This White House has had a … complicated relationship with Congress over the last six years, and its schizophrenic approach to seeking the legal authorization for the use of force abroad is indicative of the political context in which the Obama administration views the conduct of America’s foreign affairs.
The president did not even bother to ask for Congressional consent in March of 2011 when he joined a handful of Western European powers intervening in Libya’s nascent civil war. From both the left and the right, Obama was assailed for failing to request a formal AUMF from Congress. The president explained to impertinent members of the co-equal legislative branch in a two-page letter that his administration believed the president had all the authority required to execute limited airstrikes in Libya only in order to prevent an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.
When the 90 days of leeway provided to the president by the War Powers Act had expired, the White House argued that the War Powers Act did not apply to conflicts that “do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces” like that which was ongoing in Libya.
The president never asked for or received congressional authorization for the use of force in North Africa. He was never faced with any political pressure that might compel him to seek it.
Those circumstances changed two years later when, in the summer of 2013, Obama was faced with the grim task of making good on his “red line” for action in Syria. The president had no real desire to follow through on his pledge, made on behalf of the United States of America, and sought to extricate himself from the obligations of his promise without losing too much face. Congress provided him with a convenient obstacle. Obama knew that Congress would never authorize the use of force in Syria in the face of mounting public opposition. Because it was politically useful, the president now claimed that the Constitution demanded that he seek approval even for what John Kerry called “unbelievably small” pinprick airstrikes on Syrian targets.
“[E]ven though I possess the authority to order military strikes, I believed it was right, in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security, to take this debate to Congress,” the president told the nation in a prime time address. “I believe our democracy is stronger when the President acts with the support of Congress.”
Obama’s calculations were correct. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution authorizing force against Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, but that resolution was tabled and never saw a vote by the full Senate. For a time, Obama successfully wormed his way out of having to stand by his word. This proved to be a pyrrhic political victory for the president.
In the summer of 2014, Obama reverted to form and insisted that he needed no new congressional authorization to act against ISIS in Iraq. Just two weeks before the White House finally buckled under pressure and began to execute airstrikes on ISIS positions inside Iraq, the administration requested that Congress repeal the 2002 AUMF which initially sanctioned the use of force in Iraq.
All the while, the president and his allies insisted that they had every legal right to execute strikes in Iraq and, for that matter, Syria, too. Obama’s appointees insisted that the 2001 AUMF passed by Congress in the wake of the attacks of 9/11 gave the president the latitude he needed to open an entirely new theater of combat against an entirely new enemy. Obama, who had once said that “not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al-Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States” and “unless we discipline our thinking” we will be “drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight,” now determined that his administration could brand any inconvenient threat to geopolitical stability “al-Qaeda” and circumvent Congress in the process.
“Osama bin Laden started this on 9/11/2001, and he has continued it in abstentia, obviously, through what al-Qaeda does,” Secretary of State John Kerry argued before a Senate committee in December. “ISIL — Daesh – is an extension of al-Qaeda. It’s part of the same thing.”
If all this vacillation sounds like political rather than strategic maneuvering, it should. In that same hearing, Kerry laid bare the administration’s primary concern: “We are not about to start a third war,” he said.
This is the central consideration preoccupying the West Wing; not the dangerous geostrategic reverberations resulting from a regional war in the Middle East, not the security of the United States and its allies, but the political liability associated with conducting a new war against a threat they themselves allowed to mature in its Syrian nursery.
Suddenly, now that Republicans are in control of both chambers of the Congress, the administration’s thinking on the necessity of a new AUMF has dramatically evolved.
American warplanes are hard at work over Iraq and Syria, helping Iraqi army and Syrian rebel forces battle ISIS. In Iraq, American troops are busy training the military.
All of this is being done — and will continue to be done — without being officially sanctioned by Congress, although President Barack Obama now says he needs an Authorization for the Use of Military Force — AUMF.
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Administration officials say they are consulting with members of Congress and planning to send draft language for the authorization to Capitol Hill, but there’s still no timeline for when that language will arrive at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Whatever could be motivating this change of tune from the president? If history is any guide, Obama believes that he would benefit from the political cover provided by a new congressional authorization to use force in Iraq and Syria when it becomes necessary to expand those conflicts with the aim of neutralizing the threat. The last thing this president wants to be solely responsible for is a long and bloody new war in the Middle East.
As depressing as this conclusion may be, this White House’s behavior suggests that the president is as interested in preserving his political position as much if not more than safeguarding American national security.
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