girl killed by a US drone in Waziristan?
The difference is that the Chechen-American is a terrorist, and the Pashtun girl is not even acknowledged by the Pentagon (and even if she was, she'd go down as "collateral damage.")
And what if the "collateral damage" is a US citizen, as in Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, "target-assassinated" by a US drone in Yemen in October 2011?
It will take 19 months for the administration to admit he was "terminated" -- but still with no justification attached.
GWOT's rules of the game won't change -- no matter how soaring Obama's rhetoric.
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