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
iraq war
As Trump 2.0 Looms, Durbin Urges DOJ to Rescind War Powers Opinions
Praising his targeting of "overbroad, undemocratic, and dangerous" opinions, one lawyer said that "irrespective of who holds the presidency, no one should have unilateral power to plunge the nation into major conflicts."
Jan 08, 2025
The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee this week urged the Department of Justice to rescind some war powers-related legal opinions and release certain records, a call that came in the lead-up to Republican President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) made the request in a Tuesday letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, stressing the Constitution's division of treaty-making and war powers between Congress and the president, as well as the president's obligation "to take care that the law be faithfully executed."
Highlighting that the DOJ "has previously withdrawn flawed or outdated" guidance, Durbin identified five opinions from the department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that he believes should be taken off the books:
- A 1989 opinion about the Federal Bureau of Investigation's authority to apprehend suspects overseas that concludes the president can unilaterally "override" the United Nations Charter's prohibition on the use of force;
- A 2001 opinion finding the president could effectively wage the entire "War on Terror" without congressional authorization;
- A 2002 opinion suggesting the president could wage the Iraq War without congressional authorization;
- A 2020 opinion related to the U.S. assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani that—though redacted—asserts the president has the authority to order an attack on a senior official from Iran; and
- A 2020 opinion claiming that a requirement for the president to give Congress advance notice of plans to withdraw from a treaty is unconstitutional.
"Congress and the executive branch may have differing views in some respects as to the separation of powers between them," Durbin wrote. "However, these opinions are concerning outliers even by the standards of the executive branch's own legal doctrine. Indeed, it does not appear that OLC has relied upon these opinions in other publicly available legal memoranda. For these reasons, I urge the Department of Justice to withdraw them."
The senator also gave Garland a list of 20 records to release "relating to the president's authority to deploy U.S. armed forces within the United States, and the activities in which those military personnel may or may not engage."
"The need for transparency regarding these legal interpretations is particularly urgent today given the risk of domestic military deployment to suppress protests or carry out mass deportations," he wrote to the outgoing attorney general.
Sharing the letter on social media Wednesday, Durbin more clearly said, "Donald Trump has promised to deploy the military for mass deportations, and we have a right to know how the Justice Department interprets this authority."
Durbin sent the letter on the same day that Trump, during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, refused to rule out using military force to take over the Panama Canal and Danish territory Greenland, sparking global condemnation.
Keep ReadingShow Less
House Progressives Say Adieu and Thanks to 'Incomparable' Barbara Lee
"This country—and the world—owe you a great debt, Congresswoman," said the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Jan 03, 2025
With colleagues applauding her "courage and tenacity," longtime U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee retired from Congress on Thursday, ending a career during which she was both praised and vilified for voting according to her convictions, and looking ahead to another potential leadership position in her home state of California.
The 78-year-old Democrat, who represents the state's 12th District in the East Bay, left office nine months after losing the U.S. Senate primary to Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who was sworn in last month and replaced the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
She was elected to the House for her first term in 1998, and just three years later, during her second term, cast the vote that made her a hero to many progressives and peace advocates.
Days after the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked on September 11, 2001, Lee was the lone member of Congress to vote against the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)—a 60-word bill that gave the president the authority to use any and all "necessary and appropriate force" against any enemy, without congressional approval.
Twenty years after the vote, Lee wrote in the Los Angeles Times that it was "the most difficult vote" she ever cast.
"But I knew 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," she wrote.
"As I forge ahead, I wish you a bright future, always remembering it is our young people who deserve to inherit a clean planet and a peaceful world."
The vote led to death threats against the congresswoman, but as the Associated Pressreported, she spent the rest of her career in the House watching as many of her views came "to be respected, accepted, and even emulated."
In 2021, Lee sponsored legislation to repeal the 2002 AUMF, which she also voted against and which green-lit President George W. Bush's plan to invade Iraq.
The repeal legislation passed in the House in a vote of 268-161 and gathered 130 cosponsors, with a similar bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate.
"If you really believe that this is the right thing for the country, for your district, for the world, then you have to do it, and be damned everything else," Lee told the AP in a recent interview, reflecting on her vote in September 2001.
Lee also garnered support in 2007 for a bill she introduced to prevent the permanent stationing of U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq and U.S. economic control of oil resources there; that legislation also passed the House, with 77 lawmakers signing on as cosponsors.
"Congress will not be the same without the incomparable Barbara Lee," the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which Lee co-chaired from 2005-09, said Friday. "This country—and the world—owe you a great debt, Congresswoman. Thank you for your bold progressive leadership, unwavering moral clarity, and profound contributions over three decades of public service."
Lee's life in public service began when she volunteered as a community worker for the Black Panther Party. There she met Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to Congress, who became her mentor. Lee worked on Chisholm's 1972 presidential campaign and later worked on Capitol Hill before running for office.
Lee co-founded and co-chaired the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus with Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and consistently pushed to reduce Pentagon spending and invest in healthcare, housing, and other public services.
In addition to her support for limiting U.S. military action and spending, Lee was an early critic of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funds from being used for abortion services—for example, through Medicaid—and called the law "blatant discrimination against poor women." Her position has become common among Democrats in recent years, with then presidential candidate Joe Biden reversing his support for the Hyde Amendment during the 2020 election.
Addressing her constituents in Oakland, Lee said on Thursday, "Together, as America’s most diverse community, we have raised our voices and pushed the envelope for peace, justice and equity."
"I have, and will continue to, fight for working families, the middle class, low-income, and poor people," she added. "As I forge ahead, I wish you a bright future, always remembering it is our young people who deserve to inherit a clean planet and a peaceful world. Listen to them, for they speak with clarity and deserve our support."
An open letter published last month urged Lee to run for mayor of the San Francisco Bay Area city.
"We know that to solve Oakland's problems and unlock its powerful potential, it is going to take a unique combination of courage and proven experience," read the letter. "Barbara Lee embodies that."
Lee said she plans to announce her intentions for her post-Congress career in early January.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Now It Can Be Told... After All the Harm Has Been Done
Timing is crucial in media and politics—and never more so than when war is at stake. It’s completely unsatisfactory for journalists to toe the war line for years and then finally report on atrocities.
Dec 26, 2024
This week, The New York Times reported that the U.S. government made war in Afghanistan while helping to “recruit, train, and pay for lawless bands of militias that pillaged homes and laid waste to entire communities.” Those militias “tortured civilians, kidnapped for ransom, massacred dozens in vendetta killings, and razed entire villages, sowing more than a decade of hatred toward the Afghan government and its American allies.”
Written by a former Kabul bureau chief for the Times, the article appeared under a headline saying that “U.S.-backed militias” in Afghanistan were “worse than the Taliban.”
Now they tell us.
The new reporting made me think of a chapter in my book War Made Invisible titled “Now It Can Be Told.” Here’s an excerpt:
* * * * *
Timing is crucial in media and politics—and never more so than when war is at stake. It’s completely unsatisfactory for journalists to toe the war line for years and then finally report, in effect: Now it can be told—years too late.
Virtually the entire U.S. media establishment gave full-throated support to the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in early October 2001. Twenty years later, many of the same outlets were saying the war was ill-conceived and doomed from the start.
Immediately after the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, with very few exceptions, even the mainstream news organizations that had been expressing trepidation or opposition swung into line to support the war effort. Two decades later, many of the same media outlets were calling the invasion of Iraq the worst U.S. foreign-policy blunder in history.
A pattern of regret (not to say repentance or remorse) emerged from massive U.S. outlays for venture militarism that failed to triumph in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is little evidence that the underlying repetition compulsion disorder has been exorcized.
But such framing evades the structural mendacity that remains built into the military-industrial complex, with its corporate media and political wings. War is so normalized that its casualties, as if struck by acts of God, are routinely viewed as victims without victimizers, perhaps no more aggrieved than people suffering the consequences of bad weather.
What American policymakers call mistakes and errors are, for others, more aptly described with words like catastrophes and atrocities. Attributing the U.S. wars to faulty judgment—not premeditated and hugely profitable aggression—is expedient, setting the policy table for supposed resolve to use better judgment next time rather than challenging the presumed prerogative to attack another country at will.
When the warfare in Afghanistan finally ended, major U.S. media—after avidly supporting the invasion and then the occupation—were awash in accounts of how the war had been badly run with ineptitude or deception from the White House and the Pentagon. Some of the media analysis and commentaries might have seemed a bit sheepish, but news outlets preferred not to recall their prior support for the same war in Afghanistan that they were now calling folly.
A pattern of regret (not to say repentance or remorse) emerged from massive U.S. outlays for venture militarism that failed to triumph in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is little evidence that the underlying repetition compulsion disorder has been exorcized from America’s foreign-policy leadership or major news media, let alone its political economy. On the contrary: the forces that have dragged the United States into an array of wars in numerous countries still retain enormous sway over foreign and military affairs. For those forces, over time, shape-shifting is essential, while the warfare state continues to rule.
The fact that strategies and forms of intervention are evolving, most conspicuously in the direction of further reliance on airpower rather than ground troops, makes the victims of the USA’s firepower even less visible to American eyes. This presents a challenge to take a fresh look at ongoing militarism and insist that the actual consequences for people at the other end of U.S. weaponry be exposed to the light of day—and taken seriously in human terms.
Despite all that has happened since President George W. Bush vowed in mid-September 2001 to “rid the world of the evil-doers,” pivotal issues have been largely dodged by dominant U.S. media and political leaders. The toll that red-white-and-blue militarism takes on other countries is not only a matter of moral principles. The United States is also in jeopardy.
That we live in one interdependent world is no longer debatable. Illusions about American exceptionalism have been conclusively refuted by the global climate emergency and the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the ever-present and worsening dangers of thermonuclear war. On a planet so circular in so many ways, what goes around comes around.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular