According to Bradford, these CLOACA scholars (try saying that aloud with a straight face) are wielding their expertise in “the service of Islamists seeking to destroy Western civilization and re-create the Caliphate.” Bradford does not provide an exhaustive list of names, but Jeremy Rabkin, a George Mason University law professor, inferred it from his footnotes:

Among those cited are: Gabriella Blum of the Harvard Law School, a former military lawyer for the Israel Defense Force; Ryan Goodman of NYU Law School, now serving as a senior policy adviser at the Department of Defense; Michael Scharf, a professor at Case Western Law School, who served as a legal advisor to the Iraqi government for the trial of Saddam Hussein and before that in the Legal Advisor’s office at the State Department; and Michael Walzer of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, whose book on the ethics of war has been assigned at U.S. military academies for decades.

Why, you might ask, would these law professors betray their country? Bradford offers a variety of unconvincing explanations. Among the nefarious acts CLOACA scholars (that never gets less ridiculous to type) are guilty of are “skepticism of executive power,” “professional socialization,” “pernicious pacifism,” and “cosmopolitanism.”

None of these are criminal acts or behaviors, of course. But that seems to be a technicality when Western civilization is at stake. “This radical development,” Bradford declares, “is celebrated in the Islamic world as a portent of U.S. weakness and the coming triumph of Islamism.” (He cites no source for this claim.)

To suppress this “fifth column”—which is his actual term for fellow academics with whom he disagrees—Bradford offers a range of options. First, he suggests introducing loyalty oaths and firing “disloyal scholars.” Next, he recommends charging them with material support of terrorism and even treason. He even suggests treating these American academics as “unlawful enemy combatants,” a legal term used to deny Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters the protections of U.S. and international law.

Shocking and extreme as this option might seem, CLOACA scholars, and the law schools that employ them, are—at least in theory—targetable so long as attacks are proportional, distinguish noncombatants from combatants, employ nonprohibited weapons, and contribute to the defeat of Islamism.

Yes, even “the law schools that employ them”—presumably places like Harvard and Yale—could be legitimate military targets. So, too, could their homes, where their families and children live. Even a journalist like myself could be a lawful military target if I happen to quote one of these professors, Bradford argues:

Further, the infrastructure used to create and disseminate CLOACA propaganda—law school facilities, scholars’ home offices, and media outlets where they give interviews—are also lawful targets given the causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited.

Perhaps you’re hesitant to imprison or kill American legal academics for criticizing the War on Terror. But be forewarned, your affinity for basic human rights and the Constitution will turn America into a post-apocalyptic wasteland:

Slavish adherence to a dysfunctional rule-set is a suicide pact, and what seems illiberal today will be overdue the day after Islamists immolate U.S. cities with nuclear devices. The goal of the West is neither territorial nor imperial: it is simply to discredit Islamism and destroy the will of Muslims to fight on its behalf, thereby to make possible, if they allow it, a civilizational coexistence, or, if they will not, to wipe Islamism, and if need be its adherents, from the earth.

One central flaw in this argument among many is its assumption that ISIS poses an existential threat to the United States.