Over the past twelve years, a single Congressional resolution has allowed the United States to carry out military activities that constitute arguably some of the darkest marks on the tapestry of our national history. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force was passed immediately following the September 11th attacks over the course of only three days, with, according to former California Congresswoman Jane Harman who voted affirmatively on the resolution in 2001, “five hours of debate in the House and even less in the Senate.” The 60-word, less than two-page resolution is representative of the best intentions of those scrambling to lead a nation in the face of the most significant threat to its security in modern history. However, the circumstances we face in 2013 no longer fit those which fostered the AUMF’s creation.
Under the AUMF the executive branch “is authorized...to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [it] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on [9/11]...or harbored such organizations or persons.” This vast appropriation of power undercuts Congressional ownership of conflict set aside in the 1973 War Powers Resolution, allowing intelligence committees within the Department of Defense to conduct policies which remain highly questionable among members of the public, including U.S. involvement Afghanistan, detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, and operation of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.
Although it is difficult to completely separate the targets of the recent extension of the AUMF from those involved in the attacks on 9/11, it is widely agreed upon that the U.S. in 2013 faces what Senator John McCain (R-AZ) described aptly as a “dramatically changed landscape” from that which precipitated those events. Today’s threats come from decentralized terrorist franchises with foundational links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but with little or no connection to 9/11. A twelve-year-old resolution aimed at pursuing the enemy in a form which no longer truly exists is engendering inflammatory foreign policies that are constitutionally reserved for administration by Congress.
In Senator Bob Corker’s (R-TN) words, executive wielding of power under the AUMF does not ensure security, but instead keeps “the public from really being informed as to the decisions that [the U.S. is] making.” The issue has received attention most recently in Congress where members voted in late July against Representative Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) proposed amendment to the resolution “to bar any more funding of [the] ‘war’ [on terror] as of the end of 2014,” which failed 185 to 236.
Senator Corker spoke earlier in July at the Wilson Center for International Scholars in a panel discussion on the AUMF, explaining congressional aversion to addressing the outdated resolution. Before being able to repeal or drastically amend the AUMF, Congress would have to solve the age-old issues spawned by its authorizations, making it impossible, in Corker’s opinion, for our representatives to further avoid questions concerning detainment and transfer of cleared prisoners at Guantanamo and targeted drone killings in nations where we are not technically “at war”. Despite the intensely complicated nature of these issues, Corker expressed his belief that addressing them is what our elected officials agree to do when they come to the job.
Joining Senator Corker on the July 11th panel were Sarah Chayes, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Neal Katyal, Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and former Solicitor General under President Obama; and moderator Rachel Martin of NPR’s Weekend Edition. Senator Barbara Lee (D-CA) was invited but unable to attend; she is noted as the only member to vote “No” in the 2001 House referendum on the AUMF, which passed 420 to 1.
The panelists each expressed concern about the misalignment between the military actions taken by the U.S. under the AUMF and our principal democratic ideals of popular engagement with those behaviors. Only recently has the existence of drone strikes become a topic of discussion on cable news networks, reflecting what Sarah Chayes described as the emergent “explosion of consciousness [to] what...we’ve been authorizing all these years.” The executive branch’s use of the AUMF “almost as a reflex” over the past nine years bears a likeness to terror abroad in the name of protecting U.S. citizens, who, ironically, have no ownership over those policies.
Rather than accepting obliteration of the “enemy” as a boon to our national security, Chayes encouraged questioning “the grievances that have helped drive some of the radicalization of these populations… We’re not thinking about that.” Our waging of what the administration refuses to name as war in Pakistan and Yemen may, quite logically, play a stronger role in strengthening antagonistic sentiments towards the U.S. in the exact networks we are attempting to target with drones. This is not to say that we downplay potential threats posed by these entities, but that we ask whether “being at war with these organizations [is] the best way of addressing the threat that they pose?”
Neal Katya expressed similar opinions, describing the “statutory gymnastics” performed by both the Bush and Obama administrations since 9/11 in asserting that our behavior in Libya, Pakistan and Yemen does not constitute “military action”, which is “all the more reason why our founders put that responsibility [to declare war] in Congress.” He maintained that the contentious drone strikes are not “unconstitutional...though [they are] not the proper way government should function.” The entities deciding to use such inappropriate and not inconsequential tactics under the AUMF are not necessarily elected officials but “other entities, often operating, frankly, in secret” within the protections aided by the executive branch. It is important, therefore, to maintain clarity between those military actions which defend our country honorably and with some level of civic awareness (if not input), and those which members of impenetrable federal committees decide upon in secret to exterminate threat wherever they see fit under the rhetoric of the obsolete war on terror.
Chayes agreed, urging us to “look at where we’ve been spending not just our money, but our thought, our creativity over the last 10 to 12 years. It’s all been on the kinetic side...Are all those [military] resources actually being expended to...protect and further the wellbeing of American citizens?” When you count significant numbers of civilian deaths from drone strikes compared to those of terrorists, along with the October 2011 drone strike killing of 16-year-old American citizen and son of an Al Qaeda leader, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, it would seem not.
The underlying issue here may not be the AUMF at all, but an extremely skewed federal mentality towards those antagonistic factions of our global network. As long as the people allowed to conduct our defense policy maintain a strategy that means fighting terror by killing off anyone affiliated to the fragmented and constantly evolving networks, we will be perpetuating our own conflict, at home and abroad. A revision of the legislation could catalyze a change, but a revision of our national response to “terror” should be the first step.
U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Stacy L. Pearsall.
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AUMF: Reasserting the Role of Congress
August 8, 2013
Over the past twelve years, a single Congressional resolution has allowed the United States to carry out military activities that constitute arguably some of the darkest marks on the tapestry of our national history. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force was passed immediately following the September 11th attacks over the course of only three days, with, according to former California Congresswoman Jane Harman who voted affirmatively on the resolution in 2001, “five hours of debate in the House and even less in the Senate.” The 60-word, less than two-page resolution is representative of the best intentions of those scrambling to lead a nation in the face of the most significant threat to its security in modern history. However, the circumstances we face in 2013 no longer fit those which fostered the AUMF’s creation.
Under the AUMF the executive branch “is authorized...to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [it] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on [9/11]...or harbored such organizations or persons.” This vast appropriation of power undercuts Congressional ownership of conflict set aside in the 1973 War Powers Resolution, allowing intelligence committees within the Department of Defense to conduct policies which remain highly questionable among members of the public, including U.S. involvement Afghanistan, detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, and operation of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.
Although it is difficult to completely separate the targets of the recent extension of the AUMF from those involved in the attacks on 9/11, it is widely agreed upon that the U.S. in 2013 faces what Senator John McCain (R-AZ) described aptly as a “dramatically changed landscape” from that which precipitated those events. Today’s threats come from decentralized terrorist franchises with foundational links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but with little or no connection to 9/11. A twelve-year-old resolution aimed at pursuing the enemy in a form which no longer truly exists is engendering inflammatory foreign policies that are constitutionally reserved for administration by Congress.
In Senator Bob Corker’s (R-TN) words, executive wielding of power under the AUMF does not ensure security, but instead keeps “the public from really being informed as to the decisions that [the U.S. is] making.” The issue has received attention most recently in Congress where members voted in late July against Representative Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) proposed amendment to the resolution “to bar any more funding of [the] ‘war’ [on terror] as of the end of 2014,” which failed 185 to 236.
Senator Corker spoke earlier in July at the Wilson Center for International Scholars in a panel discussion on the AUMF, explaining congressional aversion to addressing the outdated resolution. Before being able to repeal or drastically amend the AUMF, Congress would have to solve the age-old issues spawned by its authorizations, making it impossible, in Corker’s opinion, for our representatives to further avoid questions concerning detainment and transfer of cleared prisoners at Guantanamo and targeted drone killings in nations where we are not technically “at war”. Despite the intensely complicated nature of these issues, Corker expressed his belief that addressing them is what our elected officials agree to do when they come to the job.
Joining Senator Corker on the July 11th panel were Sarah Chayes, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Neal Katyal, Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and former Solicitor General under President Obama; and moderator Rachel Martin of NPR’s Weekend Edition. Senator Barbara Lee (D-CA) was invited but unable to attend; she is noted as the only member to vote “No” in the 2001 House referendum on the AUMF, which passed 420 to 1.
The panelists each expressed concern about the misalignment between the military actions taken by the U.S. under the AUMF and our principal democratic ideals of popular engagement with those behaviors. Only recently has the existence of drone strikes become a topic of discussion on cable news networks, reflecting what Sarah Chayes described as the emergent “explosion of consciousness [to] what...we’ve been authorizing all these years.” The executive branch’s use of the AUMF “almost as a reflex” over the past nine years bears a likeness to terror abroad in the name of protecting U.S. citizens, who, ironically, have no ownership over those policies.
Rather than accepting obliteration of the “enemy” as a boon to our national security, Chayes encouraged questioning “the grievances that have helped drive some of the radicalization of these populations… We’re not thinking about that.” Our waging of what the administration refuses to name as war in Pakistan and Yemen may, quite logically, play a stronger role in strengthening antagonistic sentiments towards the U.S. in the exact networks we are attempting to target with drones. This is not to say that we downplay potential threats posed by these entities, but that we ask whether “being at war with these organizations [is] the best way of addressing the threat that they pose?”
Neal Katya expressed similar opinions, describing the “statutory gymnastics” performed by both the Bush and Obama administrations since 9/11 in asserting that our behavior in Libya, Pakistan and Yemen does not constitute “military action”, which is “all the more reason why our founders put that responsibility [to declare war] in Congress.” He maintained that the contentious drone strikes are not “unconstitutional...though [they are] not the proper way government should function.” The entities deciding to use such inappropriate and not inconsequential tactics under the AUMF are not necessarily elected officials but “other entities, often operating, frankly, in secret” within the protections aided by the executive branch. It is important, therefore, to maintain clarity between those military actions which defend our country honorably and with some level of civic awareness (if not input), and those which members of impenetrable federal committees decide upon in secret to exterminate threat wherever they see fit under the rhetoric of the obsolete war on terror.
Chayes agreed, urging us to “look at where we’ve been spending not just our money, but our thought, our creativity over the last 10 to 12 years. It’s all been on the kinetic side...Are all those [military] resources actually being expended to...protect and further the wellbeing of American citizens?” When you count significant numbers of civilian deaths from drone strikes compared to those of terrorists, along with the October 2011 drone strike killing of 16-year-old American citizen and son of an Al Qaeda leader, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, it would seem not.
The underlying issue here may not be the AUMF at all, but an extremely skewed federal mentality towards those antagonistic factions of our global network. As long as the people allowed to conduct our defense policy maintain a strategy that means fighting terror by killing off anyone affiliated to the fragmented and constantly evolving networks, we will be perpetuating our own conflict, at home and abroad. A revision of the legislation could catalyze a change, but a revision of our national response to “terror” should be the first step.
U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Stacy L. Pearsall.
