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There no such thing as limited strikes, limited war. We’re going to find out the hard way
Last edited Thu Feb 12, 2015, 09:14 AM - Edit history (1)
PRESIDENT OBAMA has sent Congress a draft resolution and a letter outlining his request for a new Authorization to Use Military Force to cover for the dubious authority he's claimed for months he already has to conduct war in Iraq and Syria against ISIS forces based on one or both of Bush's war resolutions; either the 2001 AUMF against al-Qaeda, or the 2002 AUMF for military operations in Iraq. In his draft today, he calls for the repeal of the 2002 AUMF, but leaves open the question of repeal of the 2001, 9-11 AUMF, instead, reiterating his earlier call for Congress to end it.
Right now, President Obama is using, as justification and 'authority' to carry out strikes, an AUMF that he says he wants repealed. In a Sept. 10 speech, the president said, "I have the authority to address the threat from ISIL," either from the 2001 or 2002 AUMF.
This is important, because, as you know well, ISIS has never directly threatened the U.S. or is in any position to pose an imminent threat to the U.S.. Although Pres. Obama's new resolution relies on the dubious argument that ISIS poses a national security threat because of something that might happen in the future, auguring preemptive war, the old AUMFs presume an ongoing or present threat.
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” candidate Obama had said in a Dec. 20, 2007 interview.
What critics of his recent deployments and ordered attacks have argued is that his unilateral definition(s) of a threat is an authoritarian product of the unitary executive. By conflating the military action against ISIS forces with Al-Qaeda for the purposes of authority, this President is not only straining credulity, but his new AUMF defines the risk to national security well outside of our constitution (well outside of his own interpretation of a 'threat' as Senator) which expands it to some future risk, rather than the 'imminent' risk the constitution proscribes for the president's unilateral deployment and use of our military forces.
The 'threat' arguments he's using are fraught with so many uncertainties, and so many weak assumptions, that they border on unlimited authority granted to the CiC to use force. The claim that ISIS is 'al-Qaeda' is so discredited that not even the administration believes they can sustain operations on that weak thread. Even if this proves true, somehow, the US still has the burden of justifying military operations in sovereign states without approval. Besides, where is the 'imminent' or ongoing threat? Where does ISIS actually threaten our national security in any imminent, overt, or ongoing manner?
At any rate, with the 2001 AUMF still in place, the president (or his successor) can straddle both dubious justifications. For the purposes of this resolution he's now proposing, President Obama is asserting that there's some future threat to the U.S. national security which impels our nation to war against ISIS. That's part and parcel of the Bushian defense of that president's own militarism in Iraq. It's almost surreal in the way that preemptive force within that country is now being justified by the same President (and many of his supporters) who once campaigned against that unconstitutional use of our military.
Compelling Strategic Interest’ — that’s what a Democratic legislator on CNN called the outset of the ‘humanitarian’ buildup of military forces in Iraq this past summer. It was the slippery slope of an ‘expanding mission’ in Iraq; now Democratic legislators are to be lined up like sheep, alongside their decidedly more warmongering republican peers, to give their vote of approval for continuing the new administration’s old military mission there. We’re just a few Democratic votes away from an enabling complicity.
It’s a fool’s venture, complete with self-perpetuating violence to draw more and more combatants to the cause of opposing America there. We’re in Iraq for good this time. The vast majority of Americans never had to sacrifice a thing for Bush’s wars. Opposing it was to oppose Bush; anti-war was, apparently, to some, just a political abstraction. There was mass slaughter of Iraqis — and American journalists died, as well, in Bush’s Iraq war. Still we called on him to just end it. Not this time around, though. Where’s the anti-war principle? Where are the anti-war values? Where did those voices go?
The president referenced the murders of 'United States citizens' in his draft resolution. Does the name Michael Kelly mean anything to anyone? Steven Vincent? What about Terence Lloyd? Paul Douglas? Or even José Couso? Look these journalists’ names up sometime; all killed in Bush's own preemptive war in Iraq. Did they justify his military action there?
In the face of the relative quiet against this administration’s warring in Iraq, ‘antiwar’ seems now like it was just a political game some played against Bush. Most of the anti-war sentiment is drowned out with shallow appeals to support this Democratic president as one ‘humanitarian’ exercise of our military after the next escalated into direct conflict. Supporters of this new mission in Iraq are either hopelessly naive and clueless about the consequences of this action or they’re complicit with every nod of approval and every cheer they make for military strikes. We’re never going to leave Iraq this time around. There’s ALWAYS going to be some atrocity which draws the ignorant and the zealous in and has them cheering in approval for more. That’s how war goes. Learn it, because we’re going to have to live with it.
It’s the terrorists’ design — it was the bin-Laden gang’s design — get the U.S. close enough so they can zero in on us and get on with their jihad, their holy war against the ‘Great Satan.’ They’ve told us this; our government and military knew this going in. What doesn’t seem to be understood by progressives who were rightly concerned about the safety of the Kurdish civilians and other refugees fleeing the ISIS forces’ terror attacks is that the U.S. military assaults in the region — our country’s military presence and activities — are ultimately counterproductive to the goals of eliminating any threat that comes from the fundamentalist groups fomenting violence in Iraq or anywhere else, for that matter.
Opposition to U.S. military action in Iraq goes deeper than just advocating non-violence, which is likely not the solution to ISIS. It’s an opposition to exactly the same ‘dumb-war’ behavior that President Obama correctly described early in his presidency. It’s the misguided notion that the U.S. is indispensable in these matters. It’s the twisted logic that ‘we broke it,’ therefore, we have to fix it. Except, fixing it means to this administration and military — as it meant to the Bush administration and military — fomenting even more violence in the vain and hopeless aim of ending it.
It’s not a matter of just leaving people to die, as many describe the position of opponents of U.S. military intervention. Other nations are more suited to help them and we should use our energy and whatever influence we have to encourage them. The U.S. military isn’t a benevolent entity; it’s a self-serving, pernicious one whose ambitions and goals have everything to do with the preservation and projection of American power and influence and almost nothing to do with the altruistic endeavors they use to justify getting their military foot in the door. It’s about the realization that our country, having already broken Iraq with our destabilizing, destructive, and opportunistic war waged for greed and petty political purposes, can scarcely hope to repair it using the same destabilizing and destructive violence.
As Bush’s own spy agencies correctly cautioned in their intelligence estimate, our military activity in Iraq had the effect of fostering and fueling even more individuals bent on violent resistance to U.S., our allies, and our interests, than they were able to put down. The intelligence report, completed in April 2006, was the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by U.S. intelligence agencies since the Iraq war had begun. It represented a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,” it asserted that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, had metastasized and spread across the globe.
An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cited the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.
It should be no surprise at all to see the report last year, from this current President’s intelligence agencies that our military presence and activity in Iraq — however altruistic the mission — is having the exact same effect of drawing more individuals looking to do battle with our nation, from around the globe, to rally to this emerging insurgent group’s deadly cause.
“U.S. spy agencies have begun to see groups of fighters abandoning al-Qaida affiliates in Yemen and Africa to join the rival Islamist organization that has seized territory in Iraq and Syria and been targeted in American airstrikes,” U.S. officials said in August
The military isn’t somehow caught off-guard by the horrible violence springing up from these Islamic combatants. Defeating them is a delusion the military has had since they first crafted their ‘evil axis’ patter to jazz Americans into letting them try their new weapons out, since they first worked Americans up into letting them explode their bombs on ‘evil ones’ and ‘enemies.’
Is there any more convincing measure of the folly of supporting this than the very fact that nothing our forces have done so far has caused the military to assert that we’re making any progress at all in putting down what they first called a “rag-tag handful of insurgents?” Don’t tell me that more troops are the answer, that more bombings is the answer. Did a full scale occupation under Bush protect and defend civilians there any better? Did we miss the horror of civilian killings under Bush’s occupying troops under Bush, all with orders to attack and kill opponents at will? Did we miss the Iraqi family members who lined the river every day to watch the steady flow of dead and bloated bodies in the sad and awful expectation that they could identify one as their own kin? Is there any more proof of the utter ignorance of a unilateral, escalated U.S. deployment than the virtual silence from the vast majority of the former ‘coalition of willing’ partners in our opportunistic imperialism?
Some people are convinced the U.S. can wage limited war; only engage in 'enduring' ground operations (whatever the hell that actually will mean in the end) … just like the President was convinced in Afghanistan that if he split the difference between what his Bush hawks nested in the Pentagon were advocating and his delusion that his own political instinct is left of center that he’d produce a moderate war. He ended up presiding over the killing of more of our troops defending the politics of Karzai than Bush lost exacting revenge for 9-11. 575 US troops died in Afghanistan during the Bush presidency. Over 1500 US troops died there under Pres. Obama. That’s a sad and disturbing legacy for a president who was elected to office proclaiming his aversion to ‘dumb wars.’
Don’t give me guff about not caring about the violence perpetrated from these Iraqi insurgents. There is no amount of troops, airstrikes, or any other attacks which will end the cycle of violence. All we can end is our ignorant and gullible part in it. Yes, I’ve heard the terrorists’ cynical demands for the U.S. to stop the airstrikes. Yet, like any hostage taker, there isn’t any regard at all for the human lives that they lure into their web of violence.
I realize that the authorization to war in this resolution ends after three years. Does anyone really believe the justifications for battling this new nemesis will end after three years? Does anyone really doubt Congress will be asked at that time to extend the warring and will acquiesce with even more time and money to try and 'win' this self-perpetuating terror war in Iraq and Syria?
Terror forces in Iraq don’t want us to stop fighting there. They never want us to stop warring there. Iraq is the holy caliphate; the land where they fight Americans for their delusions of blessed victory over the infidels. We’re just targets in Iraq now and our politicians will supply all the troops and money as the terrorists provide the atrocities for pretext. We never learn. All of the promises to stay away from ‘dumb wars’ and nonsense about ‘just war’ were either ignorant or a deception. Take your pick. We should never have returned troops to Iraq. The hawks are dupes for the combatants’ violent bait. We should know better, but I can see that we don’t. Anytime folks are ready to stand up and say ‘enough’ to this ‘dumb’ warring, I’ll be here to lend my voice. There no such thing as limited strikes, limited war. We’re going to find out the hard way.
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There will no doubt be violent extremists in the Middle East for another century. I don't know what the best approach is but I'm not going to fault our military -or anyone else's- for trying to keep things from getting worse.
Maybe sitting back and doing nothing is the best approach. Maybe it's not. 
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]
