Congress Should Immediately Terminate the 2001 AUMF

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Dave Lindorff

Forget Nancy Pelosi's "100 Hours" agenda for the new Democratic Congress.

The first thing Democrats need to do when they walk into the Senate and House chambers this January is to vote out a joint resolution repealing the September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was the authorization for the U.S. attack Al Qaeda forces and the Taliban government of Afghanistan.

That AUMF has been used, wholly inappropriately and wantonly, by President Bush as the justification for his assault on the US Constitution, for his willful violation of laws domestic and international, and for his unconstitutional usurpation of legislative and judicial power.

The president has claimed that the AUMF, far from simply being an authorization to go to war against Afghanistan and against the Al Qaeda organization there, was an open-ended authorization for him to initiate an unending "War on Terror," which he has subsequently claimed has no boundaries, and will be fought around the globe and within the U.S.

Bush has further claimed, without a shred of Constitutional authority, that this AUMF makes him commander in chief in that never-ending global conflict, and that as commander in chief, he is not bound by either law or Constitution. It is this spurious and sweeping claim of dictatorial power that the president has used to justify his signing statements, which he has used to render inoperative in whole or in part some 850 or more acts passed by Congress since 9-11. It is this same claim that the president has used to justify his deliberate violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—a felony and violation of the Fourth Amendment.

It is likewise this AUMF that he has used to justify his authorization of torture, kidnapping and detention without charge, his refusal to answer legitimate requests for information from Congress and the 9-11 commission, and his ignoring of direct orders from the federal courts.

All of these actions by the president are manifestly unconstitutional, and cry out for his impeachment. (The Constitution clearly defines and limits the president’s commander in chief role to simply making him the senior officer of the military, not a generalissimo. Furthermore, as Barbara Olshanski and I explain in our book The Case for Impeachment, the AUMF never gave Bush any authority at all to conduct war inside the U.S. In fact, Tom Daschle, who as a Democratic Senator from South Dakota was the Senate Majority Leader at the time the AUMF was passed, specifically denied a last-minute request from the White House to have the words "in the United States" inserted into the wording of the resolution authorization.)

Bush should be impeached for all of his abuses of power, as well as for many other crimes, such as his deception in leading the nation into an illegal war against Iraq. But clearly, it will take time for a growing mass movement to pressure a timid Democratic leadership into taking their oath of office seriously and initiating impeachment proceedings.

Meanwhile, Congress can pull the rug out from under this usurper right away by simply revoking the September AUMF. The situation is akin to a teenager who has been given a car and then drives around banging it up and ruining it. At some point, the parents have got to take away the keys.

There is no justification for the continuation of the 2001 AUMF. Afghanistan is no longer a war. The U.S. is simply contributing military assets to a NATO action in that country at the request of the elected government in Kabul. Such an action requires no AUMF. Meanwhile, the prevention of terror is clearly an intelligence and police issue, not a war. It too does not require an AUMF.

A simple majority vote of House and Senate would put the U.S. Constitution back in place, and would restore the balance of power between executive, legislative and judicial branches.

Then Congress can get to work on investigating the crimes and abuses of this administration, and to passing progressive legislation without fear of further unconstitutional signing statements and further presidential law-breaking.

So how about it Rep. Pelosi and Senator Reid? Are you ready to uphold and defend the Constitution? Are you ready to take the president's keys away?

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