The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times, about the suspected Boston Massacre bombers, includes the following passage:
Some Republican lawmakers want President Obama to declare Dzhokhar Tsarnaev an "enemy combatant," putting him into military detention and questioning him at length without a lawyer.
But the administration has said terrorism suspects arrested inside the United States should be handled exclusively in the criminal justice system, and gave no sign it intends to do otherwise in Mr. Tsarnaev's case. Moreover, there is no evidence suggesting that he is part of Al Qaeda; the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists.
A separate article that appears inside the paper uses the same formulation: "while the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a naturalized American citizen, is a Muslim, there is no known evidence suggesting that he is part of Al Qaeda. The United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists."
While this assertion that "The United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists" is so important that the Times repeats it, it's not clear that it's either relevant or accurate. First, what matters isn't so much whether the United States is in an armed conflict with the non-Al Qaeda Muslim extremists, but whether the non-Al Qaeda Muslim extremists are engaged in an armed conflict with us, which, at least in this particular case, they sure seem have to been (as those Marathon spectators now missing legs can attest). Second, though there may be "no known evidence suggesting he is part of Al Qaeda," he might have been inspired by Al Qaeda bomb manuals, magazines, or YouTube videos. Third, this concept of the United States being engaged in an armed conflict with "all Muslim extremists" is a straw man. We can be, and in fact are, in armed conflict with some non-Al Qaeda Muslim extremists, for example, the Taliban, without being in armed conflict with all of them (for example, Hamas).
None of this is an argument on the part of Smartertimes for handling this American citizen as an enemy combatant, especially in the absence of a congressional declaration of war. But given that in both Times news articles this claim about the United States being "engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists" is being made without attribution to any government official or outside expert, it struck me as slightly off key.