US Congress votes to rein in presidential war powers

The Unites States House of Representatives voted yesterday to revoke the authorisation it gave in 2002 to invade Iraq, a step that would rein in presidential war-making powers for the first time in a generation.

The bipartisan action reflected growing determination to revisit the broad authority that Congress provided to President George W Bush following the September 11 2001 attacks through measures that successive presidents have used to justify military action around the world.

The 2002 authorisation was repeatedly applied well beyond its original intent, including in a campaign much later against Isis in Iraq and for the killing of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani last year.

The vote was 268-161, with 49 Republicans joining 219 Democrats in favour of the bill. The debate now moves to the Senate, which is expected to take up similar legislation as the US military completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of fighting there.

“To this day, our endless war continues costing trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in a war that goes way beyond any scope that Congress conceived, or intended,” Democratic Representative Barbara Lee, who has fought for nearly two decades to remove the authorisations, said on the House floor.

President Joe Biden said this week that he would sign the House measure, making him the first president to accept such an effort to constrain his authority to carry out military action since the war in Afghanistan began 20 years ago. Biden’s decision came after announcing a full troop withdrawal from the country.

The congressional action amounts to a rare debate over presidential war powers and the degree to which the conditions that led the House and Senate to give Bush broad authority after September 11 2001 should be left in place. Over many decades, Congress has effectively ceded much of its power to declare war to the presidency, leaving some lawmakers in both parties uneasy.

Even if the Senate joins the House in repealing the 2002 authorisation, Congress would still leave in place a much broader authorisation, passed three days after the September 11 attacks, on approving the use of force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Successive presidents have cited the 2001 authorisation to justify operations against “associated forces”, and critics say it has given presidents excessive latitude to wage “forever wars” without congressional approval.

Until now, the Senate has refused to bring up legislation to repeal the authorisation of military force, and the House has done so only as an amendment to broader legislation that never went anywhere.