All’s ‘Fare’ in War http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/07/06/alls-fare-in-war/

Existing legislation in the US making it illegal to provide “material support” to any group designated as terrorist is itself Lawfare, using deliberately vague language to justify nearly anything if a terrorist group is in any way involved or can plausibly be implicated. The broad language makes it easy to initiate this type of litigation, so it is reasonable to assume that more of this will be coming from the well-funded Shurat HaDin, much of it probably playing out in American courts. Any group deemed to be hostile to Israel will be attacked and litigated against. Many of the charges will be frivolous but those who are sued will have to waste time and resources defending themselves, which is precisely what is intended.

When the pro-Israel agenda is combined with a general tendency by Republican and Democrat alike in Washington to legalize unconstitutional behavior, it becomes clear that Lawfare is here to stay. Unlike invading a country and having to explain why, it incrementally accomplishes the same objective of neutralizing enemies with little fanfare or warning. Canadian legislators are already considering making any criticism of Israel a hate crime, and once the idea takes hold here in the United States something similar is sure to follow, creating yet another basis for litigation.

And let’s not forget the possibility that the US government will someday make it illegal to criticize any and all wars it is fighting — the precedent for doing just that already exists in the Espionage Act of 1917, which is still on the statute books. Torture, targeted assassination, and wars of choice are already judged to be “legal” by those in charge in Washington. It just requires a bit more fine tuning using Lawfare to produce the kind of country where political dissent rapidly becomes an endangered species.

[see next article below by dr allen sabrosky...