A legislative push to retroactively justify Barack Obama’s war against the Islamic State would also phase out the prime legal wellspring of the global US war against terrorism.



Sunsetting the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) has been a longtime goal of the anti-Isis bill’s architect, Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

Schiff’s proposed text, released on Wednesday, revives his pre-election effort to get Congress on record about the war in Iraq and Syria, about six months after Obama dispatched US military “advisers” to aid the Iraqi government in confronting Isis. US-led air strikes, which now occur daily in both countries, began in August.

While both Obama and congressional leaders have backed legislative authorization for the war, each side has wanted the other to first propose language defining the scope of an effort Obama has said will last for years. Schiff’s office said it did not work with the White House when crafting the bill.

Schiff’s bill would give all military efforts against Isis and against al-Qaida and its affiliates an expiration date of three years after passage. The gambit is both a temporary reprieve to US counter-terrorism, deferring an expected debate in Congress this year about the future course of an evolving, 13-year-old war, and an attempted restriction of presidential authority to unilaterally wage a global war in the future.

Additionally, the Schiff bill would immediately retire the 2002-era authorization for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which the White House last year cited as another source of authority to attack Isis in the absence of explicit congressional approval.

Beyond the three-year timeline, Schiff’s bill, first reported by Buzzfeed, imposes other limits on the emerging anti-Isis war.

It would rule out a ground combat role for US forces, though it would permit Obama to deploy “special operations forces or other forces that may be deployed in a training, advisory or intelligence capacity”. Obama has incrementally authorized up to 3,000 US troops already for those purposes, while insisting they will not have any combat mission.

The bill would also bind US anti-Isis missions to Iraq and Syria, a geographic limit significant in light of recent reports that Isis is attempting to branch out and win the allegiances of jihadist groups in Egypt, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan. US forces would still be permitted to train Syrian rebels elsewhere, an aspect of the Pentagon’s inchoate effort at setting up a proxy ground force in Syria.

Micah Zenko, an expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who is critical of unbounded counter-terrorism powers under the 2001 AUMF, was skeptical that the Schiff bill would actually restrict US counter-terrorism.

A broad host of US legal authorities, from the constitution’s presidential war powers to a 17 September 2001 memorandum of notification (MON) for US intelligence agencies, provide administration lawyers with opportunities to continue existing operations, since neither the Bush nor Obama administrations have “said which lethal counter-terrorism missions are covered by the 2001 AUMF and which by the 2001 MON”, Zenko said.

US military operations could be repurposed under “covert Title 50 authorities” governing the intelligence agencies “and continued forever”, Zenko said.

The 2011 Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden provided a precedent for US military forces operating under CIA authorities and control.

“Every White House finds the political and legal justifications to use military force in the manner that they want to,” Zenko said.

The White House did not immediately indicate whether it supports the Schiff bill.