“Twenty-two years after Congress gave former President George W. Bush the greenlight to use military force against Iraq, the Biden administration is citing the same 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to justify the most recent deadly U.S. airstrike in Iraq.“
“The January 4 drone strike on a vehicle in a security district of bustling Baghdad reportedly killed at least three members of the Iranian-backed Harakat al-Nujaba militia, which the U.S. accuses of coordinating attacks on U.S. personnel still stationed in the region. However, the Iraqi military claims the militia operates under the country’s official security apparatus known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, and a spokesmanlikened the drone strike to a “terrorist attack.”
Iraqi leaders are furious, and observers across the world worry the strike is a sign that unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza could spark a wider regional conflict involving various militias and Iranian-backed groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
From President Latif Rashid on down to virtually every member of Iraq’s parliament, Iraqi officials unequivocally condemnedthe U.S. strike, warning the U.S. not to use Iraq as a “proxy battleground.”
“This is a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and security,” said Rashid in a post to social media after the airstrike last week. “We also condemn the attacks on Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. Iraq must not and will not be turned into a proxy battleground.”
U.S. officials defended the strike in Baghdad as an act of self-defense to deter drone attacks that have caused little damage but reportedly injured about 60 U.S. personnel stationed in Iraq and Syria,calling the Iraqi government an “important and valued partner.”
Iraqi lawmakers voted in 2020to expel remaining U.S. forces after a drone strike authorized by former President Donald Trump killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader, but the U.S. is still training and equipping Iraqi security forces, an effort U.S. taxpayers have funded for many years now. With the entire region on edge over the war in Palestine, this level of cooperation may be on the rocks.
“Priority must be given to dialogue as a means to defuse tensions and find common ground,” Rashid said.
In a memo to congressional leaders on Friday, President Joe Biden said he directed the strike — within the borders of a sovereign nation considered an ally and without authorization from Congress — under the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq, or AUMF, passed back in 2002. Biden also cited the 2001 AUMF that authorized the Bush administration to use force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks.
The strike was “necessary and proportionate” and in accordance with international law, the president wrote, adding that the U.S. military “stands ready to take further action, as necessary and appropriate, to address further threats or attacks.”
Anti-war and human rights groups have long pressured Congress to repeal both authorizations as a succession of presidents have used them to justify launching military operationsin at least 10 countries without going to Congress first. Both AUMFs have been central to justifying presidential authority to wage the “war on terror” over the past two decades. Multiple bipartisan attemptsatrepealing the authorizations have failed.
Mike Merryman-Lotze, a policy director at the pro-peace American Friends Service Committee, said the January 4 strike emphasizes the need for a repeal of the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs.
“Since they were first passed, every administration has used the AUMFs to justify global military actions without discussion [or] debate and often against the wills of the governments of the countries where military actions occur,” Merryman-Lotze said in an email. “Actions like the Trump Administration’s assassination of General Soleimani – also justified through the 2002 AUMF – have brought the U.S. to the brink of war.”
The response from Congress has been more muted, but a significant faction of Democrats and a handful of isolationist Republicans have spent years trying to repeal the 2002 AUMF in order to rein in runaway presidential war powers associated with the U.S.-led war on terror that destabilized Afghanistan, Iraq, and much of the Middle East.
President Joe Biden, who backedthe 2003 invasion of Iraq, previously said he supported bipartisan Senate legislation to repeal the 2002 AUMF that was reintroduced by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) in February, but that was before the Biden administration became a stalwart supporter of and supplier for Israel’s extremely deadly retaliatory strikes and invasion of the Gaza Strip.
The U.S.still has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and another 900 in Syria, ostensibly to help fight the remnants of the Islamic State, which temporarily carved out its own territory in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Syria’s civil war. It eventually suffered defeat in Iraq and Syria at the hands of an international coalition by 2019.
In response to the devastating war on the people of Gaza that followed the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, Iran proxy forces have reportedly launched dozens of drone attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria that have caused little damage to infrastructure but injured about 60 U.S. servicemembers and contractors,accordingto Voice of America.
“The U.S. should focus on securing a ceasefire in Gaza and ending the regional spread of conflict,” Merryman-Lotze said. “This attack moves us in the opposite direction.”
Democrats lost control of the House in 2022. In October, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) announced the drafting of a new AUMF that would allow the U.S. military to target Iran-backed groups. McCaulsaid he hoped the legislation would not be necessary, but Congress should be prepared to respond as Israel’s war on Gaza threatens to spill across borders. So far, the bill has not been introduced, but peace groups warn that even considering such a billcould inflame tensions in an already volatile situation.
In addition to the U.S. strike in Baghdad and an Israeli strike that killed a Hamas leader in Lebanon last week, an apparent ISIS bombing killed dozens of people in Iran gathered at a memorial for the anniversary of General Soleimani’s assassination in 2020 by a U.S. drone strike on Iraqi territory.
Tanya Goudsouzian, an analyst for Responsible Statecraft, noted the U.S. drone strike on the militiamen in Baghdad came just one day after the four-year anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination turned to tragedy in Iran. It’s hard to imagine a worse time to assassinate a leader of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, Goudsouzian argued, and the unilateral drone strike ordered by Biden can only “intensify the risk to American diplomats, troops, and civilians in Iraq.”
“Emotions were already running high among Iraqis and Iranians, and this could easily be exploited,” Goudsouzianwrote. “Calls for revenge are resonating throughout the country, and it is hard to ignore the high probability that fresh retaliatory attacks will follow from Thursday’s strike.”
Mike Ludwigis a staff reporter at Truthout based in New Orleans. He is also the writer and host of “Climate Front Lines,” a podcast about the people, places and ecosystems on the front lines of the climate crisis. Follow him on Twitter: @ludwig_mike.
“THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT (POGO)“ By Mark Thompson
“Long past time to scrap existing approvals.
The existing pair of [“Authorizations for Use of Military Force”] AUMFs represent an open-ended invitation for a president to bend them to initiate combat, anywhere in the world, without any additional congressional OK, all under the guise of waging a “war on terror.”
“The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with clashes in several other nations, happened under the authority Congress granted President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2002 shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks.
It’s long past time for Congress to revoke that pair of Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs) and come up with something better, five Democratic representatives told President Biden in a January 21 letter(PDF). “The 2001 and 2002 AUMFs were both passed nearly 20 years ago and bear little resemblance to the threats we face today,” said the lawmakers, led by California Representative Barbara Lee. She was the lone lawmaker to vote against that 2001 authorization, aimed at punishing Afghanistan, three days after 9/11. “Over the past 19 years, three successive presidents have used military force pursuant to the 2001 AUMF in more than seven countries, against a continuously expanding list of targetable adversaries.” The Iraq-inspired 2002 AUMF “is not a necessary source of authorization for any current military operations,” they added, but it “has been stretched to cover past operations Congress never authorized, including the January 2020 killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.” The Biden administration has indicated its willingness to modify the authorizations.
Ever since World War II, members of Congress have been loath to debate and vote to declare—or vote against declaring—war (e.g. Vietnam, Panama, Iraq 1.0, the Balkans, etc).
“Common sense will tell you it’s not right,” Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, toldPolitico January 21. “Bin Laden’s on the bottom of the ocean. Saddam Hussein—his demise—it’s been over a decade ago, too.”
So why do lawmakers continue the charade, allowing combat that could lead to a wider war without their buy-in? “I’ve talked to many members—I’m not gonna mention names—a lot of them want war, or they want us out, but they don’t want to vote on it,” said Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general who served in Iraq. “They don’t want to take a risky vote. And it’s not right. This is one of the most important things Congress is supposed to decide.”
“Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution over President Nixon’s veto in 1973 to reassert its constitutional prerogatives with respect to war and peace in the final stages of the Vietnam War. The system is obviously broken.
Section 4(a) of the Resolution establishes reporting requirements to prevent the president from taking the country to war in secret. In the absence of a declaration of war or other statutory authorization, the president is subject to multi-tiered obligations to report on certain triggering activities of U.S. armed forces within 48 hours to Congress.”
‘Monday, Oct. 4th marked the fourth anniversary of the attack on U.S. forces at Tongo Tongo, Niger by ISIS-Greater Sahara that killed four U.S. soldiers. The attack surprised not only the American public but also members of Congress, many of whom were apparently caught unawares by U.S. armed forces engaging in ground combat in Niger or Africa more generally.
But why were members of Congress taken by surprise? After all, as a former U.S. official told Crisis Group (where I work), Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAF) “had been doing s**t like Niger for years,” meaning partnered operations that involved going on patrols and sometimes engaging in combat. Such “advise, assist, accompany” operations are one of the ways U.S. armed forces work “by, with, and through” partners. These operations were sometimes conducted in connection with a statute – 10 U.S.C. §127e – that authorizes the Pentagon to spend appropriated funds in support of foreign counterterrorism forces. According to a second former official, in practice the Pentagon used 127e to create “clear, unambiguous proxies of the United States,” which U.S. forces could then partner with on combat operations. In the aftermath of Tongo Tongo, this official was stunned that Congress failed to appreciate what “by, with, and through” meant in practice despite the fact that U.S. special operations forces had been engaged in such dangerous operations for many years.
What explains Congress’s surprise that U.S. armed forces were engaging in combat in Niger and the more general disconnect between U.S. military operations and congressional oversight? In significant part it’s due to the lack of prior executive branch reporting under the early warning system established by the 1973 War Powers Resolution. As described in a new Crisis Group report, Overkill: Reforming the Legal Basis for the U.S. War on Terror, U.S. armed forces in Africa on “advise, assist, and accompany” missions with local partner forces sometimes appeared to have engaged in hostilities (for example exchanging fire with enemy forces, taking casualties, launching airstrikes) without clear statutory authority. Under the War Powers Resolution, the president is required to report such hostilities to Congress within 48 hours unless already authorized by statute. But the White House never submitted the required reports and thus Congress never received the clear warnings that the United States might be sliding toward conflicts in a number of African countries. In this piece, I offer details of the incidents in question, suggest possible reasons for the absence of reporting, and propose steps to increase transparency in U.S. military operations going forward.
War Powers Hostilities Reports: Law and Executive Branch Implementation
Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution over President Nixon’s veto in 1973 to reassert its constitutional prerogatives with respect to war and peace in the final stages of the Vietnam War. Specifically, Congress sought to forestall any president from taking the country to war without congressional authorization or even without congressional awareness (as had apparently been the case for aspects of the war in Indochina, such as the bombing of Cambodia).
To this end, Section 4(a) of the Resolution establishes reporting requirements to prevent the president from taking the country to war in secret. In the absence of a declaration of war or other statutory authorization, the president is subject to multi-tiered obligations to report on certain triggering activities of U.S. armed forces within 48 hours to Congress. First, she must report when U.S. military forces are introduced into “hostilities” (which the executive branch interprets narrowly, to include exchanges of fire with hostile forces and airstrikes) or introduced into situations of imminent hostilities. Such hostilities reports are the focus of this essay. Second, even if U.S. forces are not engaging in hostilities, the president must report the introduction of “combat equipped” forces into a country (which the executive branch reads as forces equipped with crew-served weapons such as machine guns requiring more than one person to operate and mortars). Third, the president must also report a substantial enlargement of such combat equipped forces in a country where such forces are already present.
Notably, under Section 5(b) of the 1973 Resolution, the submission of a report under the first of these scenarios – introduction of U.S. forces into hostilities or situations of imminent risk – also starts a 60-day clock for the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from such hostilities unless Congress declares war or otherwise enacts specific statutory authorization for the use of force.
If Congress has already authorized the use of force under a statutory authorization, the executive branch reads the War Powers resolution not to require reporting of activities within 48 hours under the provisions described above, though such actions might be included in periodic reports the White House submits to Congress every six months.
After the enactment of the War Powers Resolution, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee asked the Secretary of State how the executive branch intended to implement the new law, specifically the reporting requirements of Section 4. In an Oct. 7, 1974 letter, Secretary Kissinger explained that “Secretary [of Defense] Schlesinger and I have agreed that our respective legal counsels will be jointly responsible for bringing immediately to our attention cases where it would be appropriate for us to recommend to the President that a report be submitted to the Congress pursuant to Section 4 of the War Powers Resolution.”
Kissinger further explained:
[The] Office of the Secretary of Defense instituted an arrangement whereby the Legal Adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff informs the Department of Defense General Counsel of all troop deployment actions routed through the Chairman’s office which could raise a question as to whether a report to the Congress is required. In implementation of that arrangement a written instruction was promulgated establishing a War Powers Reporting System within the Operations Directorate of the JCS. Arrangements have been made for [the State] Department’s Legal Adviser to receive the same information as is supplied to the DOD General Counsel. Consultations between the two departments’ legal counsels will be arranged as needed.
Whether the arrangements for reporting hostilities to Congress as described by Kissinger formally remain in place is unclear based on publicly available information. Congress should want to know.
Missing War Powers Reports from the “War on Terror” in Africa
As noted in Crisis Group’s recent report and other prior public reporting (including an overview by Politico’s Wesley Morgan), since 2015 U.S. armed forces, often on advise, assist, and accompany missions, appear to have engaged in several incidents that, absent statutory authorization, would seem to fall within the ambit of hostilities for purposes of the War Powers Resolution in at least five African countries and without clear statutory authority. Although the White House reported on other hostilities during this time period, none of the incidents described below were reported by the president within 48 hours to Congress. Nor was any of this fighting widely understood to be authorized at the time by the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (2001 AUMF), the principal statutory basis for so-call the “war on terror.” In some situations, however, as with Al-Shabaab in Somalia and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the executive branch would declare the group to be an “associated force” covered by the AUMF sometime after the incident occurred. In other situations, it is unclear whether the executive branch subsequently determined that the 2001 AUMF somehow authorized these combat incidents. In many cases, these incidents only came to light years later when journalists reported on U.S. service members receiving medals for valor or injuries sustained in combat.
Consider a few examples of such hostilities:
Before the Tongo Tongo Attack
Somalia: Beginning in 2015, U.S. armed forces were reported by various media outlets to have engaged in ground combat and conducted airstrikes against al Shabaab foot soldiers. A Green Beret was awarded a Silver Star for his actions alongside Somali and Kenyan forces during one particularly intense firefight against Al Shabaab in July 2015, including for “contributing to 173 enemy killed and 60 more wounded.” The Pentagon characterized some of these actions as having been taken in the “collective self-defense” of partner forces. Although the Obama administration had previously explained in 2015 that it was targeting members of al Shabaab who were also part of al-Qaeda (and tended to be high-ranking figures in al Shabaab), such a theory would not explain combat against al Shabaab foot soldiers. It was only in late 2016 that the Obama administration announced the group as a whole was covered by the 2001 AUMF.
Mali: In November 2015, U.S. special operations forces in Bamako rushed to the Radisson Hotel after gunmen linked to AQIM seized the building and hostages, including a number or American citizens. Both Army and Marine special operators received awards for valor in subsequent battle at the hotel during which U.S. forces exchanged fire with the jihadists while rescuing hostages. Although the jihadist attack on the hotel was widely reported in the press, the Pentagon initially denied that U.S. military personnel were directly involved in rescue operations.
Tunisia: In February 2017, according to an award citation quoted by the New York Times, U.S. marines accompanying Tunisian partners “got into a fierce fight against members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” along the Tunisian-Algerian border. A former U.S. official who confirmed the incident to Crisis Group, described one marine being shot during the battle when a bullet ricocheted under his body armor. The official also noted that U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft was overhead during the fighting.
Cameroon: In a 2017 incident in northern Cameroon described in the recent Crisis Group report, U.S. Navy SEALs accompanied a Cameroonian partner force to a compound flying an ISIS flag. While the SEALs took up overwatch from some 300m away, the Cameroonian troops approached the compound and called upon its occupants to present themselves. An unidentified man emerged from the compound with an AK-47, and a Cameroonian soldier tried to fire upon him, but the soldier’s gun reportedly jammed. Acting in what a former official characterized as “collective self-defence” of the Cameroonian forces, a SEAL sniper shot and killed the man with the AK-47.
These hostilities in Somalia, Mali, Tunisia, and Cameroon all occurred prior to the attack on U.S. forces at Tongo Tongo, Niger in October 2017. Although both current and former officials told Crisis Group that the Tongo Tongo attack was a watershed moment in terms of U.S. military operations in Africa, it was not the first or last time U.S. armed forces engaged in counterterrorism-related hostilities in Africa.
After the Tongo Tongo Attack
Niger: Also described in the new Crisis Group report, a few months after the Tongo Tongo attack, U.S. forces engaged in what one former official described as a “big battle” with a different ISIS affiliate, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISIS-WAP), which is a splinter of Boko Haram. In December 2017, U.S. Green Berets accompanied local Nigerien forces, when they became involved in fighting in the Lake Chad region of southeastern Niger bordering Nigeria and Chad. Although U.S. forces were a few hundred meters back from the forward line of troops, they nonetheless engaged in combat, including by providing supporting mortar fire. The Trump administration publicly reported the incident in cursory fashion in March 2018, and, after questioning by The New York Times, provided a brief statement.
Mali: In 2018, according to the Military Times, U.S. forces with a military observer group attached to the U.N. mission in Mali came under attack and several servicemembers were injured by jihadists in Timbuktu. During the jihadist assault, which involved rockets, mortars, and car bombs, U.S. troops assembled and protected several dozen Malian civilians while armed only with their pistols. One of the U.S. service members who survived the attack told the Military Times, “the severity [of the incident] was so, so played down.”
Possible Breakdowns in War Powers Reporting
Although the Department of Defense may have provided classified briefings or reports under statutory requirements other than the War Powers Resolution to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in connection with some or all of these incidents, the White House did not submit any of the required hostilities reports under the War Powers Resolution. Because briefings and reports provided by the Pentagon to its own committees are typically classified and limited to those defense committees, such communications are not an adequate substitute for the much more widely-distributed and typically public hostilities reports under the War Powers Resolution. In interviews with Crisis Group, congressional staff and former U.S. officials noted that even if some committee staff or members had been informed of some aspects of these incidents, both the fact that U.S. forces were engaged in combat and the legal significance of these hostilities may not have been readily apparent. One former official cited the danger of important facts getting buried in such briefings or reports. Certainly after the Tongo Tongo attack, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) who sits on both the Senate Foreign Relations and Defense Committees and is one of the most engaged members of Congress on war powers, appeared taken aback by what he had learned about the true nature of U.S. military operations in Africa.
It is difficult to know why the White House failed to report the incidents to Congress as required under the executive branch’s own definition of hostilities. The difficulty in ascertaining that information is due in part to the many links in the War Powers reporting chain between U.S. special operations forces deployed in Africa and the President in the Oval Office.
There are at least three possible explanations.
First, there could have been a breakdown of communication within the executive branch, either internal to DoD or between DoD and the State Department, with respect to information relating to the introduction of U.S. forces into hostilities. According to one former official interviewed by Crisis Group, any time U.S. forces on an “advise, assist, accompany” mission in Africa fired a weapon off the range, the incident was reported to AFRICOM headquarter for War Powers reporting purposes. Whether or not this occurred in every instance is challenging to verify, though this former official stated that the commander of AFRICOM was aware of both the 2017 sniping incident in Cameroon and the battle latter that year against ISIS-WAP in Niger. There could have been a failure by AFRICOM to timely report hostilities to the Legal Adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Even if the relevant information reached the appropriate officials at the Pentagon, a former official told Crisis Group that the only clear guidance from former Secretary of Defense Mattis with respect to Africa was “to keep Africa off the front page.” In this context, the Pentagon may have sought to avoid highlighting that U.S. armed forces were in combat on the continent.
A second possibility is that at least some actors in the executive branch wanted to avoid reporting hostilities as that could have triggered the 60-day clock under the War Powers Resolution for the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces. There is some precedent for this. Despite multiple U.S. servicemembers being killed by hostile fire in El Salvador during the 1980s, the Reagan administration never filed a single hostilities report for the country despite a lawsuit brought by members of Congress. (See this comprehensive database of reports compiled by Tess Bridgeman and colleagues.)
A third potential explanation is that some officials within the executive branch, especially those closest to the operations as they were conducted, believed the 2001 AUMF covered all terrorism-related hostilities regardless of the jihadist group(s) involved, and thus did not understand the War Powers Resolution’s reporting requirements as relevant in the first place.
Whatever the reason, the absence of reporting under the War Power Resolution meant that neither the American public nor the Congress were fully aware of the extent to which U.S. armed forces were engaging in combat in Africa.
Fixing the Warning System
The system is obviously broken. There is no other way to characterize a system that has resulted in the kinds of surprises described above. But in order to understand how to fix it, the executive branch, Congress, and the public must first know what exactly is broken and why. Congress is best positioned to get to the bottom of this problem. The foreign relations and defense committees should seek answers from the Departments of State and Defense as to why hostilities reports were not filed within 48 hours in connection with the incidents described above.
If information regarding hostilities was not shared within the executive branch as specified in the Kissinger letter, Congress should determine where that breakdown occurred. If officials within the executive branch reached a considered judgment at the time of these incidents that no War Powers report was legally required, either because the 2001 AUMF provided statutory authority for the hostilities or for some other reason, Congress should suss out those legal theories. If it turns out that expansive and after the fact interpretations of the 2001 AUMF were used to cover these incidents, that is yet another reason for Congress and the administration to replace the 2001 statute with a narrowly tailored authority that clearly specifies where and against whom the U.S. military is authorized to use force.
In any case, looking forward, Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin should follow the examples of their respective predecessors, Kissinger and Schlensiger, and publicly explain how they intend to ensure “full and timely” compliance with the reporting requirements of the War Powers Resolution.
ConclusionThe War Powers Resolution was enacted in part to prevent any president from taking the country to war in secret. If the executive branch fails to report hostilities as required under the Resolution or under any successor statute such as the National Security Powers Act, there is a great risk that the United States will inadvertently and unwittingly slide into new conflicts as ostensibly “advise, assist, and accompany” operations cross the line into combat. The effectiveness of war powers reforms will depend in part on rigorous reporting. They will also require that use of force authorizations be narrowly tailored so that the executive branch cannot point to them as a reason for not reporting hostilities in new parts of the world. Congress should focus on both priorities, sending the executive branch a signal that it is serious about timely and rigorous war powers reporting under current law, and embarking on the overdue task of reforming the 2001 AUMF.”
Brian Finucane (@BCFinucane) is senior adviser with the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group. Prior to joining Crisis Group in 2021, he served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State.
“The United States has been at war for the last 18 years.
While the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war, the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMF) have allowed three U.S. presidents to expand our military presence across the globe.
I am certain that we will continue down this path unless Congress takes back their responsibility to decide if our troops should be sent to war.
It’s clear that there is a financial cost to war.
Endless war has caused our federal budget deficit to soar to a startling one trillion dollars per year. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone have cost us more than $6 trillion with no end to the violence in sight. Yet and still, the lack of congressional action to repeal the AUMF are inching us closer and closer to another dangerous conflict — one with potentially more devastating stakes — with Iran.
Though the Middle East may seem like it is worlds away for many of us, war and its resounding impacts feel closer to home. Whether you were alive during the Korean or Vietnam Wars, or born after 9/11 and have never lived in a conflict-free world, war has become eerily familiar, if not normal.
I’ve personally witnessed the human cost of war, of veterans physically and emotionally scarred for life. My brother was killed in 1967, six months after his arrival in Vietnam. He was loved, West Point-trained, and he had a bright future.
Then in 1984, twelve years after he served in Vietnam, my nephew snapped and shot both his parents and himself.
But this only part of the story. As a person of faith, I can’t in good conscience only look at how war has affected us in the United States.
Lately, the “art of the deal” supersedes civil diplomacy.
But with sanction after sanction intended to force Iran’s hand, we are instead promoting corruption and engaging in a dangerous game that has us teetering towards nuclear war.
Frighteningly, the administration said the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs could be used to justify potentially going to war with Iran.
Thankfully, lawmakers are paying attention and working to prevent this from happening. Our own U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Virginia, has shown leadership on this issue.
She supported the bipartisan Khanna-Gaetz amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to prohibit an unauthorized war with Iran and help us avoid unnecessary, violent confrontation in the future.
That amendment passed the House by a vote of 251-170.
House leaders Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer will be looking to her as they negotiate the final version of the NDAA with the U.S. Senate.
We a looking to Rep. Luria to work with her colleagues in Congress to ensure that the final NDAA contains provisions that prohibit unauthorized war with Iran and repeals the 2002 AUMF to help reassert Congress’s authority over war and peace.
War is never the answer. The human toll at home and abroad, as well as the ballooning financial burden of these endless wars are too much to bear.
Congress and the administration must shift the focus from military intervention to diplomacy if we are to achieve lasting and sustainable peace.”
“Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) — the law passed after 9/11 has been used by three presidents to justify military action in 14 countries. The majority of Americans support a new approach abroad.
Concerned Veterans for America” and “VoteVets”, are advancing a more restrained American foreign policy.“
“In today’s hyper-partisan climate, it is rare for a majority of Americans to agree on anything, let alone something as important to our country’s future as foreign policy. Yet, it’s happening.
Our organizations, Concerned Veterans for America and VoteVets, are doing just that. We have historically clashed during election cycles and bitterly debated how the Department of Veterans Affairs can best serve our nation’s veterans. Yet, we are setting differences aside to advance a more restrained American foreign policy.
With the U.S. role in the world at the forefront of public discussion, it is clearer than ever the majority of Americans support a new approach abroad. Much like the partnership between our two organizations, we believe Americans are willing to reject partisan labels in favor of resolving endless wars, removing troops from Syria and Afghanistan, and pursuing a foreign policy that deters threats and encourages mutually beneficial trade and diplomacy.
To further these goals, we are urging Congress to reclaim its constitutional role in authorizing military action abroad and to ensure such a weighty responsibility does not rest solely with the executive branch. With elected representatives vigorously debating U.S. involvement in the world, American interests and the well-being of its citizens will be more thoroughly considered.
In short, an engaged Congress is more accountable to its constituents, more responsible for American security, and more invested in our economic prosperity.
Fortunately, we are seeing hopeful signs that Congress may begin to reassert itself.
Earlier this year, and for the first time ever, Congress used the War Powers Act to demand an end to American support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Also, the House of Representatives passed a measure to repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) — the law passed after 9/11 that authorized military force in Afghanistan, but which has been used by three presidents to justify military action in 14 countries.
One of the most significant moves toward restoring the balance of power was the passage of a measure that would effectively bar the president from taking offensive military action against Iran without approval from Congress. Cosponsored by two unlikely allies, Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., an outspoken Trump supporter, and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, this provision would enforce the law, by making clear that the president has no authority to use any existing AUMF to launch an offensive attack against Iran, requiring Congress to debate, approve and authorize offensive military action against that country.
A similar measure received the support of half the Senate. Unfortunately, too many members chose to continue the status quo instead of facing the hard issues and difficult decisions.
A majority of members in both the House and Senate have now voted in support of restricting the executive branch and reasserting the legislative branch in matters of war, just as the Constitution outlines.
Alongside Congress, the American people are largely united in their desire for fewer wars, and a recent poll shows they don’t support a war with Iran. Accordingly, it is critical that members of the NDAA conference committee fight to keep the House-passed Khanna-Gaetz amendment in the final report. Not only would it be a big step toward restoring the constitutional checks and balances that would lead to a more restrained foreign policy, it’s what the American people want.
Rethinking U.S. foreign policy is no simple task. It takes strong, principled leaders willing to honestly evaluate the implications of such significant decisions as sending men and women into battle. Little by little, through measures like the Khanna-Gaetz amendment, our lawmakers can ensure the American people are not unnecessarily embroiled in another endless war that doesn’t serve our national interests or make us any safer.”
“Congress overwhelmingly passed the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. It is a sweeping law crafted by lawyers from the administration of President George W. Bush to grant him unprecedented power to wage what he would dub the “War on Terror.” A mere 60 words, both Bush and now Obama have used the 2001 AUMF as their legal justification for the President’s Surveillance Program, which gave rise to the NSA controversies; indefinite detention and the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; signature drone strikes from Somalia to Pakistan; and virtually every use of U.S. force to fight terrorism across the globe in the last 13 years. Congress next passed the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq.
When President Barack Obama announced his strategy to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria last week, the former constitutional law professor and 3-year senator who campaigned for the presidency on a promise to end the never-ending war in Iraq launched another indefinite war in the Middle East against the terrorist group. He did so using the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, the same laws he once condemned, and without a vote from Congress on the laws’ new purpose more than a decade later
Obama’s reversal on the AUMFs is dramatic. His administration recently mapped out a foreign policy at National Defense University in May 2013 to get the U.S. “off a perpetual wartime footing,” in part by refining and repealing these Bush-era laws. And the ramifications, legal analysts say, will have a ripple effect beyond the midterm elections or even the last years of the Obama administration.
As the president himself argued at National Defense University, “Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states.”
“So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further,” Obama said. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”
Just not yet.
Al-Qaeda by Any Other Name
Over 3 months, 164 air strikes and nearly 2,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq, the Obama administration has insisted the president is acting within his authority as commander in chief, as endowed by Article 2 of the Constitution. Though the administration has issued a series of War Powers Resolution Letters to Congress, Obama officials have emphasized their actions are “consistent with” — rather than beholden to — the resolution’s 60-day limit for how long U.S. forces can be engaged in hostilities abroad without seeking congressional authorization.
In mid-August, as congressional aides and legal scholars alike expressed increasing skepticism of the legal argument for the administration’s expanding mission, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Defense One that the White House still supported the repeal of the 2002 AUMF. But she continued: “We are reviewing the applicability of the 2001 AUMF to this situation, which would be in addition to the president’s constitutional authority as noted in the War Powers Resolution report.”
Because neither the 2001 nor the 2002 AUMF included a sunset date, both still exist as statutory authorities. But given the administration’s stated position on the AUMFs, it came as some surprise when on a background call ahead of Obama’s primetime address Wednesday night, senior administration officials said for the first time they would now be relying on the 2001 AUMF, rather than the president’s constitutional powers alone, as the basis for military action. Then, on Friday, the White House told The New York Times that the 2002 Iraq AUMF additionally would serve as “an alternative statutory authority basis on which the president may rely.”
In response to a number of questions about how the administration can be relying now on the 13-year-old, 2001 AUMF, White House spokesman Josh Earnest argued Thursday the Islamic State is the “true inheritor of Osama bin Laden’s legacy.”
“The 2001 AUMF continues to apply to ISIL because of their decade-long relationship with al-Qaeda, their continuing ties to al-Qaeda; because they have continued to employ the kind of heinous tactics that they previously employed when their name was al-Qaeda in Iraq; and finally, because they continue to have the same kind of ambition and aspiration that they articulated under the previous name,” Earnest said, calling al-Qaeda’s stated disavowal of the Islamic State “one internal disagreement that was aired in public.”
The Islamic State is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who joined the insurgency in Iraq shortly after the 2003 invasion. He was a known mid-level bomb facilitator who survived long enough to bubble up in 2010 as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Baghdadi and other fighters from AQI would eventually form the Islamic State. On Aug. 14, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, published a statement on its website pledging its support for the Islamic State, and the groups reportedly exchange advice. But in February, al Qaeda leadership formally disassociated from the Islamic State, marking the first time the group has formally disavowed a former affiliate, according to the WashingtonPost.
John Bellinger, legal advisor to the National Security Council and the State Department under Bush, said in response to the administration “considering” the 2001 AUMF — weeks before Obama’s address — that administration lawyers could not conclude “in good conscience” that the Islamic State is an associated force with al-Qaeda. Bellinger was in the White House situation room with then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice preparing for a morning staff meeting on Sept. 11, 2001, when they heard the first reports of the attacks. Bellinger told Defense One that Obama’s address marked a “dramatic reversal of course” and a “remarkable change in legal position.”
“To the surprise of everyone who has been following the issue, in the last 48 hours the administration has said no, the reason that the president has all the authority that he needs is not that he’s relying on the Constitution: There is congressional authorization under the 2001 AUMF.”
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, said both AUMFs are problematic, from a legal standpoint.
“The problem with the 2002 AUMF is it talks about using force against Iraq,” he said. “It’s hard to square the language, using force against Iraq is not the same as using force in Iraq, particularly not when we’re allied with the Iraqi government. And it’s a bit of a mislabeling the problem with the 2001 resolution for the use of military force — it’s very hard to argue that ISIL is an associated force, given that al Qaeda has expelled the group.”
Bellinger said of the argument that the Islamic State is the “heir” to bin Laden, “It does seem to be a stretch.”
“Of course, I haven’t seen the intelligence, but the administration has not suggested that they have evidence of association or at least any significant connection,” he said. “This seems to be more of a case where the lawyers have been sent back to the drawing board and told, ‘We want to rely on the 2001 AUMF, come up with your best arguments.’ So this seems to be more of a political justification, a political decision to rely on the 2001 AUMF, rather than a carefully laid out legal case. And it’s politically very convenient because one, the president doesn’t have to ask for and get an authorization right now, and two, the War Powers Act wouldn’t be triggered.”
‘Mugged by the Reality of Terrorism’
The administration has sought to differentiate the Islamic State fight from Bush’s full-scale Iraq War, emphasizing that it is more akin to the counterterrorism operations the U.S. has been conducting for years in Somalia and Yemen. It has also tried to prepare the American people for a sustained, prolonged campaign, likely to take years and extend beyond Obama’s presidency. But there is another key contrast between Obama’s war against the Islamic State and Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: Bush went to Congress for authorization.
As Obama considered intervening in Libya in 2011, White House officials said he didn’t require authorization from Congress under the War Powers Act. But as the U.S. military involvement extended beyond the time limits of the War Powers Resolution, officials then argued the conflict didn’t amount to “hostilities.” And almost exactly a year ago, when considering air strikes against Syria after President Bashar al-Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” by using chemical weapons, Obama again said he could act without congressional approval because the situation represented a potential threat to the U.S. But he also sent Congress a War Powers Resolution, and said lawmakers should decide. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., never brought the measure to the floor because he did not have the votes. Obama did not conduct the strikes.
“I think they’re learning the wrong lessons from last fall,” said Barry Pavel, vice president and director of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. Pavel served in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for almost 18 years and then as senior director for defense policy and strategy for the National Security Council under both Bush and Obama. “Last fall I was shocked that they went to Congress [for strikes against Syria] … I thought it was a significant undermining of presidential prerogatives and precedent.”
But, Pavel told Defense One, “When you’re talking about an operation for ‘years,’ it’s pretty significant and it’s of a scale and expected duration that warrants a discussion with the American people, not altogether unlike the Iraq invasion. I would as gently as possible suggest that they should consider [congressional authorization], especially as he hands it off to his successor.”
“We don’t know how this is going to play out,” he continued. “You want other people along for the ride, a political sharing of risk and responsibilities, as a nation.”
Wittes offered two reasons Obama would seek to rely on existing AUMFs and not come to Congress for new authorities. “The first is presidents don’t like asking permission for things,” he said, “and the second is Congress doesn’t like to vote.”
“We have tended to style this as a migration of war power to the president, as a usurpation,” Wittes said. “But it’s actually as much an abdication and abandonment by Congress of their authority, as it is a presidential claim of power.”
While Bellinger agreed “Congress has essentially has been let off the hook” by the president’s argument he is relying on the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs, he said rather than providing Obama political cover, the move opens him up to significant criticism — particularly from his base.
“He said he wanted to repeal and refine the AUMF and that he would not sign any law to expand it,” he said. “So here he has not signed a law to expand it, he’s expanded it himself, and contributed to one of its most significant expansions, to go after a new group in Iraq and Syria.”
“He’s essentially just come full circle,” Bellinger said. “He’s now been forced to confront the real reality of terrorism … six years later, he’s having to confront a really vicious terrorist group. It goes and beheads a couple of Americans and it’s much harder for him to say, ‘We should just treat this as a law enforcement matter. We need to move off a war footing and move on with our lives.’”
“He’s been essentially mugged by the reality of terrorism.”
“DEFENSE ONE”
ROSE COVERED GLASSES 