SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
aumf
22 Years After Authorization for Endless War, It Is Time to Turn the Page
Two decades ago, Congress failed to fully do its constitutional duty to not just vote but fully debate going to war. The good news is that in the weeks ahead, Congress will have the best chance in years to finally get it right.
Sep 15, 2023
Like so many, we vividly remember where we were 22 years ago this week as the horrific attacks of Sept. 11 unfolded. We still mourn the 3,000 lives lost that day and will never forget the irreparable damage the attacks on 9/11 had on our community. We remember the people taken too soon and pray for the families and communities forever changed.
In the days after 9/11, the president requested and Congress authorized a 60-word blank check for a war that continues to this day. In the weeks and months ahead of us, Congress is preparing to embark on its biggest reassessment of that war authorization, and in doing so, we must ask the hard questions and do the difficult work that we did not do all those years ago.
Twenty-two years ago this week, one of us cast the lone vote against that 2001 war authorization and agonized over the vote, but came to grips with it during the very painful yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, “As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.” Yet, that is exactly what we did. The last thing the country needed was to rush into war after 9/11, or ever, without proper deliberation by the people — represented by Congress — as the Constitution intended.
The other of us co-leads an organization founded in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, authorized just one year after 9/11. While more members of Congress voted against that war, the debate was similarly rushed, and did not ask the necessary tough, hard questions.
Part of the genius of our Constitution is its system of checks and balances. One of the most essential is the separation between the president as commander in chief and Congress as the body that decides where and when our nation goes to war. Unfortunately, in 2001 and 2002, those checks and balances did not work as they should have. Instead of putting constraints on presidential war-making, Congress passed war authorizations that amounted to a blank check, enabling four successive presidents to wage a global war at a cost of trillions of dollars and countless human lives.
Two decades ago, Congress failed to fully do its constitutional duty to not just vote but fully debate going to war. The good news is that in the weeks ahead, Congress will have the best chance in years to finally get it right.
Congress is on the cusp of repealing the 2002 Iraq War authorization (and an earlier authorization for the 1991 Gulf War). Earlier this year, a large bipartisan majority passed its repeal in the Senate, and there is clearly a similarly large bipartisan majority in the House to do the same. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) should put the Senate-passed bill on the floor immediately, where it will pass and go on to President Biden, who has pledged to sign it into law.
The harder work will come on the 2001 war authorization. Congress hasn’t made up its mind about how to handle the 2001 authorization for use of military force (AUMF) — and that’s OK. Publicly debating issues of war and peace is what Congress is meant to do. What is unacceptable is that we have allowed this debate to go on endlessly while an absurdly broad war authorization remains in place indefinitely, waiting to be abused and further stretched beyond its original purpose. The Constitution intends that our nation’s default stance be peace, and that to change that requires an act of Congress. Yet today, the situation is the complete opposite, and it’s time to fix that.
If Congress cannot agree we should be at war, then we ought not to go to war.
These questions are not academic. Twenty-two years ago, Congress voted to go to war without asking how long this war would go on, where it would be fought, how it would end and if there were other means to bring the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks to justice that risked fewer unintended consequences. Before Congress gives this or any president such awesome power again, it must ask the questions we failed to ask then and weigh the hard lessons of what has and has not worked since 2001 to genuinely increase our, and others, security.
What remains then, is how we ensure that happens. Unfortunately, Congress has shown time and time again that while some may genuinely want to debate and do the hard work of deciding what, if any, war authorizations may be necessary, far too many are happier instead to live with the status quo of our endless wars. Thankfully, there is a ready-made option to finally force Congress to do its job: repealing the 2001 war authorization with a time-limited sunset.
Without the forcing mechanism of repeal, there is no powerful incentive to ensure Congress has the debates and asks the hard questions it has so long avoided. It also gives Congress time to demand the president, as commander in chief, make clear where we are already at war, against whom, and exactly what specific authorities he would like moving forward. It can be forgiven that the president lacked this specificity in the hours after 9/11, but there is absolutely no excuse for not having it now, 22 years later.
Some will say that you cannot repeal the 2001 AUMF without already having passed a replacement. But the last two decades have shown that without first repealing the 2001 AUMF, there is no urgency to force a decision on what comes next. And while there is a possibility that, after careful consideration and thorough debate over many months, Congress may not come to agreement on a new war authorization. But we should remember that such a possibility is exactly why the Constitution gives Congress this power. If Congress cannot agree we should be at war, then we ought not to go to war. And of course, in case of any truly imminent attack, the president would retain the right to defend the country. Failing to pass a new war authorization would not be the system failing. It would be our nation’s most fundamental system of checks and balances working exactly as it was designed.
There’s also a tremendous opportunity in turning the page on decades of endless war. We could reorient our national security to confronting the threats of today and tomorrow, not yesterday. From climate change to infectious diseases to the global rise of autocracy, few of these threats are served with a military-first war footing. We could also redirect some of the trillions being spent at the Pentagon towards a more balanced federal budget that invests in our communities and secures them against all threats, not just those that can be bombed.
Twenty-two years ago, our country endured a terrible attack, and Congress responded by going to war. Now, all these years later, it is time for Congress to finally restore our basic checks and balances and do its constitutional duty.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rescind Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq NOW
Wars of choice in Vietnam and Iraq have not led to peaceful American-style democracies, as those can never be imposed from the outside.
Apr 09, 2023
Recently, the US Senate voted on a bipartisan basis to rescind the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq. President Biden, who voted for that AUMF in 2003, has said he will sign it if it gets to his desk.
At this writing, it is unclear if the U.S. House will post the rescission for a vote and, if so, whether it will pass in that chamber. I fervently hope that it will, so one of the most notorious episodes in U.S. history can be peacefully laid to rest.
If that does happen, it would be a strong parallel to the rescission of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution by the U.S. Senate in 2009. That AUMF in 1964 was also based on deception and authorized the U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, which became the greatest American debacle of that era.
But far more important, rescinding the Iraq AUMF would repudiate deception and manipulation by any Presidential Administration as happened with the George W. Bush Administration in getting Congress to support it. It would also discourage open-ended Congressional AUMFs with no expiration date, which so far has allowed the one in Iraq to continue for two decades. In short, it would re-establish the Constitutional principle that only Congress can declare war, and repudiate the decades-long trend toward an imperial US presidency.
In the lead-up to the U.S. attack on Iraq 20 years ago, as the executive director of the Princeton-based Coalition for Peace Action, I helped lead intensive organizing to try to prevent it.
We organized numerous demonstrations opposing the Bush administration's campaign to start a war with Iraq, including joining a demonstration of over 1 million in New York City shortly before the March 19, 2003 invasion. With demonstrations worldwide attended by tens of millions, it was the largest anti-war mobilization in history to try to prevent a war.
We also did intensive lobbying in opposition to the Bush Administration’s AUMF to authorize the war. I remember being in a delegation that met with the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg shortly before the vote, at which he shared that he couldn’t justify sending his own son to that war so had decided to vote against it.
Starting in August 2002, there was an intense mobilization by the Bush Administration with neoconservatives like Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to promote the war based on the deception that it was needed to prevent Iraq from using Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
That culminated with a presentation by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Council in February 2003 asserting the same supposed danger. The Council didn’t vote to support it. We put forward compelling evidence that the Bush Administration was deceiving the American people into supporting the war, but it began anyway.
Years later, I had an in-person conversation with the Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq, Dr. Hans Blix. He told me he had met in person with President Bush before he launched the war, and certified to him that Iraq had no nuclear weapons. He said he told him that if he were given just a few more months, he could certify that it also didn’t have Chemical or Biological Weapons. But Blix said Bush simply retorted that he had made the decision, and the US invasion happened shortly after.
Peace-loving citizens in the U.S. and across the world organized intensively to end the war. I’m proud that the Coalition for Peace Action played a leading role in that effort in our region. But it wasn’t ended until 2011 when the US finally withdrew its last remaining troops as part of an agreement in 2008, before Bush finished his second term. Over 5,000 U.S. Servicemembers were killed, and tens of thousands wounded—including countless returning US Servicemembers who suffer from PTSD to this day. And up to one million Iraqis died.
The U.S. House needs to complete rescission of this deceptive and extremely damaging AUMF. In January 2020, the Trump Administration invoked it to conduct a drone assassination of a top Iranian military leader who was in Bagdad, creating a grave danger of major war with Iran. Iran did a retaliatory strike against a U.S. base in Iraq. But thankfully, no U.S. troops were killed—though a considerable number were injured.
Wars of choice in Vietnam and Iraq have not led to peaceful American-style democracies, as those can never be imposed from the outside. We need to rescind the AUMF for the Iraq War, as we did with the Tonkin Gulf AUMF that green-lighted the Vietnam War. Readers wanting to support that goal can visit peacecoalition.org.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'A Great Start': Peace Advocates Cheer Senate Repeal of Iraq War Authorization
"A larger and far more consequential challenge remains: repealing the 2001 AUMF which authorized the global war on terror," said one activist.
Mar 29, 2023
Peace campaigners cheered Wednesday's vote by the U.S. Senate to repeal the authorizations for the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq, while calling on the House of Representatives to follow suit.
The Senate voted 66-30 in favor of a bill to rescind the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force (AUMF), with 18 Republican senators crossing the aisle to support the legislation, which now heads to the House. An amendment by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would have empowered the president to attack Iran was defeated on Tuesday.
It is uncertain if the lower chamber's GOP leadership will take up the measure. In 2021, the Democrat-led House passed a repeal of the 2002 AUMF, with the support of 49 Republican lawmakers. The Biden administration supports the repeal.
"The people of the United States deserve elected leaders that will end our endless wars."
The more sweeping 2001 AUMF greenlighting then-President George W. Bush's global war against terrorism—which has been waged in at least eight countries at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives—remains in place and unendangered. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the author of the 2021 repeal bill, was the only member of Congress to vote against the 2001 AUMF.
"Today, the Senate made the belated but critical decision to repeal the 2002 and 1991 AUMFs," Win Without War government relations director Eric Eikenberry said in a statement. "This appropriately comes days after the 20-year anniversary of the Iraq War—the horrific end result of Congress handing then-President Bush a blank check to wage war at the expense of the people of Iraq and the United States."
\u201c"Today\u2019s vote begins the process of accountability the war deserved long ago. We welcome this vote... and we thank @timkaine and @SenToddYoung for so doggedly pushing for this outcome."\n\nFull statement on the Senate's AUMF repeal vote from @epeikenberry: https://t.co/HTzbAJi8zF\u201d— Win Without War (@Win Without War) 1680110106
"The Trump administration amply demonstrated the risks of leaving outdated military authorization on the books," Eikenberry continued, likely referring to the January 2020 drone assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, which was carried out under the AUMF.
Former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump both invoked the AUMF when the former launched, and the latter escalated, the U.S.-led coalition campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
"We cannot gamble again by allowing the next irresponsible and short-sighted president to abuse their executive power to destroy lives around the world," Eikenberry added. "We now call on the House of Representatives... to immediately take up repeal and send it to the president's desk. The Iraq War deserves justice and accountability, and the people of the United States deserve elected leaders that will end our endless wars."
\u201cThe Senate repealing the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs for Iraq is a great start. A larger and far more consequential challenge remains: repealing the 2001 AUMF which authorized the global war on terror. https://t.co/2Oeg57xmha @CarnegieEndow @CEIPStatecraft\u201d— Matt Duss (@Matt Duss) 1680113771
Common Defense political director Naveen Shah related that "as a veteran of the War in Iraq, I saw firsthand the utter devastation the war had on ordinary Iraqis, and the ordinary troops who were sent there."
"Keeping these war authorizations open after all these years is a sad reminder of our country's mistake," Shah argued. "We need to ensure it never happens again, and that begins with this repeal and continues by requiring congressional authorization, after a full public debate, before America ever sends our troops into harm's way again."
Bridget Moix, general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, said that "Quakers know that war is not and never has been the answer. Not today. Not tomorrow. And certainly not 20 years ago."
"The 2002 Iraq AUMF, as we stated at the time, should have never been passed and signed into law," Moix continued. "A congressional repeal of the law is a vital step to help heal our country's addiction to war and end endless wars. What we can invest more in to build a safer world is peacebuilding and global cooperation."
"True peace is more than the absence of fighting. It is addressing the root causes of war and managing conflict nonviolently," she added. "As long as the U.S. can still attack and kill with impunity in Iraq, neither its people nor ours will know true peace."
Roughly 2,500 U.S. troops—over 4,000 of whom died during the invasion and occupation of Iraq—remain in the country today.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular