(Dawn Megli / Neon Tommy)

The Pentagon's top lawyer said there will be a time that stopping terrorism will be a criminal matter, not a military one.

Jeh Johnson, speaking at the Oxford Union, said that the battle against terrorist organizations, led by al-Qaida is reaching a turning point and the military-based strategy the United States has been using will end. That strategy is what started the war in Afghanistan, which has been going on for more than a decade.

“I do believe that on the present course there will come a tipping point, a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al-Qaida and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, such that al-Qaida as we know it, the organization that our Congress authorized the military to pursue in 2001, has been effectively destroyed,” he said according to The Guardian.

Johnson said that police and other law enforcement groups would take the lead on stopping terrorist groups.

Technically, murder and abductions, tactics used by terrorist groups, are criminal actions that law enforcement would generally handle. However, the United States has favored viewing terrorism as a military matter. The Supreme Court backed this decision in 2006.

The Obama administration has expanded the war on terror, with both military and CIA-based drone wars and covert kill lists.

Read more of Neon Tommy's coverage of the war on terror here.
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