The War Against al-Qaeda Is Over

What stops the U.S. government from declaring war on a person it perceives as a security threat and summarily attacking and killing him? The fact that doing so would violate the target’s right to life and fundamental due process, you might say. But in war, killing an enemy’s combatants is permitted. So can the United States declare war and designate as a combatant such perceived threats as a drug kingpin in New York, a Mafia don in Chicago or even Julian Assange or Edward Snowden? More than moral revulsion militates against such abuse of war powers. There are also legal limits on who is properly viewed as a combatant and when war is an appropriate response to a threat. Those limits are rarely discussed, but nearly 12 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with U.S. involvement in the traditional civil war in Afghanistan winding down, it is time to apply those limits to the global “war” against al-Qaeda and its armed affiliates.