“I don’t think there’s any question but that we are at war,” said then-Attorney-General designate Eric Holder at his confirmation hearingin January 2009, agreeing with Senator Lindsey Graham that the United States and Al Qaeda were embroiled in a global armed conflict. Three years later, with Guantanamo still open, military commission proceedings moving ahead, and terrorist suspects being killed on a routine basis by U.S. drones, Holder returned to the topic.  In a speech given earlier this month at Northwestern Law School, he reaffirmed his view that the country is at war with Al Qaeda, while acknowledging that it is not a conventional war. Holder’s speech, though short of a detailed legal justification of the U.S. practice of carrying out targeted killings of suspected terrorists, was the most thorough analysis of these issues that the Obama Administration has provided to date.  It built upon ideas previously expressed by State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh, in a March 2010 speech before the American Society of International Law, and Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson, in February 2012 speech at Yale Law School. Coming five months after a missile fired from a U.S. drone killed American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, Holder’s speech specifically focused on the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens.  Holder did not mention al-Awlaki by name, but he took pains to emphasize that “citizenship alone” does not protect terrorist suspects from targeting. Read More on Justia…