FYI ..
--
Bush's war on terror is over
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
May 26, 2013 -- Updated 1805 GMT (0205 HKT)
Obama speaks on anti-terror strategy
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Terrorism has been in the news with Boston bombing and killing of UK
soldier in the street
* Peter Bergen says despite recent acts, the enemy behind 9/11 has been
defeated
* He says President Obama signaled he wants Bush's endless war on
terror to end
* Bergen: Key part of Obama speech was idea that America's perpetual
war footing should end
Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a director at
the New America Foundation and the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for
bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad," the basis for the HBO documentary
"Manhunt" that will be shown on CNN at 9 p.m. ET Monday.
Washington (CNN) -- In the past few weeks, we've
seen a British soldier hacked to death with a meat cleaver on the
streets of London and bombers blowing up spectators at the Boston
Marathon.
On the surface, terrorism is alive and well.
So how should the United States react to these continuing threats?
Peter Bergen
For the first time on
Thursday, President Obama laid out the full scope of his proposed
counterterrorism strategy, and it boiled down to this: George W. Bush's
endless war on terror is over.
And that's appropriate, since the enemy Bush went to war with after September
11 has largely been defeated.
Obama's speech at the
National Defense University in Washington was designed to lay the
political groundwork to wind down America's longest war, the war that
began when al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center and a wing of the
Pentagon 12 years ago.
Thursday's speech was the first time Obama had delivered an overarching
framework for how to
conceptualize the conflict that has defined U.S. national security
policy since 9/11.
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Other speeches by Obama
have focused on aspects of that conflict, such as Guantanamo and the
Afghan war. But no speech has made such an expansive examination of the
war against al Qaeda and its allies in all its manifestations, from
drone strikes to detention policies to a clear-eyed assessment of the
scope of the threats posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates, as well as by those
"homegrown" extremists who attacked the Boston Marathon in April.
Much of the coverage of
the speech has centered on the measures the president outlined to impose
greater constraints on CIA drone strikes and to try to hasten the
eventual closing of Guantanamo.
But the most significant aspect of the speech was the president's case that the
"perpetual
wartime footing" and "boundless war on terror" that has permeated so
much of American life since 9/11 should come to an end.
Obama argued that the
time has come to redefine the kind of conflict that the United States is
engaged in: "We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or
else it will define us."
This is why the
president focused part of his speech on a discussion of the seemingly
arcane Authorization for the Use of Military Force that Congress passed
days after 9/11 and that gave Bush the authority to go to war in
Afghanistan against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies.
Few, if any, in Congress who voted for the authorization understood at the time
that they were
voting for a virtual blank check that has provided the legal basis for
more than a decade of war. It is a war that has expanded in recent years to
other countries in the Middle East and Africa, such as Yemen and
Somalia, where the U.S. has engaged in covert military operations
against al Qaeda-affiliated groups.
Theoretically, when U.S. combat troops finally withdraw from Afghanistan in
December 2014, the
authorization should simply expire, and the nation will no longer be at
war. After all, once combat operations are over in Afghanistan, why
would you want to keep in place an authorization for a permanent war?
However, there are now
some in Congress who would like to expand the scope of the Authorization for
the Use of Military Force beyond its present parameters to include
military operations against terrorist groups that were not involved in
the 9/11 attacks, which could prolong America's wars indefinitely and
add additional terrorist groups to the United States' list of enemies it is at
war with.
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker,
R-Tennessee, ranking member of the influential Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, for instance, last month called for an expansion of the scope of the
authorization.
Obama made it quite
clear in his Thursday speech that he would oppose such an expansion,
saying he hopes instead to "ultimately repeal the AUMF's mandate. And I
will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further."
In short, Obama intends to end a seemingly endless war.
That's because,
according to Obama, "the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the
path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time
thinking about their own safety than plotting against us."
On Thursday, Obama
asserted (in my view, correctly) that what remains of the terrorist
threat, while significant and persistent, is nothing on the scale of the al
Qaeda organization that launched the 9/11 operation and instead
consists of "less capable al Qaeda affiliates, threats to diplomatic
facilities and businesses abroad, homegrown extremists."
These threats, the
president further asserted, can be managed by carefully targeted drone
strikes overseas and efforts to counter extremist ideology at home and
do not require some kind of broader war.
Obama is also looking to his legacy and the presidents who will follow him and
is trying to
begin to create the public consensus and legal framework that will help
to ensure that the United States isn't "drawn into more wars we don't
need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more
suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states."
Obama clearly hopes to leave office in 2016 as the commander in chief who
finally ended America's longest war.
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