America’s never ending “war on terror” marches forward with a new twist, with President Obama formally asking congress to pass an authorization bill for the use of military force against ISIL . . .military force that is already being used and has been used for the last 6 months against ISIL, under authority that President Obama claims he already has. This absurdity is being met with a variety of political opposition from all sides, but perhaps most notable is opposition by Republican war hawks, who are complaining that the authorization that the President seeks but doesn’t need, is too restrictive and doesn’t go far enough.
The end result of the rhetorical debates that are now taking place among politicians and the media, will be the same: the United States will continue to wage war in Syria, Iraq, Northern Africa, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and anywhere else it deems necessary to defend “freedom” and fight “terrorism.” President Obama’s new request to the new congress, and all the debate that ensues from it, is nothing more than political theater that will ultimately allow all politicians involved to point the finger at each other, and not take responsibility for any of the blow back that inevitably flows from U.S. interventionism.
As I’ve explained in the past, the war in Syria is a proxy war for control of the energy rich region. The so-called civil war in Syria, funded by U.S. Gulf State allies and assisted by the U.S. and Western allies, is now approximately 4 years old. It is a bloody and brutal conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands, created millions of refugees, and has now morphed into a Frankenstein’s monster known as ISIL or ISIS, who has taken over large territorial swaths in both Syria and Iraq.
When the grand prize of Iraq that the United States went to the trouble to invade under President George W. Bush began to lose control to the new threat posed by ISIL, the United States needed a way to find public support for an expanded war in Syria. First there was the horror of Syria’s President Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians, which Obama wanted to punish with “punitive” bombings. Russia and Assad threw a wrench into that plan, agreeing to give up Syria’s chemical stockpile of weapons. Since a hostile republican congress expressed reluctance at the time, Obama agreed to the dismantling of the chemical weapons. I predicted on this blog then that it was only a temporary pause in the march to war in Syria. When ISIL started making gains in Iraq, and beheadings of Western hostages was posted on the Internet, the propaganda campaign on the new dire threat posed by the new group “who is so extreme that even Al Qaeda rejected them” was waged.
War hawks in the U.S., such as Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, began pushing the idea that U.S. ground forces would be needed. Blame was also cast against Obama, not just by Republican war hawks, but by Former Secretary of State and future presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Their collective criticism and fault blaming lay not with themselves who voted to invade Iraq to begin with under the false pretenses of “weapons of mass destruction,” but because Obama withdrew from Iraq prematurely (almost a decade later). Hillary Clinton immediately ran before cameras and reporters after leaving office, claiming that Obama should have listened to her and other war hawks and supported the mythical “moderate opposition rebels” fighting in Syria. Of course the reality of this long and sprawling conflict didn’t begin with the U.S. leaving Iraq too soon and not supporting the “moderate rebels;” it began with the invasion of Iraq and the arming of foreign fighters to overthrow Assad that morphed into ISIL.
Now the U.S. has escalated its military role in Iraq and Syria, training and re-training the Iraq army and the nonexistent moderate rebels in Syria, as well as deploying at least 2400 non-boots-on-the-ground “advisers” and special opps. This is in addition of course to a massive bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, or what our leaders and media prefer to call by the more sanitized and civilized term as “air strikes.” Despite all this, Lindsay Graham has taken to the airways professing his deepest fears of ISIL “coming back here and killing us all at home.” Speaker John Boehner, when not busy trying to undermine the White House negotiations with Iran on a nuclear deal by collaborating with Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu behind President Obama’s back, is complaining that Obama’s new request for using military force against ISIL is not enough.
In the noise of this political theater, it is easy to become distracted about what it all means, and it is a legitimate question to ask why Obama is asking for authorization for authority he claims he already has, and why war hawks are reluctant to grant him the authority they claim he already has but is not using adequately.
Although the U.S. Constitution specifically grants only congress the authority to declare war, it also makes the President the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The result has been, over the course of U.S. history, less official wars declared by congress, and more wars declared conflicts, with policy largely determined by the Presidency. The last time war was officially declared by congress was World War II. A backlash against the Vietnam War was the passage of the War Powers Act of 1973, which sought to clarify when and how long a President could wage war without congressional approval, but in practice it has not changed much. More common in practice are congressional Authorization to Use Military Force, or A.U.M.F.’s..
President George W. Bush got two of these authorizations. The first one, used to invade Afghanistan, was in 2001, and gave the President broad authority to wage a global war against Al Qaeda and its associates. It is this authority that President Obama claims he already has and is using in the campaign against ISIL. The second A.U.M.F. that President Bush got from congress authorized the invasion of Iraq. Mr. Obama’s new A.U.M.F. request to congress repeals Bush’s second authorization in 2002 for the Iraq invasion, and his accompanying letter claims to want to “refine” or “repeal” the 2001 authorization (the one he is still using now).
But by claiming he has all the legal authority needed by congress under the 2001 authorization, and by not repealing it, Mr. Obama in engaged in nothing more than smoke and mirrors in his claim that he wants to involve congress in this war decision. What he is seeking is actually a redundant, newly worded 2001 authorization to wage an endless war on “terror,” with terror being loosely defined as Al Qaeda, ISIL, or “associate” groups, or “successor” groups. In other words, anybody the White House, past, present and future, decides to subjectively label a terrorist organization, will be fair game, and congressional approval, forget a declaration of war, will not be necessary, just a nice endorsement to help spread the blame around when the blow back and consequences become unpalatable to the American public.
Likewise, congress is more than happy right now to complain about the White House’s strategy and tactics for combating ISIL, without actually voting on official policy. The war hawks are claiming that Obama’s new request is just political cover pretending that he wants to combat ISIL when he really doesn’t, and that they want a more broad authorization that would allow ground troops. Obama’s new proposal limits ground troops in Syria and Iraq by not committing them to “enduring” operations – another subjective term that means nothing, should the President decide on a more robust occupation. Obama’s new request also puts a time limit of 3 year from its enactment, but of course since he still claims authority for his actions already on the 2001 authorization, even were the new authority to be passed, the old authorization after 911 will still be in effect in three years when the new authorization expires. . . a mere 17 years later.
No matter how this new, contrived “debate” between congress and the White House plays out over this neverending war, or what Obama terms America’s “perpetual war footing,” one thing remains clear. The office of the President will continue to wage war whenever it wants, and sometimes congress will give them the official green light – like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry did on voting for the Iraq invasion – and then blame being “mislead” when it goes wrong, or deferring responsibility and blaming White House management of the conflict from the sidelines. In the end, Obama only wants the appearance of congressional approval, and congress only wants the appearance of support if it goes right, and the latitude to complain endlessly if its complicated.
Here is a link to copy and paste to your browser of Obama’s request for military authorization:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/11/us/politics/document-text-of-obamas-resolution-to-authorize-military-force-against-isis.html