War on Terrorism Over?

Last week, shortly after being inaugurated, President Barack Obama ended the "global war on terror" (GWOT). Or so The Washington Post reported.
The new president countermanded the Bush administration's extralegal
approaches by mandating the closure of Guantanamo within a year,
outlawing the use of torture in interrogations, and putting the CIA out
of the secret prisons business. Obama announced that he wanted to "send
an unmistakable signal that our actions in defense of liberty will be
as just as our cause."

Sounds good. But the Post's declaration might be just as premature
as President George W. Bush's infamous "mission accomplished" speech on
the USS Lincoln that signaled the "end" of the Iraq War.
On the civil liberties front, for instance, the administration retains
the right to use renditions, by which the CIA secretly abducted
suspects and transferred them to third countries without trial. "I
think it's a glaring hole," Vincent Warren of the Center for
Constitutional Rights said last week on Democracy Now!
"I think that one way that the Obama administration could have dealt a
more decisive blow to the illegal Bush policies and even the rendition
policy, which originated under Bill Clinton, is to specifically
reference this and to say that we are going to disavow this."

Also, the inmates at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, which holds
more prisoners than Gitmo, and the thousands held in Iraq won't get the
case-by-case review accorded to their counterparts in Cuba.
Non-military agencies like the CIA, after a six-month review, might get
"additional or different guidance" on interrogations -- and who knows
what that means. And, as Politico points out,
the guy in charge of the 30-day review of Gitmo is the same fellow who
was in charge for the last two years -- Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates. That's not exactly a recipe for reform.

But even if Obama holds to his word on torture, closes Guantanamo
within the year, applies the same yardstick to detainees at Bagram and
in Iraq, and eliminates the Clinton-era policy on extraordinary
rendition, the death of the "global war on terror," as Mark Twain once
said of his own prematurely published obituary, is greatly exaggerated.
Indeed, on the day after it published GWOT's obituary, The Washington Post reported
on two U.S. unilateral air strikes in Pakistan that killed 20 suspected
terrorists. Although it observed an uncharacteristic silence over these
strikes, the Pakistani government has previously expressed outrage at
these violations of its sovereignty.

Then there's Afghanistan, which will be the new epicenter of U.S.
counterterrorism strategy. Here's the relevant excerpt from the
official White House statement
on foreign policy: "Obama and Biden will refocus American resources on
the greatest threat to our security -- the resurgence of al-Qaeda and
the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They will increase our troop
levels in Afghanistan, press our allies in NATO to do the same, and
dedicate more resources to revitalize Afghanistan's economic
development." Why does Obama believe that he can escape the same
outcome in Afghanistan that Bush faced in Iraq? As former Democratic
presidential nominee George McGovern argued in a recent appeal
for a five-year "time-out" on war, "In 2003, the Bush administration
ordered an invasion of Iraq, supposedly to reduce terrorism. But six
years later, there is more terrorism and civil strife in Iraq, not
less. The same outcome may occur in Afghanistan if we make it the next
American military conflict."

So, is this a kinder, gentler GWOT? Certainly the new Obama
administration is more concerned about observing international law.
It's more prudent in its willingness to use diplomacy over force. But
so far at least, the new president still treats terrorism as a war to
be won rather than an endemic problem to be dealt with patiently and
largely by law enforcement agencies. We're still at war in Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and for the time being in Iraq. We're still selling arms
to Indonesia, Israel, and Colombia as part of an overall
counterterrorism approach. The Pentagon's new Africa Command (AFRICOM)
still looks at counter-terrorism through a military lens.

Sounds to me like we haven't seen the last of GWOT quite yet.