Buttigieg, a veteran of the conflict in Afghanistan, said that Congress had “abdicated” its responsibility in foreign policy. Buttigieg demanded an end to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that has been used by presidents of both parties to justify a variety of military actions and wars that have been launched since the 9/11 attacks. This conviction that the role of Congress must be restored, and that American foreign policy had been insulated not just from the American people but from our elected representatives, was in fact, the most developed portion of his speech. “We should never find ourselves in a situation that we did in 2017,” Buttigieg said, “when we had four troops killed on a counterterrorism mission only to have senators from both parties admit that they didn’t even realize we had 1,000 troops stationed in that country.”
This is all true and all a shame.
But it is unclear if a president can actually make Congress responsible for foreign policy if they choose not to be. There is a refusal of responsibility from Washington from both branches. We saw this in the Obama administration, when the president seemed to be preparing the United Sates for a mission of regime change in Syria against Bashar al-Assad, and then punted the decision over to Congress. Popular opinion ran so hot against this that Congress refused to endorse such a mission. And yet, the CIA and the Department of Defense, and a limited number of ground troops, continued to run extensive missions aimed at undermining Assad. If the men who occupy offices of public trust can reread the 2001 AUMF authorizing war on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan as a legal mandate for war on behalf of groups allied to al-Qaeda in Syria during 2014, then revocation may mean nothing at all. Surely such men would find legal justification for further interventions without the AUMF, or a vote in Congress.
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