President Obama is reportedly ready to ask congress for authorization to use military force against ISIS. The authorization will include strict limits on the types of U.S. ground forces that can be deployed, according to congressional sources.
President Barack Obama will soon give Congress his proposal for a new authorization for the use of military force against Islamic State fighters, and it will place strict limits on the types of U.S. ground forces that can be deployed, according to congressional sources.
Almost six months after the president began using force against the Islamic State advance in Iraq and then in Syria, the White House is ready to ask 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 on al-Qaeda, the 2002 AUMF regarding Iraq and Article II of the Constitution. But under pressure from Capitol Hill, the White House has now completed the text of a new authorization and could send it to lawmakers as early as Wednesday.
Usually Obama is only too happy to declare that with his pen and his phone he is prepared to act unilaterally. In fact, he never asks congress for authorization unless it's for something he doesn't really want to do. Recall back in 2013 when Obama waffled on his Syrian red line, that was not really his red line but the world's red line, which then turned out to be no line at all.
Mr. Obama said that the world needed to show the Syrian regime that they could not use chemical weapons with impunity.
And he defended his assertion that "a red line" would be crossed by the use of such weapons, arguing that he was simply emphasising accepted international laws.
"First of all, I didn’t set a red line," he said. "The world set a red line.
"So when I said that my calculus would be altered by chemical weapons, which the overall consensus of humanity says is wrong – that’s not something I just made up. I didn’t pluck it out of thin air.
"My credibility isn't on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line."
So, having declared that the red line was crossed, Obama backed off. He decided he needed congressional approval for action against Syria. Not everyone agreed that he needed it.
President Obama said Saturday the United States should take military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons on civilians but also turned to Congress for approval -- dealing a potential setback to America's foreign policy and setting up what will likely be a hard-fought Washington debate on the issue.
“This menace must be confronted,” Obama said of the Assad regime’s alleged chemical attack, speaking from the Rose Garden.
However, the announcement also raised the question about whether the president put the burden on Congress to act.
"President Obama is abdicating his responsibility as commander in chief and undermining the authority of future presidents," said New York Rep. Peter King, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "The president doesn't need 535 members of Congress to enforce his own red line."
A tough talking Obama announced that Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad had to go. But that was 2013 and here we are a year and a half later with Bashar al Assad still in power in Syria, more secure than ever. Based on Obama's past performance and this new AUMF proposal, we should expect ISIS to be more firmly entrenched than ever two years from now.
That could be the ultimate effect of Obama's proposal for a new AUMF which places strict limits on the types of U.S. ground forces to be deployed. (My emphasis below.)
If enacted, the president's AUMF could effectively constrain the next president from waging a ground war against the Islamic State group 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 have been 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 Islamic State would 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 U.S. 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 U.S. air strikes and Combat Search and Rescue personnel.
It isn't war that Obama, or the rest of the anti-war crowd, opposes. They seem quite supportive, for example, of the Palestinian's perpetual war against Israel. Has anyone in the anti-war movement ever suggested the slightest opposition or disapproval of Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel?
By the look of it, this new AUMF proposal would set the conditions for a new perpetual war between radical Islam — whether we call them ISIS or al Qaeda — and the west. And that will do nicely for Obama and his anti-war constituents who are opposed only to America winning such a war.
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