Adopting the Obama ISIS AUMF would amount to signing another blank check.

[bigtree]

from Gene Healy at CATO blog:


As drafted, the president’s ISIS AUMF:

1. Does not impose geographic restrictions on the use of military forces (…thus a war that began with the placeholder Pentagon designation “Operations in Iraq and Syria” could easily expand beyond its current two-country theater);

2. Does not include firm limitations on ground combat operations (…unless you think barring “enduring offensive ground combat operations” is a workable and enduring limitation);

3. Does not preclude the war’s expansion to “associates of associates” of ISIS (… in fact, the Obama AUMF’s “associated forces” provision contains a broader delegation than did the 2001 AUMF, which doesn’t contain any such provision…);

4. Does not sunset the 2001 AUMF; and

5. Does not clarify application of the 2001 AUMF to the ISIS fight (…which risks leaving any limits it imposes susceptible to evasion by a president invoking the earlier resolution).

What little congressional debate we’ve seen so far on the president’s new war hardly smacks of “Profiles in Courage.” Still, the draft AUMF approved by the lame-duck Senate Foreign Relations Committee last December, flawed as it was, made for a far better starting point. It imposed a three-year sunset on the 2001 AUMF, applied new transparency requirements, and at least tried to provide limits on ground combat beyond a few flexible adjectives. If Congress is going to retroactively authorize the president’s latest war, they ought to reclaim some of the control they’ve ceded, not blithely delegate still more power. As I argue in greater detail here, “the 114th Congress should pick up where the SFRC left off, and impose additional limits on presidential authority.” Adopting the Obama AUMF as-is would amount to signing another blank check.


read: http://www.cato.org/blog/obamas-isis-aumf-codifying-mission-creep

related:

full text of the resolution proposed by President Obama: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/02/11/obamas-request-for-congressional-authorization-to-fight-the-islamic-state-full-text/

Full text of President Obama’s letter to lawmakers accompanying draft war powers resolution: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-sends-congress-draft-war-authorization-article-1.2110734

Lawfare: Obama's draft ISIL AUMF actually expands presidential war-making power from the current baseline
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026215518

NYT: Obama's ISIS war-authorization request to Congress "alarmingly broad... excessively expansive": http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026215583

my post, 'There no such thing as limited strikes, limited war. We’re going to find out the hard way": :http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026211061

[Fred Sanders]

1. If it is a blank check how come the War Dogs want to tear it up? Nice headline, not the reality.

[JoePhilly]

2. This OP is starting to seem like Groundhog's Day.

Same basic OP, same set of links, slightly reworded.

And we're all doomed ...

And the fact this draft forces the GOP Congress to take an official stand ... goes ignored completely.

[Fred Sanders]

4. I trust Obama, I have listened to his speech on this in full and unfiltered and the fact the

War Dogs are peeing their pants and licking their privates in frustration belies the corporate left wing outrage.

Obama on ISIL, Unfiltered by the Corporate Media Lying Machine

[Bluenorthwest]

12. The duration of the authorization in and of itself requires more than trusting Obama for the

authorization will belong to the next President, who could be a Republican. The trust has to be in the document. The 'war dogs' want a larger, boarder war. The critics on the liberal side want a more limited and specific authorization if there must be one at all.
It sounds to me like you'd gladly go larger and boarder, but that limits and specifics bother you. That puts you with the hawks full tilt.

[bigtree]

5. after you've funned yourself ridiculing me, try reading and understanding the objections cited

...there is a similarity and consistent theme of executive overreach and broadened war-making authority. the links are a reference for anyone who actually cares enough about this issue to look beyond petty politics and understand the policy behind this expansion of war-making authority requested by President Obama.

[JoePhilly]

6. Congress has a job to do here, right?

Let's be honest ... no President is going to give up power, and every President will take as much as they can get. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive.

Now, Congress could take action. They should. For the past 4 decades, probably longer, they've abdicated their authority in this regard. No one should be surprised that a President would attempt to take control where Congress continues to do nothing. Consider that after 9/11, no one blames Congress for their inaction. The blame goes to the President.

You keep attacking the President for doing what a President is going to do in a situation like this. Congress won't take a stand, the President does. That's how it works.

So, I guess you can post the same OP a few more times, and include the exact same links each time. But each time you do, you seem to ignore the role, and responsibility of Congress, in this process.

Congress has abdicated its role. And multiple President's have stepped in to fill the void.

Want to complain? The correct target is Congress.

And if Congress continues to do nothing, this President, and the next, and the next, will fill the gap.

[bigtree]

7. you view my differences with his war policy as 'attacking the President'

...that's a short-sighted, loaded, biased, petty way of engaging me and I'm going to have a hard time taking you seriously. Everything that you've posted about my policy differences with this president have not only contained personal attacks on my character and motive, but are shallow political defenses of Barack Obama which are curiously void of any direct responses of the points I go to great lengths to detail and outline.

To you, JoePhilly, my consistent points raised citing several different authors and policy experts represents some sort of nefarious or banal ploy. However, I've done so with the expressed purpose of fleshing out my own objections with his AUMF with something other than my own layman's perspective. Each link I provided makes similar points about executive overreach in the president's draft AUMF which augers for an expanded and perpetual military engagement. That's not an 'attack', it's an effort to provide clear analyses of his proposal from my own pov.

So, let me take a look at your own perspective (repeated here from another post you made) and try and respond to it.

After months and months of claiming that he had all the authority he needed to wage war against ISIS, Pres. Obama has decided to include Congress in the decision-making process of waging this war. Credit is certainly due for finally making that choice. I do wonder why he waited for what he certainly knew long ago would be a reduced Democratic presence in Congress, if not the republican majority he's now facing, to seek their formal approval; to encourage them to take up their war-making responsibility. Of course, he's not to be faulted for their own deliberate negligence in letting the Executive take all of the initiative and lead; not to mention allowing him to proceed unabated using resolutions which say nothing at all about warring against IS or ISIL.

Still, I can't ignore his own prerogative and desire to shed himself of the Bush-era resolutions which provide a dubious measure of authority by conflating ISIS with al-Qaeda and using their definition of an imminent or ongoing threat to justify military strikes in Iraq and Syria. He seems to be acutely aware of the flimsiness of that claim of an imminent or ongoing threat because his new AUMF outlines a future threat which is a new and broadened expansion of the definition of a justification to war under our constitution. Not even Bush, in his zeal to war in Iraq, used the 'future threat' standard in any official way (albeit, proclaiming the need for preemptive war in his rhetoric).

I point this out because it is more than Pres. Obama letting Congress in on the debate; it represents an ambition by this president to expand the war-making authority of his office in ways which will almost certainly be exploited by future presidencies. Another expansive ambition in the President's draft resolution is his bid for an unlimited geographical battlefield in his war, and also, an unlimited scope and broad definition of the enemy he intends to have our military forces engage. Gene Healy at CATO blog uses the phrase "associates of associates" to describe the “associated forces” provision, which he points out, "contains a broader delegation than did the 2001 AUMF, which doesn’t contain any such provision…"

Another troubling facet of this resolution is that, while it calls for the repeal of the 2002 Iraq AUMF, it doesn't call for the repeal of the 2001 9-11 AUMF which would allow the President to simply ignore whatever provisions he's asking Congress to approve and mandate and go back to the present state of unchecked and poorly matched authority. Leaving the 2001 AUMF in place makes any other resolution, including this one he's proposing, meaningless.

SO, JP, we're left with a president seeking expanded war-making authority which would limit the duration of his warring (yet, would presumably still continue until the end of the authorization, even if the mission was somehow completed), while leaving in place something which would give him and future presidencies seemingly unlimited justification to breeze past this AUMF he's asking for (presumably still unchecked by Congress, of course).

I put all of that together and I'm not the least impressed that the republican-controlled Congress will take this up in their deliberations. Most of the republican objections are that the draft resolution doesn't go far enough; many of the Democrats are complaining that it goes too far. I don't know why you think it's a great thing that this expanded war-making proposal will be presented to this republican-controlled Congress. I don't know why you believe that they will modify it in some agreeable way. I'm just not seeing this Congress the same as you, I guess.

Sure, Congress has 'abdicated' their role, so far. They're just fine letting the President take the heat and responsibility for warring. I don't have any more regard for their judgment than I do for the wisdom or correctness of the president's actions, so far, or for his draft resolution. Evidently, you believe differently.

If this is just some kind of chess, then it's being played out against dangerous and warmongering opponent. President Obama might just get what he's asking for, and I think that's the worst prospect of all.

[Autumn]

8. These AUMFs and their resulting wars are beginning to remind me of Groundhog's Day.

[KoKo]

3. Do you mean the CATO Institute linked in the article

as the War Dogs?

Didn't understand your post.

[bigtree]

9. the republicans are saying the resolution doesn't go far enough

...Democrats are saying that it goes too far.

You're not really reading enough. Republican opposition, while it basically indicates nothing but antipathy for this president and everything he opposes, is diametrically the opposite in motivation and to the content of Democratic objections to policy. I wouldn't be so sanguine in making that observation. In this case, it augers for their approval of the most expansive of presidential authority the president is asking for.

Others, like Sen. Sanders and Democratic congressman Adam Schiff are trying to limit that authority and scope of the Executive's authority to war.

If you really want to understand why these analysts believe it's a blank check' you should read their opinions, not just gauge the political wind.

[bigtree]

10. »

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Yes. But, this time it will different from our glorious victories in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan

It will gloriouser.

[woo me with science]

13. K&R