Putting an end to America’s endless wars

Last week, Trump administration officials pushed back against bipartisan interest in Congress to finally rein in America’s perpetual wars abroad.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Oct. 30, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis downplayed the need for a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force, with Mattis claiming a new AUMF “is not legally required to address the continuing threat posed by al-Qaida, the Taliban, and ISIS.”

Arguing instead that AUMFs passed by Congress in 2001 and 2002 are legally sufficient to justify American military efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Tillerson and Mattis expressed concerns with the prospect of a new or updated AUMF which might impose limits on America’s wars.

While claiming a new AUMF is unnecessary, Tillerson suggested any new AUMF should be free of time constraints or geographic restrictions. In other words, Tillerson wants the Congress to continue ceding limitless war-making authority to the executive branch.

That is not the sort of power the nation’s founders intended to grant the president. As James Madison wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature.”

And as the past 16 years have shown, American military action abroad that isn’t tethered to any comprehensive strategy or even a basic set of limitations can lead to an array of unintended consequences while bogging down the United States in costly foreign conflicts of little benefit to American national security.

The 2001 AUMF, along with the 2002 AUMF passed in support of war with Iraq, are at the very least in need of updating.

In the days following the September 11 attacks, the Congress approved the 2001 AUMF granting the president authorization to pursue military force against “those nations, organizations, or persons” the president “determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

While the initial targets were understood to be groups like al-Qaida and the Taliban, the 2001 AUMF has since been used to justify American military interventions in countries like Libya, Pakistan and Yemen and fighting groups that didn’t exist in 2001 like al-Shabaab in Somalia and ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

If Congress is serious about defeating ISIS, and truly believes American national security depends on its defeat, then members of Congress should be capable of putting together an explicit authorization for doing so, rather than relying on an outdated AUMF written long before ISIS existed.

Fortunately, it appears momentum is building in Congress to finally end America’s perpetual wars abroad. On June 29, in a surprising move, the House Appropriations Committee voted in support of a budget amendment by Rep. Barbara Lee, DCalif., to repeal the 2001 AUMF.

While that effort was eventually halted, the hearing last week at least signals continued, if belated, congressional interest in finally restoring the needed balance in war-making authority. We urge Congress to halt the open-ended wars of the past 16 years, to repeal past AUMFs and develop clearly defined limits, enemies and sunsets to facilitate continued congressional oversight.

— Los Angeles Daily News,

Digital First Media