This story originally appeared at TomDispatch.com
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Business as Usual on SteroidsThe Obama Administration Doubles Down on the War on Terror
By Karen J. Greenberg
In the seven weeks since the killing of Osama bin Laden, pundits and experts of many stripes have concluded that his death represents a marker of genuine significance in the story of America's encounter with terrorism. Peter Bergen, a bin Laden expert, was typically blunt the day after the death when he wrote, "Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now."
Yet you wouldn't know it in Washington where, if anything, the Obama administration and Congress have interpreted the killing of al-Qaeda's leader as a virtual license to double down on every "front" in the war on terror. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was no less blunt than Bergen, but with quite a different endpoint in mind. "Even as we mark this milestone," she said on the day Bergen's comments were published, "we should not forget that the battle to stop al-Qaeda and its syndicate of terror will not end with the death of bin Laden. Indeed, we must take this opportunity to renew our resolve and redouble our efforts."
National Security Adviser John Brennan concurred. "This is a strategic blow to al-Qaeda," he commented in a White House press briefing. "It is a necessary but not necessarily sufficient blow to lead to its demise. But we are determined to destroy it." Similarly, at his confirmation hearings to become Secretary of Defense, CIA Director Leon Panetta called for Washington to expand its shadow wars. "We've got to keep the pressure up," he told the senators.
As if to underscore the policy implications of this commitment to "redoubling our efforts," drone aircraft were dispatched on escalating post-bin-Laden assassination runs from Yemen (including a May 6th failed attempt on American al-Qaeda follower Anwar al-Awlaki) to Pakistan. There, on May 23rd, a drone failed to take out Taliban leader Mullah Omar, while, on June 2nd, an attempt to kill Ilyas Kashmiri, a militant associated with the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai, India, may (or may not) have failed. And those were only the most publicized of escalating drone attacks, while reports of a major "intensification" of the drone campaign in Yemen are pouring in.
In the meantime, President Obama used the bin Laden moment to push through and sign into law a four-year renewal of the Patriot Act, despite bipartisan resistance in Congress and the reservations of civil liberties groups. They had stalled its passage earlier in the year, hoping to curtail some of its particularly onerous sections, including the "lone wolf" provision that allows surveillance of non-US citizens in America, even if they have no ties to foreign powers, and the notorious Section 215, which grants the FBI authority to obtain library and business records in the name of national security.
One thing could not be doubted. The administration was visibly using the bin Laden moment to renew George W. Bush's Global War on Terror (even if without that moniker). And let's not forget about the leaders of Congress, who promptly accelerated their efforts to ensure that the apparatus for the war that 9/11 started would never die. Congressman Howard McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was typical. On May 9th, he introduced legislation meant to embed in law the principle of indefinite detention without trial for suspected terrorists until "the end of hostilities." What this would mean, in reality, is the perpetuation ad infinitum of that Bush-era creation, our prison complex at Guantanamo (not to speak of our second Guantanamo at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan).
In other words, Washington now seems to be engaged in a wholesale post-bin Laden ratification of business as usual, but this time on steroids.
Perhaps after all these years the nation's leadership was simply unprepared for bin Laden's death and hasn't been able to imagine switching directions readily, or perhaps the war on terror has simply become a way of life. Certainly, the Obama administration has a record of translating potentially propitious moments for change into strategic paralysis.
Remember, for instance, the president's day-one-in-the-Oval-Office pledge to close Guantanamo within a year? Six months later, the administration had doubled down on the idea of the indefinite detention of terror suspects and so effectively made Obama's promise meaningless. It's a pattern that's repeated itself when it comes to the Afghan War, the trial in New York City of 9/11 "mastermind" Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and other crucial matters.
But think about it for a moment: Should the postmortem to bin Laden be just a continuation of the same-old-same-old? Shouldn't there be a national pause for reflection as the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches? Wouldn't it make sense to stop and rethink policy in the light of his death and of a visibly tumultuous new moment in the Greater Middle East with its various uprisings and brewing civil wars?
Why has an administration that prides itself on thinking before doing pushed on without a moment's reflection? Why shouldn't the president establish a commission filled with at least a few new faces (and so a few new thoughts) to assess what a war on terror might even mean today? And why not insist that, until the findings of such a commission come in, there will be no new expenditures, legislation, or policy decisions to continue -- let alone further expand -- that war, its detention policies, or for that matter the Patriot Act?
Were the President to establish such a commission, here are five symbolic steps it might recommend -- hardly the only ones, but a start -- that could help set the U.S. on another path and put the war on terror behind us:
1. Concede that there is no more tangible endpoint for the war on terror than the death of bin Laden: Rather than trying to banish the term "war on terror" (as the Obama administration did in 2009), let's face it squarely. Practically speaking, at the moment as for the past near-decade, it is little but a catch-all phrase for "endless war."
Our commission would have to face a basic question: If we are not to commit to war without end, what could the "cessation of hostilities" possibly mean when it comes to American terror policy? Any attempt at a definition would have to grapple with the real meaning of bin Laden's death. After all, it may be the only tangible victory we'll ever have. What a moment, then, to announce that the war on terror has now passed out of its "war" phase and entered a phase of risk management.
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