Operating system vendors have built entire “protected path” setups to guard audio and video all the way through the device chain. TVs and monitors now routinely use HDCP copy protection to secure their links over HDMI cables. Game consoles are packed with encryption schemes to prevent copied games from playing. Microsoft even goes out of its way to add encryption when Windows Media Center records unencrypted over-the-air TV content. Even the humble DVD, with its long-since-breached CSS encryption, offers more in the way of encryption.

But US drones, which spy on militants and rain down death from a distance, have none. The mind boggles, as it seems like the situation should be totally reversed: no encryption on legally-purchased content, more encryption on devices designed to watch and kill human beings.

But the fact Obama didn’t immediately bow down to the military and order up General McChrystal’s 40,000 troops the moment they were demanded was “dithering.” Too bad Johnson didn’t follow Kennedy’s lead and dither himself in Vietnam:

In November 1961 Kennedy sent Gen. Maxwell Taylor and foreign policy adviser Walt Rostow to South Vietnam. On their return they reported that it was possible for the South Vietnamese to defeat the Communist insurgents without an American takeover of the war effort if the United States provided strong political backing for the South Vietnamese government and provided substantially in-creased military and economic assistance. They further recommended that President Kennedy send 8,000 combat troops to South Vietnam. Kennedy decided against sending combat troops but authorized the deployment of up to 15,000 military advisers. By the time of Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 the U.S. effort in Vietnam was costing $400 million a year, and about 12,000 military advisers were providing assistance to the South Vietnamese military effort. By the end of 1963 there had been only 70 American casualties.

Of course, in “January 1964 the Joint Chiefs of Staff had sent President Johnson a memo urging him to increase the U.S. commitment and to consider a bombing campaign against North Vietnam. By following these two strategies the military hoped that the war could be won more quickly. The commitment of U.S. troops was doubled; by the end of 1964 there were 23,300 Americans serving in Vietnam.”

The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again — for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours — is obscene. All decent people should object. . . .

The reason it is so easy for the U.S. to declare wars, and to continue fighting year after year after year, is because so few Americans feel the actual pain of those wars. We’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than we fought in World Wars I and II combined. If voters had to choose right now between instituting a draft or exiting Afghanistan and Iraq, the troops would be out of those two countries in a heartbeat.

I don’t think our current way of waging war, which is pretty easy-breezy for most citizens, is what the architects of America had in mind. Here’s George Washington’s view, for example: “It must be laid down as a primary position and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal service to the defense of it.”

The court determined, essentially, that the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were “wars” because they constituted armed conflicts of sufficient size and scope. In essence, they were wars because they looked like wars, talked like wars, and walked like wars.

The court also determined, however, that the wars have ended. The court had to do so because under the statute the applicable statute of limitations begins to run again “three years after the termination of hostilities as proclaimed by the President . . . .” The court noted that it is very unclear when these wars ended or will end: “Traditionally, the end of a war is marked by the signing of a formal peace treaty. However, formal surrenders like those of Germany and Japan at the end of World War II, like formal declarations of war, are the modern exceptions.” The court also admitted that “a strong case can be made, given the continuing expenditures and loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the United States remains at war.” Nevertheless, the court finally decided the wars ended, respectively, with the recognition of the government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and with Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech in Iraq:

On December 22, 2001, the United States formally recognized and extended full diplomatic relations to the new government of Hamid Karzai.37 That recognition signaled the cessation of a state of war with Afghanistan. Accordingly, the statute of limitations with respect to the Afghan conflict, expired on December 22, 2004. Similarly, on May 1, 2003, President Bush, while aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, proclaimed that “[m]ajor combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.” Consequently, with regards to the Iraq conflict, the statute of limitations expired on May 1, 2006. (footnotes omitted)

I thought you’d like the good news.

p.s. The government apparently argued, but not very strenuously, that the ongoing “war on terror” constitutes a war as well. Of course, that would mean we’ll forever be at war. It’s not the first time the Bush Administration has made this argument; it has done so continuously since 2001. The court, like any body I’ve heard of presented with the argument, didn’t take it seriously:

At the hearing on the motion, there was also discussion of a global “war” on terrorism, waged principally against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. The use of the metaphor of war to describe the struggle against terrorism has been criticized. See Sir Adam Roberts, The ‘War on Terror’ in Historical Perspective, 47 SURVIVAL 101-130 (Summer 2005). I do not understand the government to be pressing the argument that the United States is “at war” with al Qaeda, at least in any traditional legal sense.