We in Congress must also heed the painful lessons from the language of the authorization of the use of military force that was enacted days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the request of President George W. Bush. In just 60 words, Congress authorized the president to take action against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, but imposed no temporal or geographic limitations on the effort. Subsequent interpretations expanded the scope of action to include the broadly defined universe of “associated forces.” At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in May 2013, representatives of the Obama administration blithely opined that the 2001 authorization could allow for war to be carried out for another 25 years, an astonishing claim that surely went beyond what Congress intended 13 years ago.
We should not be stretching the open-ended 9/11 authorization even further to cover action against ISIS, an organization that didn’t even exist until years after the 9/11 attacks and is in open conflict with Al Qaeda. Instead, we should be drafting a specific, narrow authorization for limited military action as described by Mr. Obama last week: airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the training and equipping of forces in the region to fight ISIS, and counterterrorism operations to eliminate the organization’s leadership. And we should put an appropriate expiration date on this authority, so that the president and Congress can assess progress and decide whether to continue the mission.
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