The goal of detecting future events has several implications and two of them are explored in this chapter. First, the objective of detecting future events means that whoever poses a threat has to be targeted and if the threat is posed by a number of individuals that increases over time, enmity is extended to those individuals. This is true even if they act in the name of a terrorist group that did not exist when the conflict started. From a legal perspective, this practice is facilitated by the uncertainties related to the temporal delineation of conflicts. Second, the objective of addressing future threats entails to act against individuals who are not presently perpetrating hostile acts. This practice requires that the traditional interpretation of direct participation in hostilities be subjected to a temporal change. Instead of suspending the protection of civilians solely when ‒ and only for such time as ‒ they engage in acts that reach a certain threshold of harm, targeting enemies because of the threat they pose for the future means extending direct participation in hostilities not only to preparatory acts, but also to signs revealing membership to an enemy group. This shift is facilitated by the insufficiently defined notion of “continuous combat function.”

This chapter takes up the “forever war” theme by returning to Iraq just prior to Obama’s troop pullout and to Afghanistan where he inherited a failing war. Coming into the White House, Obama fulfilled his campaign pledge to end Bush’s “dumb war” in Iraq but left the country vulnerable. The violence in the Syrian civil war attracted al Qaeda militants from Iraq. They formed the nucleus of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the most fearsome terrorist network in the world. ISIS seized land in Syria, invaded Iraq, and announced a caliphate. Obama answered Iraq’s pleas for help. US and allied airpower, along with SOF, turned the tide of battle. The Pentagon again used local allies; this time mostly Kurds who formed the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces. The SDF fought ISSI and the Damascus regime to carve out an enclave in Syria. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, Obama endorsed the Pentagon’s surge of troops to nearly 100,000 so as to exit the war as in Iraq. He changed course and stopped U.S. participation in combat roles in 2014. He decreased troops to around 8,000 before leaving office. At first Trump upped the troops and gave his generals greater freedom to act. Then, he, too, scaled them down to 2,500 in Afghanistan and Iraq, while negotiating with the Taliban to leave totally by May 1, 2021.

Contemporary war seems to be both perpetual and everywhere – not enclosed by neat pair of finite dates nor limited to a particular field of battle. Yet despite that ubiquity, war stories remain largely on the margins. The Hurt Locker, for instance, won the Academy Award for Best Picture (and five other Oscars to boot), but remains the lowest-grossing film ever to do so. This essay addresses the field of twenty-first-century representations of war, including work by Kevin Powers, Kayla Williams, Brian Castner, Siobhan Fallon, Brian Turner, and others, noting common themes such as the nature of an all-volunteer military, the widening gap between military and civilian cultures, the expanding presence of women, and changing experiences with technology and the nature of trauma. The essay also addresses the war stories that are immensely popular with the public – the ever-expanding cinematic universes of superheroes that are built on never-ending conflict and combat. These, too, are forever wars.