AUMF
continued
On September 18, 2001, the U.S. Congress passed an Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) to allow the U.S. president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
In October 2002, Congress passed a second AUMF which gave the U.S. president the authority to “use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq).” This authorization very specifically refers to Iraq.
Between 2018 and 2020, the United States engaged in what was characterized as “counterterrorism operations” in 85 countries. The Bush, Obama, Trump I, and Biden administrations all argued that the 2001 AUMF gave the sitting U.S. president a green light to fight terrorism in places that are so obviously beyond the original mandate that it would be funny – that is, if it wasn’t so incredibly dangerous.
According to a 2021 report by the Costs of War project at Brown University, these four presidents cited the 2001 AUMF to “justify an unknown number of military operations, including airstrikes, combat, detention, and supporting partner militaries, in at least 22 countries.” These included airstrikes and operations in Djibouti, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, plus “support of counterterrorism partners” that included Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Kenya, Kosovo, Jordan, Lebanon, Niger, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Turkey.
The report also found that the executive branch:
Consistently used vague language to describe the locations of operations, failed to accurately describe the full scope of activities in many places, and in some cases simply failed to report on counterterrorism hostilities.
Failed to specify the number of operations conducted in each of the 22 countries involved when reporting to Congress in reference to the 2001 AUMF. In many locations of U.S. military activities, the executive branch has inadequately described the full scope of U.S. actions.
Reported on “support for CT (counterterrorism) operations,” but did not acknowledge that troops were or could be involved in direct combat with militants, as in Niger in 2017, when four U.S. service members were killed in an ambush as they attempted to carry out a raid on a militant compound (the AUMF was cited only after this incident came to light).
AMERICA! THIS IS BLATANTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL! There is ZERO evidence that any of these countries “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons” – the very thing that must exist to have authorization under the 2001 AUMF.
To make matters more absurd, absent an updated authorization, Congress is now having to explicitly say what military interventions are not authorized under the current AUMF, which is exactly backward.
For example, in November 2017, the U.S. House issued a non-binding resolution to let everyone know that America’s military assistance to Saudi Arabia in Yemen was not authorized by Congress: “Congress has not enacted specific legislation authorizing the use of military force against parties participating in the Yemeni civil war that are not otherwise subject to the Authorization of Use of Military Force or the Authorization of Use of Military Force in Iraq.”
Congress has also developed the asinine habit of using its authority under the 1973 War Powers Resolution to block presidents (namely Donald Trump, the first time around) from using military force abroad.
The first time they did this was in late 2018, when the U.S. Senate ordered an end to American military operations in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, which had essentially become a bombing campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. < Note: Even though we disagree with the method, it’s good that somebody did something. The situation in Yemen then and now is a humanitarian catastrophe, as bombs target civilian facilities and prevent critical aid shipments from getting to Yemenis. >
The second time they did this was in 2019, when the U.S. House and U.S. Senate both agreed to curtail American military involvement in Yemen – a measure vetoed by Donald Trump – and a third time was in February 2020, in response to the drone attack that killed Iranian Commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a senior official of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the commander of the Quds Force (the agency that is part of Iran’s formal military structure that is responsible for Iran’s covert military operations).
This is ridiculous. Members of Congress need to begin doing their constitutionally mandated jobs immediately. We must demand a new AUMF, because this is the slippery-est of slippery slopes.
A great example comes from April 2018, when Donald Trump ordered airstrikes against Syrian forces to supposedly disrupt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons – and he did so without permission from the U.S. Congress. The Trump administration’s claim was that “the president’s direction was consistent with many others taken by prior presidents.” It was further explained that, before the attack, “(Trump) reasonably determined that the use of force would be in the national interest and that the anticipated hostilities would not rise to the level of a war in the constitutional sense.”
Although we particularly appreciate the first part of the response – it’s the same one we used in high school to explain that “everyone else” also got drunk at the lake and blew curfew – these unilateral actions are 100% unlawful under the United States Constitution.
The Lone Wolf mentality of the executive branch is out of control. If we allow missile strikes against Syria to happen without authorization from Congress, what is to stop any U.S. president from...oh...let’s say unilaterally attacking Iran or North Korea?
Let that sink in America.