WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama made waves this week by sending a proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force to Congress for its consideration.
What was striking about his proposal wasn’t so much that it came six months after the start of the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State militants, but that it was constructed in a way that makes it operationally pointless.
The AUMF submitted by Obama authorizes three years of fighting against the Islamic State with vague limits on how engaged U.S. ground troops can be. But if Congress were to simply sit on its hands, military operations would continue anyway. That’s because the president has relied on a sweeping 2001 war authorization to legally cover the combat operations already underway. Though he has stated his desire to repeal the 14-year-old measure, he did not make that a condition of his new request. War, in other words, can proceed legally unabated regardless of what this Congress does.
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“When he said that [in the campaign], he never imagined what it would be to be president of the United States with a caliphate wannabe beheading Americans on YouTube,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“This is Michael Corleone. ‘I tried to get out. Every time I tried to get out, they pulled me back in,'” Sherman said, referencing the “Godfather” movies. “You try to ease conflict, and they behead somebody on YouTube.”
“It is very hard to have peace on all fronts,” he added.
