He spent seven months bombing Libya without congressional authorization and without complying with the War Powers Resolution. His lawyers argued that thousands of airstrikes, which professor Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School notes “killed thousands of people and effected regime change,” did not constitute “hostilities.” Professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University School of Law says, “Claims that large-scale air attacks don’t count as warfare were specious when the administration trotted them out in defense of its intervention in Libya in 2011; and they have not improved with age.”
Goldsmith says Obama has become “a matchless war-powers unilateralist” who “removed all practical limits” on presidential war-making when exercised, as in Libya, for proclaimed “humanitarian ends.” Goldsmith notes that although the Obama administration said last month that his inherent powers as commander in chief are sufficient to authorize airstrikes in Syria, it has subsequently said that he also is empowered to strike the Islamic State by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that President George W. Bush sought before attacking the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The AUMF says:
“The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
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