by Travis Normand

An article appeared yesterday (Feb. 14, 2013) on the HuffingtonPost.com titled Drone Attacks Spur Legal Debate On Definition of ‘Battlefield.’

The debate concerning the geographic limits of the battlefield is not a new one.  In fact, the debate has been ongoing at least since the U.S. declared that it was engaged in a “War on Terror.”  After all, terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda are organizations and they typically have no geographic nation or state.  So, contrary to the traditional war paradigm we are used to, when the U.S. sent troops into Afghanistan to combat the al-Qaeda organization, the U.S. was not going to war with Afghanistan.

However, the author of the above referenced HuffingtonPost.com article suggests that a 2002 Drone attack in Yemen is what “blew apart notions of ‘war’ and ‘battlefield’ which has guided the application of the legal traditions, treaties and laws of armed conflict for centuries.”

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