On Wednesday, (early Thursday UAE time) US President Barack Obama gave Congress his proposal for authorisation for the use of military force against Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and it placed strict limits on the types of US ground forces that can be deployed.
Almost six months after the president began using force against Daesh’s advance in Iraq and then in Syria, the White House asked Congress for formal permission to continue the effort. Until now, the administration has maintained it has enough authority to wage war through the 2001 AUMF (Authorisation for use of Military Force Against Terrorists) on Al Qaida, the 2002 AUMF regarding Iraq and Article II of the Constitution. But under pressure from Capitol Hill, the White House completed the text of a new authorisation.
If enacted, the president’s AUMF could effectively constrain the next president from waging a ground war against Daesh until at least 2018. Aides warned that the White House may tweak the final details before releasing the document publicly.
In advance of the release, top White House and State Department officials were briefing lawmakers and Congressional staffers about their proposed legislation. Two senior Congressional aides relayed the details to me.
The president’s AUMF for the fight against Daesh will restrict the use of ground troops through a prohibition on “enduring offensive ground operations”, but provide several exemptions. First, all existing ground troops, including the 3,000 US military personnel now on the ground in Iraq, would be explicitly excluded from the restrictions. After that, the president would be allowed to deploy new military personnel in several specific roles: Advisers, special operations forces, Joint Terminal Attack Controllers to assist US air strikes and Combat Search and Rescue personnel.
Under the president’s proposal, the 2002 AUMF that was passed to authorise the Iraq war would be repealed, but the 2001 AUMF that allows the US to fight against Al Qaida and its associated groups would remain in place.
The new statute will authorise military action against Daesh and its associated forces, which are defined in the text as organisations fighting alongside the terrorists and engaged in active hostilities. This means Obama will be free to attack groups such as the Jabhat Al Nusra Front or Iraqi Baathist elements who have partnered with the terrorists in Syria or Iraq. There are no geographic limitations, so the administration will be free to expand the war to other countries.
The president’s proposed AUMF will sunset in three years and would not give the president the unilateral authority to extend the authorisation. That means the next president will have to come back to Congress for a new authorisation in 2018, if the fight against Daesh lasts that long.
The White House’s AUMF largely tracks a version introduced by Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Democrat Robert Menendez last December, with small tweaks to clarify the definition of Daesh and its associated groups, and to remove the geographic limits. The president’s limits on ground troops are more constricting than what some Republicans had asked for.
The president has crafted the bill so it can engender bipartisan support on Capitol Hill while still preserving an enormous amount of flexibility on the battlefield without micromanagement from Congress, one senior Republican Senate aide said. More Republicans are likely to support an AUMF now that the president has requested it formally, the aide added, warning that Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican) and other hawks will still object to the ground-force limitations.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had been resisting a vote on the floor on an AUMF, but now that the president has made his move we can expect floor action in late February or early March, following hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Some Republicans remain sceptical of the president’s actual enthusiasm for an AUMF, as the current ambiguity gives Obama a lot of flexibility in carrying out the war. They will now wait to see if the administration remains active on the issue after the legislation is introduced.
“The president has to deliver Democrat votes on this and he has to show a commitment,” the senior Republican Senate aide said. “He’s actually got to prosecute the fight to get this thing passed. If he doesn’t demonstrate that he actually wants this, you might see Republicans walk.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. In recent days, White House officials have acknowledged that the release of the president’s AUMF proposal is just the beginning of the effort.
“There will be a very robust debate,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week. “Things that aren’t that serious have a hard time getting through the United States Congress these days. So when we’re talking about something as weighty as an authorisation to use military force, I would anticipate that it will require substantial effort.”
The last time Obama asked for an authorisation to use military force, it was to strike the Bashar Al Assad regime in response to its use of chemical weapons. Yet, it was obvious that the administration was not wholly committed to actually prosecuting that war. He nixed the attacks before Congress weighed in.
This time around, Obama is already engaged in the fight against Daesh and his team genuinely wants Congressional buy-in. Clearing up the legal ambiguity of the war will be helpful, but it will not solve the more important conflict between the White House and lawmakers over the scale and effectiveness of the mission.
— Washington Post
Josh Rogin is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes about national security and foreign affairs.
