President Obama is going before Congress to request authorization for the limited use of military force in a battle of up to three years against the Islamic State. On the surface, this looks like a welcome recognition of Congress’s ultimate authority in matters of war and peace. But unless the resolution put forward by the White House is amended, it will have the opposite effect. Congressional support will amount to the ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making.

People who take the Constitution seriously, on both sides of the aisle, must not allow this to happen. They should insist on the repeal of the 2001 resolution and an explicit repudiation of the “associated forces” doctrine. Only then will the next president be required to return to Congress to gain its consent if he or she wants to continue the war past the 2018 deadline. If it fails to take a stand now, its sham debate will generate another destructive cycle of distrust that will further alienate Americans from their representatives.

– From Bruce Ackerman’s New York Times op-ed: Congress, Don’t Be Fooled; Obama Still Believes in Unlimited War

First off, I want to thank Bruce Ackerman for writing this op-ed in the New York Times yesterday. Although the Obama administration already claims unlimited war powers in practice, this claim is illegitimate, which is why he is going to Congress to solidify his ability to declare worldwide warfare against a terrorist group that is a direct result of U.S. foreign policy: ISIS.

I previously covered the shadiness with which Obama was justifying his clearly illegal and unconstitutional war against ISIS last year in the post: Obama’s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar. Here’s an excerpt:

While critics have been questioning the legality of U.S. military campaigns consistently since the end of World War II, one trend has become increasingly clear. With each new President and each new war, we have witnessed those who hold the office act more and more like dictators, and less and less like constitutional executives.

To fight ISIS, Barack Obama is using the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which allowed for military action against “nations and organizations that planned, authorized, committed or aided the 9/11 attacks.” ISIS wasn’t even a twinkle in Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s eye back in September 2001. Even more stunning, ISIS and al-Qaeda more closely resemble enemies than allies. Yet this doesn’t seem to affect Nobel Peace Prize winning Barry Obama’s war planning. You can’t get much more insane and Orwellian than that.

As Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, and author of “The Decline and Fall of the American Republic” notes, Obama is now looking for political cover from Congress. However, he may actually get a lot more than that. He may help pave the way for future Dictators in Chief to wage worldwide endless war against pretty much any enemy that can be conjured up.

Don’t take it from me though. From the New York Times:

PRESIDENT OBAMA is going before Congress to request authorization for the limited use of military force in a battle of up to three years against the Islamic State. On the surface, this looks like a welcome recognition of Congress’s ultimate authority in matters of war and peace. But unless the resolution put forward by the White House is amended, it will have the opposite effect. Congressional support will amount to the ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making. The problem is the double-barreled position advanced by Mr. Obama. He asserts that he already has sufficient congressional authority for an open-ended war with the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS. He bases this claim on an expansive reading of Congress’s 2001 resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to make war on Al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks. As long as this resolution remains on the books, Mr. Obama claims, he can continue fighting, even if Congress never agrees to a new resolution. For political cover, Mr. Obama now wants Congress to grant him new authority, and yet he opposes repeal of the 2001 authorization in exchange for that new authority. Although he has pledged to refine, and ultimately repeal, the old resolution, he has failed to follow through on similar commitments in the past. If Congress contents itself with another empty promise, it is highly likely that the old act will remain on the books when the new resolution runs out in 2018. This will allow Mr. Obama’s successor to reassert his current position and continue fighting on the basis of the authority he inherited from the Bush era. In short, “Heads I win; tails you lose.” Whether or not Congress passes Obama’s new resolution, the next president can continue making war indefinitely. This is especially true since Mr. Obama’s current proposal endorses the very formula his lawyers used to transform the 2001 resolution into an open-ended grant of power. To see this point, it’s important to recall a bit of history. When Mr. Bush went to Congress in 2001, he initially demanded authority to make war “to deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.” But Congress refused to grant him this carte blanche, restricting his war-making authority to groups and countries “associated” with the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, both the Bush and Obama administrations have used the wiggle word “associated” to transform the resolution’s limited grant into the wide-ranging war-making authority that Congress explicitly denied the president in 2001. White House lawyers have accomplished this power grab by claiming that a host of groups are somehow “associated” with Al Qaeda by virtue of increasingly distant connections to the surviving remnants of Osama bin Laden’s organization. People who take the Constitution seriously, on both sides of the aisle, must not allow this to happen. They should insist on the repeal of the 2001 resolution and an explicit repudiation of the “associated forces” doctrine. Only then will the next president be required to return to Congress to gain its consent if he or she wants to continue the war past the 2018 deadline. If it fails to take a stand now, its sham debate will generate another destructive cycle of distrust that will further alienate Americans from their representatives.

This is very serious stuff. Please pass this post along to everyone you know.

For related articles, see:

Obama’s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar

Leon Panetta, Head of Pentagon and C.I.A. Under Obama, Says Brace for 30 Year War with ISIS

The American Public: A Tough Soldier or a Chicken Hawk Cowering in a Cubicle? Some Thoughts on ISIS Intervention



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