December, 14 2021, 11:39am EDT
![Costs of War](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012551/origin.jpg)
Analysis of 2001 AUMF Shows Lack of Oversight of U.S. Counterterrorism Operations
New Analysis Shows Some Counterterrorism Activities Have Not Been Reported to Congress
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND, BROWN UNIVERSITY
A new analysis of where the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) has been used to justify U.S. counterterrorism activities reveals a lack of transparency over how the AUMF is used, including what operations are actually happening in countries where the AUMF is cited. Other legal justifications used in counterterrorism operations similarly lack transparency and oversight. The analysis is based on newly updated Congressional Research Service data through August 6, 2021. The findings were reported today in Spencer Ackerman's Forever Wars.
"In light of our previous research showing how widespread U.S. counterterrorism activities are globally, this analysis shows where the 2001 AUMF has been used and when and where counterterrorism operations have happened outside the umbrella of the AUMF," said Stephanie Savell, Co-Director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute and author of the analysis. "There are several cases of combat and airstrikes since 2001 that various presidents have not reported to Congress."
Costs of War produced a map showing that between 2018-2020, the U.S. undertook what it labeled "counterterrorism" operations in 85 countries. Of those operations, presidents must report on situations where U.S. troops are involved in "hostilities" or "imminent hostilities." The new analysis shows the AUMF has been cited to justify counterterrorism operations in 22 countries. Moreover, it is not the only legal authority under which counterterrorism operations are being carried out.
Much of the executive branch's reporting lacks geographic specificity, so the 2001 AUMF has sometimes been used to justify operations in regions rather than countries. This being the case, the analysis describes at least two countries - Mali and Tunisia - where there has been clear evidence of hostilities but which do not appear in executive branch 2001 AUMF citations.
The analysis also found:
- The executive branch has 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.
- Executive branch reporting to Congress in reference to the 2001 AUMF fails to specify the number of operations conducted in each of the 22 countries involved. In many locations of U.S. military activities, the executive branch has inadequately described the full scope of U.S. actions.
- In other cases, the executive branch has reported on "support for CT operations," but has not acknowledged 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).
"There are a large number of U.S. counterterrorism operations, occurring under different legal umbrellas, which makes it difficult to track these activities and assure that there is adequate Congressional oversight," said Savell.
The Costs of War Project is a team of 50 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2010. We use research and a public website to facilitate debate about the costs of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the related violence in Pakistan and Syria. There are many hidden or unacknowledged costs of the United States' decision to respond to the 9/11 attacks with military force. We aim to foster democratic discussion of these wars by providing the fullest possible account of their human, economic, and political costs, and to foster better informed public policies.
LATEST NEWS
Dems Spotlight Project 2025 Plan to Wield 'Zombie Law' Against Abortion Rights
Project 2025 "includes a detailed blueprint for a future Republican president to impose a backdoor national abortion ban with a stroke of the pen," a pair of House Democrats warned.
Jul 18, 2024
Two congressional Democrats who spearheaded the Stop Project 2025 Task Force warned Thursday that abortion rights opponents are laying the groundwork to revive and wield a 151-year-old "zombie law" to ban abortion nationwide.
In a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, who is under growing pressure to drop out of the 2024 race, Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) noted that the Project 2025 agenda crafted by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups "includes a detailed blueprint for a future Republican president to impose a backdoor national abortion ban with a stroke of the pen by willfully misapplying this antiquated and unconstitutional statute."
The statute in question is the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that prohibits the mailing of any "instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing" that "may, or can, be used or applied for producing abortion." Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) is leading the Democratic effort to defang the law.
According to the health policy research organization KFF, the Comstock Act "has not been applied to the mailing of abortion materials in the last fifty years." A trio of legal experts recently described the law as the "most significant national threat to reproductive rights."
Huffman and Raskin noted in their letter Thursday that the statute "was used to prosecute freethinking publisher DeRobigne Mortimer 'D.M.' Bennett," who "was sentenced to 13 months of hard labor in 1879 for mailing an anti-marriage pamphlet that advocated for women's bodily autonomy."
"Emma Goldman was hounded, silenced, and incarcerated for speaking out in favor of contraception," the House Democrats added. "Ida Craddock was charged multiple times for distributing writings on women's rights and sexual relations between husband and wife; she was re-arrested in 1902 after serving a three-month prison sentence, convicted, and died by suicide before serving her five-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Anna Trow Lohman also died by suicide rather than facing trial for distributing birth control and abortifacients."
"MAGA activists are now working to resuscitate this near-dormant law to advance their far-right agenda."
Huffman and Raskin wrote that while the U.S. Supreme Court "largely overturned most of the Comstock Act through landmark decisions on free speech, abortion, and birth control" over the course of the 20th Century, "many of these decisions have been eroded and attacked" by the current conservative-dominated Supreme Court.
"MAGA activists are now working to resuscitate this near-dormant law to advance their far-right agenda," warned the two Democrats, who called on Biden to issue pardons for "Bennett, Goldman, Craddock, and any others who were unjustly convicted under the Comstock Act" to make clear that he "stands against any efforts in the past, present, or future to weaponize the Comstock Act against Americans' individual rights to free speech and reproductive autonomy."
Huffman and Raskin's letter came a day after The Washington Posthighlighted that Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)—the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump—joined dozens of GOP lawmakers last year in calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to "shut down all mail-order abortion operations," citing the Comstock Act and other federal statutes.
The Biden Justice Department has said the Comstock Act "does not prohibit the mailing of certain drugs that can be used to perform abortions where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully."
While Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025 and stopped short of explicitly endorsing a federal abortion ban, the platform that Republican delegates approved earlier this week at the party's convention in Milwaukee declares, "We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life or liberty without due process, and that the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights."
As The Intercept's Shawn Musgrave observed Wednesday, abortion opponents welcomed that line as an endorsement of the notion of "fetal personhood."
"Far from moderating on abortion, the GOP platform now suggests that fetuses and embryos already have full constitutional rights—without the need for any new laws or amendments," Musgrave wrote. "This aligns neatly with Project 2025's roadmap and Vance's views."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Amnesty Condemns Israel's 'Mass Incommunicado Detention and Torture' of Palestinians
The head of the human rights group said Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law is enabling "rampant torture" of Palestinian detainees and "institutionalizes enforced disappearance."
Jul 18, 2024
Israel is using its dubious Unlawful Combatants Law to arbitrarily detain Palestinians from the Gaza Strip—including women and children—indefinitely without charge and trial, according to an Amnesty International report published Thursday.
All 27 former detainees interviewed by the rights group described being tortured by Israeli forces.
Amnesty documented the cases of 21 men, five women, and one 14-year-old boy taken from Gaza and held in indefinite incommunicado detention in facilities including the notorious Sde Teiman camp in Israel's Negev Desert for periods of up to four-and-a-half months, without access to lawyers or contact with their families.
"All those interviewed by Amnesty International said that during their incommunicado detention, which in some cases amounted to enforced disappearance, Israeli military, intelligence, and police forces subjected them to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment," the report states.
"Israeli authorities are using the Unlawful Combatants Law to arbitrarily round up Palestinian civilians from Gaza and toss them into a virtual black hole."
Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law allows the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to detain anyone from Gaza that they suspect of being engaged in the fight against Israel or posing a threat to its national security indefinitely without charge, trial, or evidence. Last December, the law was amended to allow the IDF to hold suspects for up to 96 hours without a detention order, up to 75 days without being brought before a judge, and up to three months without seeing a lawyer.
"While international humanitarian law allows for the detention of individuals on imperative security grounds in situations of occupation, there must be safeguards to prevent indefinite or arbitrary detention and torture and other ill-treatment," Amnesty International secretary general AgnèsCallamard said in a statement. "This law blatantly fails to provide these safeguards. It enables rampant torture and, in some circumstances, institutionalizes enforced disappearance."
"Our documentation illustrates how the Israeli authorities are using the Unlawful Combatants Law to arbitrarily round up Palestinian civilians from Gaza and toss them into a virtual black hole for prolonged periods without producing any evidence that they pose a security threat and without minimum due process," Callamard added. "Israeli authorities must immediately repeal this law and release those arbitrarily detained under it."
According to the report, "those detained included doctors taken into custody at hospitals for refusing to abandon their patients; mothers separated from their infants while trying to cross the so-called 'safe corridor' from northern Gaza to the south; human rights defenders, [United Nations] workers, journalists, and other civilians."
Former detainees at Sde Teiman said they were blindfolded and handcuffed for their entire imprisonment, forced to remain in painful stress positions for hours on end, and prevented from speaking to other prisoners or even raising their heads.
Said Maarouf, a 57-year-old pediatrician kidnapped by Israeli troops during an attack on al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City in December 2023, was detained for 45 days at Sde Teiman. He described being constantly blindfolded and handcuffed, beaten, starved, and forced to sit on his knees for long periods.
A 14-year-old boy taken from his home in Jabalia in January was held for 24 days at Sde Teiman. He told Amnesty that he was jailed with more than 100 adults in a single barrack and was kicked, punched in the head, and repeatedly burned with cigarettes. Amnesty observed bruises and burns on the child's body when it examined him in February. Like other detainees interviewed by the rights group, the boy said he was always blindfolded and handcuffed and was not permitted to see a lawyer or his relatives.
Earlier this year, Israeli medics working at Sde Teiman said amputations of hands and feet due to injuries from constant handcuffing were "a routine event."
The five women interviewed by Amnesty were initially jailed at a military detention center in an illegal Israeli settler colony in the occupied West Bank, then at Dimon women's prison in northern Israel. All five said they were beaten during transport.
One woman taken on December 6 said she was separated from her two children—ages 4 and 9 months—and initially held alongside hundreds of male prisoners. She was beaten, forced to remove her veil and photographed without it, and subjected to the mock execution of her husband.
"On the third day of detention, they put us in a ditch and started throwing sand," she said. "A soldier fired two shots in the air and said they executed my husband and I broke down and begged him to kill me too, to relieve me from the nightmare."
Another woman said guards threatened: "We will do to you what Hamas did to us. We will kidnap and rape you."
These and other accounts are consistent with the testimonies of Israeli whistleblowers and former prisoners at Sde Teiman and other Israeli detention facilities.
Former detainees and human rights defenders have described Sde Teiman as "Israel's Guantánamo" and "more horrific than Abu Ghraib"—the notorious U.S. military prison in Iraq where prisoners were tortured and dozens died. Palestinians held at Sde Teiman and at other detention sites described being electrocuted, mauled and even raped by dogs, constantly beaten, starved, and subjected to other torture and abuse. Other former Sde Teiman detainees said they witnessed a prisoner raped to death, possible executions, and other atrocities.
IDF officials told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz last month that the IDF is investigating the in-custody deaths of dozens of detainees, including 36 who died or were killed at Sde Teiman since October, when Israel began its retaliatory war following the attack by Hamas-led militants that left more than 1,100 Israelis and foreign nationals dead—some of whom were killed by Israeli troops.
Over 240 other people, mostly Israelis, were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. A Human Rights Watch report published Wednesday details war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder and rape perpetrated by members of five Palestinian armed groups that took part in the October 7 attacks.
Since October, Israel's siege, bombardment, and invasion of Gaza has left at least 139,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people forcibly displaced, and starvation—sometimes deadly—running rampant.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan has also applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including "extermination."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Report Shows How Lawmakers in GOP-Dominated South Harm Workers
"It will be important for Southerners from all backgrounds," one expert wrote, "to stand together and build the coalitions needed to demand policymakers create a new economic development model."
Jul 18, 2024
"For at least the last 40 years, pay and job quality for workers across the South has been inferior compared to other regions—thanks to the racist and anti-worker Southern economic development model."
That's according to a Thursday report by Chandra Childers, a senior policy and economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The new publication is part of her "Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation" series.
Previous documents in the series have discussed how "Southern politicians claim that 'business-friendly' policies lead to an abundance of jobs and economic prosperity" but in reality, their failed model is designed "to extract the labor of Black and brown Southerners as cheaply as possible" and has resulted in "economic underperformance."
"Because of the political opposition to unions, when workers try to organize, employers know that they can illegally intimidate them, refuse to recognize the union, or negotiate a contract in bad faith."
Thursday's report dives into various elements of the Southern economic development model, which "is characterized by low wages, limited regulations on businesses, a regressive tax system, subsidies that funnel tax dollars to the wealthy and corporations, a weak safety net, and staunchly anti-union policies and practices."
Childers uses a U.S. Census Bureau definition of the South, which includes: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
The EPI report highlights that "Southern states have lower median wages than other regions," "low-wage workers make up a larger share of the workforce across the South," and "every state that lacks a state minimum wage" is in the region.
The publication also points out the decline of coverage from employer-provided health insurance and pensions in the South, as well as how workers there "have less access to paid leave than their peers in other regions" and "Southern state lawmakers have also disempowered local communities."
"Across the South, most states have passed so-called right-to-work laws, with the exceptions of Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia," Childers detailed. "Right-to-work laws do not, in any way, guarantee workers will have access to a job if they want one. They simply make it harder for unions to be financially sustainable."
"In addition to right-to-work laws and the overall opposition from political leaders across the region, workers seeking to organize a union typically face intense opposition from employers," she continued. "Further, because of the political opposition to unions, when workers try to organize, employers know that they can illegally intimidate them, refuse to recognize the union, or negotiate a contract in bad faith—with little to no fear of being held accountable by political leaders."
While "there are city and county officials who support higher minimum wages and access to pensions and paid leave for workers" in the South, she explained, their ability to take action is limited by preemption, which "is when state policymakers either block a local ordinance or dismantle an existing ordinance" intended to help the working class.
Childers' report doesn't explicitly point fingers at particular political parties, but the region has been largely dominated by Republican officials during the past four decades covered by the analysis.
While the Republican presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump is clearly making a play for working-class voters by selecting Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as the vice presidential candidate and inviting International Brotherhood of Teamsters general president Sean O'Brien to speak at this week's convention—provoking criticism from progressive politicians and labor leaders—Southern GOP leaders continue to display disdain toward efforts to organize workers.
As Volkswagen employees in Tennessee began voting on whether to join the United Auto Workers in April, six Southern GOP governors put out a joint statement saying they were "highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states."
EPI said at the time that the governors' anti-union statement "clearly shows how scared they are that workers organizing with UAW to improve jobs and wages will upend the highly unequal, failed anti-worker economic development model of Southern states."
The Chattanooga vote was a success, but the following month organizers faced a tough loss at a pair of Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama, where the UAW is now seeking a new election. Meanwhile, regional GOP policymakers have ramped up attacks on unions, advancing legislation that makes organizing harder.
"To begin to work toward changing the Southern economic development model," Childers argued, "it will be important for Southerners from all backgrounds—across race, ethnicity, gender, immigrant statuses, and income levels—to stand together and build the coalitions needed to demand policymakers create a new economic development model."
The expert urged people across the South to fight for a model that includes a living wage, guaranteed health insurance, pensions, and paid leave.
"Finally, and perhaps most important, workers must be able to come together in a union to demand fair wages and benefits, a safe working environment, and the ability to have a say about their workplace—even when politicians are intransigent," she stressed. "This is a model that would serve the interests of all Southerners."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular