The “global battlefield” idea is a dangerous idea. It turns the whole world into a killing zone. Obaaama’s drones can reach any target in the world under the abstract umbrella of the “war on terror.” But, Washington is defining political activists and social reformers as combatants and terrorists, so this isn’t a war against terror. In reality, it is a war against freedom.
Glenn Greenwald:
“If you go and look at the premises of George Bush and Dick Cheney’s theory of executive power and counter-terrorism that caused so much controversy among Democrats back when Republicans were doing it, they were things like the entire world is now a battlefield. It used to be the case that battlefields were very finite and well-defined segments of real estate or territory in various countries.
And within a battlefield you can exercise all sorts of unconstrained power. You can shoot people, when you find them you can take them and give them a military commission and execute them on the spot. Essentially, battlefields are law-free places. And so, that’s always been the case, and that’s legitimately true, that’s not just a United States doctrine.
So to declare the entire world a battlefield in the war on terror on the theory that traditional battles no longer happen is to basically say that the powers that I just described, that are unconstrained, that used to be confined to very identifiable battlefields, now exists without limits: they exist in the entire world.” [5:55 - 7:00 in the video below].
Saman Mohammadi is the writer and editor at The Excavator
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