'Tipping Point': Obama Lawyer Talks About Ending 'Endless' US War

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/11/30-9



US defense department general counsel, Jeh Johnson, says responsibility for tackling al-Qaida should pass to the police and other law enforcement agencies when the 'tipping point' in pursuit of group is reached.


'Tipping Point': Obama Lawyer Talks About Ending 'Endless' US War
Published on Friday, November 30, 2012 by Common Dreams
- Common Dreams staff

If a global war declared by the world's sole military and economic superpower against a shadowy, fragmented, franchisable, and loosely-grouped band of erstwhile 'dangerous' but also 'ravaged' and 'largely dismantled' terror group was over, how would you know it?

You wouldn't, of course, which is the reason that few ask and almost none, especially members of the US government or military, talk about anything that resembles the "official" end of what has long become known as the "global war on terrorism," or GWOT.

Today, however, at a speech given at Oxford University, Jeh Johnson, a Pentagon lawyer and one of President Obama's top legal advisors, spoke openly about what it might mean for the US government to declare an end to its seemingly endless war against—what critics have sharply pointed out is a "tactic"—"terrorism".

~snip~

I do believe that on the present course, there will come a tipping point – a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al Qaeda and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, such that al Qaeda as we know it, the organization that our Congress authorized the military to pursue in 2001, has been effectively destroyed.