Close up, Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism looks a lot like George W Bush’s

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/05/close-up-barack-obamas-counter-terrorism-looks-a-lot-like-george-w-bushs/

Close up, Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism looks a lot like George W Bush’s
By The Conversation
Saturday, July 5, 2014 10:33 EDT
By Luca Trenta, University of Nottingham

With the world focused on ISIS and Iraq, last month US Special Forces carried out a capture operation in Libya against Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspected ringleader of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power justified the raid as an action based on America’s “inherent right to self-defence” which was aimed at preventing armed attacks.

Power’s letter relies on a confusing mix of justifications, invoking both a state of “armed conflict” and the need to prevent future attacks. Significantly, the letter suggests that the Obama administration has maintained the notion of “continuing and imminent threat” that has driven the US counter-terrorism effort since Obama’s first term.

This deceptively simple notion implies that, given that the threat is always “imminent” it is up to the decision-maker to decide when and if it is “imminent” enough. So the notion of imminence is transformed from something that has a meaning in terms of timing – when imminent means “immediate” – to something that depends on a decision-maker’s assessment and priorities, that is, a policy option.

Imminence and pre-emption

This transformation did not occur in a vacuum. Back in 2002, in the now-famous National Security Strategy, the Bush administration explicitly called for a redefinition of the temporal parameters of imminence. The shadowy nature of the threat posed by terrorists (and rogue states) required states to act pre-emptively. The strategy has correctly been interpreted as one of the key steps in preparing the ground for the 2003 war against Iraq.