{"id":3354,"date":"2014-09-11T10:45:30","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T16:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=3354"},"modified":"2014-09-11T10:45:30","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T16:45:30","slug":"why-obama-thinks-he-can-bomb-isis-in-syria-without-asking-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/why-obama-thinks-he-can-bomb-isis-in-syria-without-asking-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Obama Thinks He Can Bomb ISIS In Syria Without Asking Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Hayes Brown<\/a>, Think Progress
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

President Barack Obama used his\u00a0prime-time address<\/a>\u00a0Wednesday night to announce that the United States will expand its airstrikes against the militant group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), while also preparing to move into Syria to do so as well. When American forces begin carrying out this new strategy, however, they will be doing so while relying on a nearly thirteen-year old document as the basis for its domestic legal authority.<\/p>\n

This became clear when a senior administration official told reporters last night ahead of Obama\u2019s address \u201cwe do not believe the President needs that new authorization\u201d to wage a lengthy campaign against ISIS. \u201cWe believe that he can rely on the 2001 AUMF as statutory authority for the military airstrike operations he is directing against ISIL,\u201d the official continued, using the government\u2019s preferred acronym for the group. \u201cAnd we believe that he has the authority to continue these operations beyond 60 days, consistent with the War Powers Resolution, because the operations are authorized by a statute.\u201d<\/p>\n

That determination came as a surprise to many, based on the complicated relationship between al Qaeda, the original target of the AUMF, and ISIS. Passed to allow President George W. Bush to go after both al Qaeda and the Taliban who hosted it, the 2001 AUMF was written in\u00a0an extremely broad fashion<\/a>\u00a0to allow the executive branch to target anyone associated with the 9\/11 attack. Since then, it has been used as the justification not just for the war in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, but also to strike out at al-Qaeda and \u201cassociated groups\u201d in such countries as Pakistan,\u00a0Somalia, and Yemen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under the logic applied by the White House, the fact that matters most is that ISIS began its life as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the branch set up following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. While the groups prospects waned for a time, the war across the border in Syria gave the organization new life as it took advantage of the chaos to regroup, recruit, and reorient itself. Currently ISIS is listed on the State Department\u2019s\u00a0Foreign Terrorist Organization<\/a>\u00a0list as the \u201cIslamic State of Iraq and the Levant (formerly al-Qa\u2019ida in Iraq),\u201d with the site clearly saying that the group had been on the list since 2004.<\/p>\n

As a different senior administration official\u00a0explained to the Guardian<\/a>, the determination was based on the group\u2019s \u201clongstanding relationship with al-Qa\u2019ida (AQ) and Usama bin Laden.\u201d The fact that the U.S. fought against ISIS when it was still AQI, that the group still wants to conduct attacks against \u201cU.S. persons and interests\u201d and ISIS\u2019 belief that it\u2019s the real successor to Osama bin Laden\u2019s legacy, the official argued, means \u201cthe President may rely on the 2001 AUMF as statutory authority for the use of force against Isil.\u201d As recently as earlier this year, however, the Obama administration was attempting to narrow the scope of the AUMF, or at least\u00a0prevent it from expanding<\/a>, acting on a\u00a0promise the president made<\/a>\u00a0in a speech in 2013 to \u201crevise and eventually repeal\u201d the law.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just the White House that\u2019s using that formulation. In\u00a0prosecuting a case<\/a>\u00a0against a Colorado teenager for providing material support to a terrorist organization, the Department of Justice said that the suspect stood accused of conspiring to \u201cprovide and attempt to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, specifically Al-Qaeda (AQ) and its affiliates, including Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).\u201d<\/p>\n

But labeling ISIS as an affiliate of al Qaeda requires a huge stretch for one reason: the two are no longer associated. In fact, they\u2019re openly fighting against each other. In February, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri officially disavowed ISIS after a split between the head of the Iraqi group and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda\u2019s preferred jihadi group in Syria. ISIS \u201cis not a branch of the al-Qaeda group .\u2009.\u2009. does not have an organizational relationship with it and [al-Qaeda] is not the group responsible for their actions,\u201d al-Qaeda\u2019s General Command\u00a0said in a statement<\/a>\u00a0at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn its face this is an implausible argument because the 2001 AUMF requires a nexus to al Qaeda or associated forces of al Qaeda fighting the United States,\u201d Robert Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, told\u00a0the Daily Beast<\/a>. \u201cSince ISIS broke up with al Qaeda it\u2019s hard to make that argument.\u201d Chesney went on to ask in\u00a0an article at Lawfare<\/a>\u00a0if later the argument that ISIS as a successor force to al-Qaeda will be expanded to the point that \u201cwe later hear of the AUMF applying to associated forces of this successor force? It is not hard to imagine many of them popping up the Iraqi-Syrian theater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the weaknesses in the administration\u2019s argument, Congress doesn\u2019t look ready to put up much of a fight over it. An outpouring of support from Congress accompanied Obama\u2019s address, which also asked legislators to approve $500 million in additional funding and explicit permission for the Pentagon to train and equip Syria\u2019s moderate rebels, but few insisted that a new authorization be drafted. And when Obama met with Congressional leaders on Tuesday and told them he already had the authority to act in Syria, there are\u00a0no reports<\/a>\u00a0of any of them arguing with him. \u201cI think the real issue is scope,\u201d one Congressional aide\u00a0previously told ThinkProgress<\/a>\u00a0to explain Congress\u2019 hesitancy. \u201cWhile some members are concerned about giving the President too much power, others are worried about not addressing the full scope of the problem. Under Article II, it appears that the President has the authority to act, at least in the short-term, and so we are not likely to see congressional action before the elections.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Hayes Brown, Think Progress click here for original article President Barack Obama used his\u00a0prime-time address\u00a0Wednesday night to announce that the United States will expand its airstrikes against the militant group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), while also preparing to move into Syria to do so as well. When American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3356,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions\/3356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}