war on terror

"War on terror" denotes, in American law and practice, the broad political, military and intelligence campaign launched by the US government after the attacks of 11 September 2001, directed against terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda and the states or networks that supported them. The term is not an independent statutory provision, but an overarching doctrine and political framework that legitimised a series of extraordinary state measures. The central legal basis was the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) of 2001, adopted by Congress, which authorised the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those behind the attacks or those who harboured them.

In the context of the CIA's secret interrogation programme, the term covers the counterterrorism logic under which US authorities established so-called black sites — secret detention facilities outside US borders — and employed interrogation methods that have subsequently been characterised as torture. The operations were carried out by reference to the wider war on terror and the special powers the presidency claimed to hold under the AUMF and the war powers of the executive branch.

The legal framework created by the "war on terror" doctrine was controversial from the outset. A central dispute concerned whether detained terrorism suspects were protected by the Geneva Conventions and by US legislation, including the right to habeas corpus. American case law — particularly the Supreme Court decisions in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) and Boumediene v. Bush (2008) — set limits on the executive's claims of unlimited room for action.

The legal reckonings in the wake of the programme have turned on whether the interrogation methods constituted criminal acts under American and international law, and on the responsibility and immunity of state actors. In 2014 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence published a detailed report documenting the scope of the programme and the methods behind it. In this context, "war on terror" is used as the overarching framework within which the acts took place — and which has subsequently been assessed in legal and political terms.