Republicans’ dangerous effort to change the way we fight the war on terror.

On October 11, 2000, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore took their seats at a table on the stage of Wait Chapel at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for their second presidential debate. The event was billed as a conversation. Jim Lehrer, the polished public TV anchor, was the moderator, and he took the candidates through an eclectic assortment of national issues, from gay marriage to education reform. On foreign policy, Lehrer asked how the rest of the world should view the United States.

“It really depends,” Bush said, “upon how our nation conducts itself in foreign policy. If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us.” Gore agreed. The “idea of humility is an important one,” he said, but humility was not enough. America had to have “a sense of mission in the world.” The status as the world’s only superpower created an obligation, Gore believed, to “project the power for good that America can represent.”

All of this came back to me recently as the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives began dangerously playing with the terms of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). Congress passed the AUMF three days after September 11, 2001. It authorized the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force” against the countries, people, and groups that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the September 11 attacks, to protect America from further terrorist violence. The vote in the House was 420-1, in the Senate it was 98-0.

Given the great fear that gripped the country at the time, the AUMF was a pretty carefully written piece of work. While on the one hand, it permitted the president to use force at his discretion, on the other hand, it limited his decision-making by insisting that military action be tethered to September 11 and intended solely to prevent “future acts” of terrorism against the United States.

Fast on the heels of Osama bin Laden’s death, however, House Republicans have proposed a new AUMF, the language of which is very troubling. This version authorizes the president to use whatever military force he considers necessary and appropriate against those who “are part of, or are substantially supporting, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.” The language insisting upon a connection to September 11 has been removed, along with the requirement that military action be intended to prevent “future acts” of terrorism against the United States. An even greater concern with the proposed AUMF is that no one quite knows what “forces” might be considered “associated,” or what “support” is “substantial.” Congress has not troubled itself with definitions. One would have hoped the Obama administration would have been more precise. After all, it is the entity that will wield this new power. But, in the fusty language only lawyers could love, the administration has said, “It is neither possible nor advisable … to attempt to identify, in the abstract, the precise nature and degree of ‘substantial support,’ or the precise characteristics of ‘associated forces,’ that are or would be sufficient to bring persons and organizations within the foregoing framework [of the AUMF].” They know it when they kill it, evidently.