Andrew McCarthy asks: Are We Still At War?

[4est_4est_Gump]

Those nations, organizations, or persons [that the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.

The commander-in-chief’s license to wage war is plainly circumscribed by the 9/11 atrocities. Of course, that does not make the AUMF what any sensible person would call “narrow.” After all, it trusts the commander-in-chief to judge which “nations, organizations, or persons” were complicit in the 9/11 operation — no additional congressional findings are needed.

While one person’s judgment can be quite elastic, the president’s need not be in order to make the AUMF extremely capacious. It is broad on its own terms. For example, al-Qaeda is the organization that was principally complicit in 9/11, and thus it may be attacked anyplace, anytime. The AUMF also undoubtedly authorizes warfare against the Taliban, al-Qaeda’s former host, even though the president, in his discretion, chooses not to regard the Taliban as an enemy — indeed, our government has not even designated the Afghan Taliban as a terrorist organization, much less declared war against it. In addition, the AUMF would authorize war against Iran. The 9/11 Commission all but expressly implicated the mullahs in the 9/11 plot, despite the disinclination of President Obama, of President Bush before him, or of Congress to connect those dots.

Nevertheless, as broadly as the 2001 AUMF could be interpreted, it is not boundless. It clearly requires any use of force to be rooted in 9/11. Only those who plotted and executed the 9/11 attacks, or who harbored those who did so, are legitimate targets.

Some claim there is more play in the AUMF’s joints. They point out that the AUMF goes on to explain Congress’s desire “to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.” But this is an explanation of Congress’s motive for the authorization spelled out in the AUMF; it does not expand that authorization. Of course it is true that, 9/11 aside, Congress does not want terrorists to attack us. But that does not alter the fact that, in the AUMF, Congress permitted combat operations only against terrorists culpable for 9/11, not against any terrorist who might ever attack us. Even the reference to “future acts of international terrorism” seized on by expansive constructionists is expressly limited to acts that might be committed “by such nations, organizations or persons” complicit in the 9/11 attacks or in the harboring of 9/11 attackers.

What does all this mean for drone attacks, the hot topic du jour? In recent days, the debate over these targeted killings — and the collateral killings that inevitably attend them — has strayed from its original focus on the assassination of American citizens who collude with al-Qaeda. Attention is now drawn to an equally urgent subject: the Obama administration’s startling intensification of the drone campaign.

Obama may have campaigned in 2008 as the candidate who would return us to the Clinton era, when terror attacks were deemed crimes suitable for civilian prosecution rather than acts of war fit for military response. As president, though, Obama has authorized hundreds more drone attacks than did his supposedly war-mongering predecessor. In addition, he has dramatically extended the frontiers of the campaign, which now include not only Pakistan and Yemen but also a vast swath of the Maghreb.

Nor is that all. This week, Brandon Webb and Jack Murphy, two former special-ops warriors, published Benghazi: The Definitive Report. If the book is accurate, Obama delegated to John Brennan, his top counterterrorism adviser and nominee for CIA director, unfettered authority to conduct a covert war against terrorists in northern Africa — an enterprise conducted outside the normal chain of command and without the knowledge of relevant American diplomatic and intelligence officials.

Let’s put aside for the moment that, had George Bush done something like this, only the peal of impeachment bells would have silenced the media outrage. The pertinent question is: Who are the targets of this alleged covert war?

Yes, there are heinous jihadists in Mali, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, and other African badlands. The problem is that the vast majority of them had nothing to do with 9/11 and their connections to al-Qaeda are murky at best. The problem is that, while some of them approve of al-Qaeda’s worldwide jihad, most of them lack the means, and many the desire, to attack the United States. Thus, according to at least some knowledgeable military and intelligence veterans, our drones are catalyzing threats against the United States that would not otherwise exist.

Do not get me wrong. We have seen the wages of abiding safe havens for al-Qaeda. In Afghanistan and Sudan, the network set up shop, trained recruits, and convinced many who’d been aggrieved locally to terrorize globally. When al-Qaeda and its affiliates establish these redoubts, as they are now trying to do in northern and eastern Africa, they plot mass-murder attacks against the United States and American targets throughout the world. That is why we must not allow that to happen anyplace. Naturally, we do not want to make the threat against us worse than it is. But ignoring it is not an option. The logic of jihadist ideology is global aggression, even if many of its adherents are not quite so ambitious . . . at least for the time being. We are therefore better off striking jihadist strongholds than refraining from striking them. The additional enemies we may inspire are more than offset by those our resolve discourages.

So President Obama is right to want our extraordinary military capabilities trained on emerging jihadist hubs — and I applaud him for recognizing that effective national security need not entail extravagant nation-building projects that do not make us safer. But to have legitimacy, drone attacks and other special-operations initiatives against our jihadist enemies must be authorized by Congress. The Constitution calls for war to be waged by the commander-in-chief, but it must be approved by the sovereign — and that is not the president. It is the American people, acting through their representatives in Congress.

Congressional authorization is not just what our law demands, it is what sound policy dictates. Under the Obama administration’s unilateral approach to war, on some days we are targeting jihadists in Abbottabad and in villages along the Gulf of Aden, while on other days we are somehow aligning with jihadists in Benghazi and Cairo (and maybe Aleppo).

Are the Americans being killed without due process Americans who were directly involved in 9-11?

Are we at war or are we acting lawfully?

What if it is neither?

Just askin'...



We want to see how consistently Democrats hold their President to the standard they established for his predecessor...

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

I loved him in St. Elmo's Fire.

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

I loved him in St. Elmo's Fire.

tickle me elmo lmfao

 

[yevkassem72]

Meh. If it were up to me, all clerics, fundamentalists, feminist types, and other enemies of the Revolution would be fodder for Madame Guillotine. A world without fundamentalists, theocrats, evangelicals, etc. would be a world without religious wars. A secular world where the rest of us could live in sanity and peace. We can start with Hezbollah and Hamas and work our way from there.

Well worth a few million executions in the short term, to save billions of lives in the long run.