On
Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing
on whether the statutory basis for this "war" - the 2001
Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) - should be
revised (meaning: expanded).
This is how Wired's Spencer Ackerman (soon to be the
Guardian US's national security editor) described the most
significant exchange:
"Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on
terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant
secretary of defense for special operations and
low-intensity conflict, answered, 'At least 10 to 20
years.' . . . A spokeswoman, Army Col. Anne
Edgecomb, clarified that Sheehan meant the conflict is
likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today - atop the
12 years that the conflict has already lasted. Welcome
to America's Thirty Years War."
That
the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that
the "war on terror" will last at least another
decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of
this week's big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and
AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew
Bacevich has
spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted
an explicit doctrine of "endless war". Obama officials,
despite
repeatedly boasting that they have delivered
permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as
clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring
this to be so.