The militarisation of 'war on terror' in the US

The National Defence Authorisation Act continues the onward march of the 'war on terror' through the American homeland.

New York, NY - In an instructive coincidence, the passage of the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) by the US Congress came on December 15, 2011, the same day as the official start of US forces' pullout from Iraq. One front in the US' post-9/11 conflicts closed overseas, as another front seemingly opened at home. Now awaiting President Barack Obama's signature, which will turn it into law, the NDAA would further entrench here at home some of the defining features of the United States' extraterritorial campaign against political violence by non-state actors, continuing the onward march of the so-called "war on terror" through the American homeland.

For years, my students, my colleagues and I have been dealing with the realities of indefinite military imprisonment without trial, and of trial before untested and unfair military commissions. But we deal with those issues in the context of our work on behalf of our many non-citizen clients imprisoned outside of the US, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan.

Together, the NDAA's provisions keep Guantánamo open as a facility, while expanding within the US a set of practices and legal approaches that stem from the Guantánamo experiment. Of course, the Guantanamisation of the American justice-and carceral-system was already well underway. Since 9/11, lengthy and oppressive pre-trial detention conditions have become the norm in federal terrorism cases, along with draconian sentence enhancements meted out to convicts in such cases, and subsequent imprisonment under cruel Special Administrative Measures and in majority-Muslim Communications Management Units. But this legislation represents further, significant strides in that direction, and, notably, ones that are overtly military in character.

To be clear, the NDAA does not institute martial law for all in the US. But it would be foolish not to see that it lays a potential foundation for it in the future. Students of history, and those of us new Americans who have lived under military or militarised regimes - and that includes many Muslim Americans - will spot the kinship and recognise in this law some of the markers of authoritarian rule. Read More