“Political realities” are now justification for this nation – no doubt without consulting Congress – to commit an act of war against a nuclear power, because one of its citizens living in this country, and unallied with his own government, attacked us??

This is insane talk, as far as I’m concerned (how does it differ from Richard Armitage’s juvenile, bullying threats to foreign government officials during the Bush administration?). And it ties right in with Jim White’s diary today, detailing our government’s latest corrupt dealings with the dictatorial, nuclear-armed semi-client state of Pakistan:

We are approaching the one year anniversary since Jeremy Scahill disclosed the extensive JSOC-Blackwater secret war effort within Pakistan and yet there is no indication that either Barack Obama or David Petraeus sees a need to shut down the rogue operators there. Despite the occasional attempt to portray the US military as providing crucial relief efforts in the massive floods in Pakistan (such as in the accompanying photo), the reality is that US military relief to Pakistan has been derided as but a tiny fraction of the military relief provided in other recent world catastrophes. Last week’s sentencing of Aafia Siddiqui to eighty-six years in jail provoked massive protests across Pakistan. And now we are learning that NATO (which really means US) helicopters have killed over 50 people in air raids on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan over the weekend.

“Rogue operators” is putting it mildly.

If you fund and protect dictatorial client states, are you not a dictatorial state yourself? [Who doubts that we’re helping Yemen to repress the latter grassroots group, in the name of covertly chasing the “tiny” former group, in John’s excerpt @ 14: “The curious emergence of a tiny but well-publicized al Qaeda in southern Yemen amid what observers call a broad-based popular-based Southern Movement front that eschews the radical global agenda of al Qaeda…”]

Again, as with Yemen, we’re acting in Pakistan with the “permission” (bought at obscene cost to the U.S. taxpayer) of what passes for the government there. Even as that government nominally helps us track down the true targets of the 2001 force authorization. Thus, we are not in fact “at war” with Pakistan itself. Whatever U.S. forces are secretly doing in Pakistan, it isn’t fighting “a war with Pakistan.” But now the saber-rattlers in the administration think a car bomb in New York is worth risking a nuclear attack, (and a failed attack is worth threatening Pakistan with war), while Congress snoozes amidst its lobbyist largesse? I mean… Where does this end?

As we know all too well, our wildly-mistargeted and disproportionate response to 9/11 began with an Authorization for the Use of Military Force quickly rubberstamped by Congress back in 2001. A never-revisited (and, thus, apparently-permanent “military force, not law enforcement, authorization”) AUMF which the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has of late interpreted so broadly that this is how legitimate targets of that AUMF (and thus legitimate wartime-“protected” detainees in that conflict) are now legally defined in America (quoting Judge Reggie Walton’s recent summary of the lay of the land in his denial of the Sulayman habeas petition):

In AI-Bihani I, the petitioner relied on the international laws of war in arguing that his detention was unlawful because he was essentially a “civilian contractor,” and, pursuant to the laws of war, he could not be detained because anyone not “belonging to an official state military is a civilian, and civilians … must commit a direct hostile act, such as firing a weapon in combat, before they can be lawfully detained.” Id. at 871. The circuit rejected this argument, reasoning that “[t]here is no indication” from Congress that it “intended the international laws of war to act as extra-textual limiting principles for the President’s war powers under the AUMF.” Id. Rather, the circuit concluded that the appropriate sources for determining the scope of the President’s authority under the AUMF to detain an individual “are the sources courts always look to: the text of relevant statutes and controlling domestic caselaw.” Id. at 871-72.

[…]

Thus, under the law of this [D.C.] circuit, the government may establish the lawfulness of the petitioner’s detention by showing that he “engaged in hostilities … against the United States,” that he “purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” or that he “is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces.” AI-Bihani, 590 F.3d at 871. And, the determination of whether an individual is “part of’ the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces is one that “must be made on a case-by-case basis by using a functional rather than a formal approach.” Bensayah, _ F3d at _2010 WL 2640626, at *5. […] But, the government must do more than just prove that the detainee was an “independent … freelancer.” Bensayah, _ F3d at _,2010 WL 2640626 at *5.

– Judge Reggie Walton, July 20, 2010

How does merely being a “part of” the Taliban (once and apparently thus forever, however flimsy the evidence, unless you’re now part of our puppet Afghanistan government), al Qaeda, or “associated forces” (whatever that means) make one a “combatant” in an “armed conflict” with the United States under the 2001 AUMF, which identifies its targets as the perpetrators of 9/11 and their accomplices?? Never mind under the definition of an armed conflict under the law of war – which, of course, the two radicals on the Circuit who created the Al Bihani precedent threw out the window as inapplicable to government actors in the U.S. (according to their likeminded colleagues, via mere dicta, but according to Judge Walton’s interpretation, as part of their binding precedent)?

Don’t ask me. Ask federal district Judge Lewis Kaplan (a fitting New York colleague of Judge Richard Berman’s, it would appear), who had no trouble in July declaring that the “speedy trial” rights of Ghailani (whose federal trial began today), after years of post-indictment U.S. detention and torture (first in CIA custody abroad for two years, and then in military custody at Guantanamo) without trial, were neither here nor there. Meaning that his Constitutionally-guaranteed speedy trial rights were not abridged, according to Judge Kaplan (who had his conclusion, and was in desperate need of a justification), because Ghailani – charged with acts committed in Africa in 1998 – could lawfully have been swept up in 2004 under the 2001-authorized armed conflict as an “enemy combatant” merely for being a member of al Qaeda – and thus held indefinitely, whether or not he was ever prosecuted, or treated humanely, or provided POW protections, or, or, or… (‘whatever the guvmint says, Sir’).

My contempt for incumbent Members of Congress, for letting our nation reach this deeply deplorable and dangerous state of affairs, is off the charts.