<\/p>\n
Glenn Greenwald <\/strong> Last October, senior Obama officials anonymously unveiled to the Washington Post<\/a> their newly minted \u201cdisposition matrix\u201d, a complex computer system that will be used to determine how a terrorist suspect will be \u201cdisposed of\u201d: indefinite detention, prosecution in a real court, assassination-by-CIA-drones, etc. Their rationale for why this was needed now, a full 12 years after the 9\/11 attack:<\/p>\n Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade<\/em>. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight<\/em>. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether the statutory basis for this \u201cwar\u201d \u2014 the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) \u2014 should be revised (meaning: expanded). This is how<\/a> Wired\u2019s Spencer Ackerman (soon to be the Guardian US\u2019s national security editor) described the most significant exchange:<\/p>\n \u201cAsked 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, \u2018At least 10 to 20 years.\u2019<\/em> . . . A spokeswoman, Army Col. Anne Edgecomb, clarified that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today \u2014 atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted. Welcome to America\u2019s Thirty Years War.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the \u201cwar on terror\u201d will last at least<\/em> another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week\u2019s big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP\/DOJ) combined<\/em>. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning<\/a> that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of \u201cendless war\u201d. Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting<\/a> that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida<\/a>, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so.<\/p>\n
\nguardian.co.uk<\/a>
\nMay 20, 2013<\/p>\n