CULTURE
Lawful Carnage Scholar Samuel Moyn and journalist Spencer Ackerman consider the inherent contradictions of the endless war on terrorism. BY R O Z I N A A L I B
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ooking back, the war against terrorism was designed to be a forever war. Two months after George Bush launched the global “war on terror,” the United States– led coalition had wrested control of most of the country of Afghanistan from the Taliban government, and had killed a top al-Qaeda military commander in a bombing raid. Not long after, hundreds of Taliban soldiers across Afghanistan laid down their weapons, and their leader Mullah Omar agreed to surrender the group’s stronghold Kandahar to the local tribes. The Taliban had effectively handed the country to
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America. Yet none of this appeased Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He rejected the capitulation and called a “negotiated end” to the conflict “unacceptable to the United States.” Over the next 20 years, the U.S. would go on to spend nearly a trillion dollars in Afghanistan, over 2,400 American forces would die, and some 20,600 others would come home injured. More than 66,000 Afghan military and police would be killed, and countless more civilians would be dead. The U.S. will leave Afghanistan this year, with no certainty that the Taliban, which has been
advancing across the country, won’t seize Kabul once again. Yet none of these tragedies— from the rejection of surrender in Afghanistan to around one million civilians killed in the war on terror—constitutes a crime, even if it violates our moral sensibilities. This is not because the United States acted with impunity after the 9/11 attacks; to the contrary, the Bush administration repeatedly pointed to the Constitution and international law to legitimate its wars. His successor, a constitutional lawyer, did the same; Barack Obama even used law to justify the assassination of a U.S. citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki, and his 16-year-old son. Donald Trump called himself an “anti-war” president as he turned to existing laws to accelerate bombing in Afghanistan, which increased civilian casualties by 330 percent. From the beginning, the carnage of the war on terror has proceeded lawfully. Every administration has
ANJA NIEDRINGHAUS / AP PHOTO
From the beginning, the carnage of the war on terror has proceeded lawfully.
58 PROSPECT.ORG JUL /AUG 2021
