The White House on Wednesday said a timetable that expired over a week ago limiting its ability to continue a war unauthorised by Congress does not apply to the operation against the Islamic State (Isis) militant group.



The 1973 War Powers Resolution holds that presidents have a 60-day window to conduct hostilities without an act of Congress blessing the conflict. Absent such an explicit authorisation, wars are supposed to lose their legal force.



The White House repeatedly cited the War Powers Resolution throughout the summer, as it notified Congress about troop deployments and air strikes that inaugurated the war. Initial troop deployments for the war began in mid-June, although some legal scholars doubted that the ostensibly non-combat deployments started the clock.

7 October marked 60 days after US warplanes began bombing Isis positions in Iraq. The newest war – officially christened Operation Inherent Resolve by the US military on Wednesday – now includes attacks on Isis targets in Syria and is expected to last for years.

But according to the White House, a pair of 2001 and 2002 congressional resolutions, known as Authorisations to Use Military Force (AUMF), satisfy the War Powers Resolution’s requirement for a “specific authorisation” from the US legislature.

“Because the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs constitute specific authorisation within the meaning of the War Powers Resolution, the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day limitation on operations does not apply here,” said Bernadette Meehan, spokeswoman for the National Security Council.

Congress approved the 2001 AUMF to attack al-Qaida and its allies responsible for the September 11 attacks. It approved the 2002 AUMF to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Both resolutions long predate the existence of Isis, which al-Qaida has specifically excommunicated and denounced. Before the launch of Operation Inherent Resolve, Barack Obama supported the expiration of both AUMFs.

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at Notre Dame, said Obama was in “clear violation” of the War Powers Resolution, a Vietnam-era reform intended to restore legislative supremacy over warmaking.

“The two AUMFs for 2001 and 2002 were with respect to two very different conflicts, aimed at two different enemies, pursuing very different strategies, and based on completely different legal justifications, certainly under international law,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell urged Congress to demand Obama “fulfil the legislation that they have adopted” and require Obama to specifically request congressional backing for the war. Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, urged the same thing as the 60-day window under the War Powers Resolution closed.

Before Congress broke for the midterm elections last month, it voted to grant the US military power to train a Syrian proxy force, a move the administration cheered as an indication of congressional support. Initial units for that proxy force will take an estimated year to train, equip and field, underscoring the Pentagon’s belief that the goal of defeating Isis will take “a matter of years,” as the press secretary, Rear Adm John Kirby, said on Wednesday.

Naming the campaign was a concession to two months’ worth of criticism that the administration was downplaying the extent of the US commitment by letting it go unnamed. A Pentagon website called it simply “Targeted Operations Against Isil Terrorists,” using the govenment’s preferred acronym for Isis. Operation Inherent Resolve had been a placeholder term, called “just kind of bleh” by an anonymous officer in the Wall Street Journal.



“That’s the name, it’s out there, that’s what we’re calling it, now we’re moving forward,” Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.



The name also comes a day after a meeting of defence chiefs in the anti-Isis coalition conceded, according to an official US military readout, that Isis has “tactical momentum on several fronts”.

For two days, 39 US air strikes have battered Isis positions near the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane, the heaviest barrage thus far in the new war. But Kirby said the city “could very well still fall”.

The National Security Council’s Meehan indicated the White House will still file War Powers Notifications to Congress over the anti-Isis war, regardless of its contention about the relevance of their timetables – as a notification measure.

“We have filed War Powers reports consistent with the reporting provisions of the War Powers Resolution, and we will continue to do so. At the outset, the President authorised a series of discrete air strike operations,” Meehan said.

“The War Powers reports filed earlier in the summer notified Congress and the American people of each of these specific operations. In September, the President authorised and announced an expanded mission, and the administration filed War Powers reports on 23 September identifying this expanded mission. Going forward, we intend to update Congress consistent with War Powers Resolution as part of the comprehensive periodic reports that we submit to Congress in June and December.”