A president who ends war or president who makes war endless?

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Feb 17, 2015 - 10:07:10 AM

President Barack Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, gestures as he speaks about the Islamic State group, Feb. 11, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Photo: AP World Wide Photo

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - President Barack Obama, who came into office six years ago promising to do away with this country’s bloody, costly, “war on terror” may have instead ushered the U.S. into an “endless war,” one without borders, or even a definition of what would constitute its ultimate victory.

Mr. Obama sent Congress a formal request to authorize military force against the Islamic State six months after the U.S. began bombing Iraq and Syria. His proposed resolution imposes a three-year limit on U.S. operations, but it does not put any geographic limits on the military campaign, while it also opens the door for ground combat operations in some circumstances.

“Today my administration submitted a draft resolution to Congress to authorize the use of force against ISIL. I want to be very clear about what it does and what it does not do,” Mr. Obama said, speaking in the White House Roosevelt Room Feb. 11, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

“This resolution reflects our core objective: to destroy ISIL. It supports the comprehensive strategy that we’ve been pursuing with our allies and our partners: a systemic and sustained campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria; support and training for local forces on the ground, including the moderate Syrian opposition; preventing ISIL attacks in the region and beyond, including by foreign terrorist fighters who try to threaten our countries; regional and international support for an inclusive Iraqi government that unites the Iraqi people and strengthens Iraqi forces against ISIL; humanitarian assistance for the innocent civilians of Iraq and Syria, who are suffering so terribly under ISIL’s reign of horror.”

“I think President Obama has to decide whether he wants to be the president who ends war, or the president who makes war endless,” Phyllis Bennis, director of the Project for a New Internationalism at the Institute for Policy Studies, told The Final Call. “I think the problem is the Congress is not debating the use of force. They are just debating the details around the edges. They are authorizing continuous war.”

Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus agree. “Unfortunately, the authorization proposed by the president this week is too broad. In order to ensure meaningful limits on executive branch authority, an AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force) should at a minimum contain a clear objective and geographical limitations. It should also include an enforceable ban on the deployment of ground troops with exception for only the most limited of operations, unambiguous language, and a repeal of the 2001 AUMF,” Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said on Feb. 13 in a statement in behalf of their roughly 70-member caucus.

“The devastating and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us that when we give military authority to the executive, it should not be a blank check,” they said.

Some Progressive Caucus members have proposed, what Ms. Bennis describes as “a very good resolution that calls for an alternative (strategy) to deal with ISIS, a diplomatic, negotiated, humanitarian solution.”

But opponents of war have been erratic in standing up to war authorizations in the past, Ms. Bennis pointed out. Rep. Lee was the only member of the entire Congress to vote against the war authorization in 2001 in the delirious rush to war after the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11th of that year. “I think there may be some votes against the authorization to use force, but I don’t think there will be enough,” Ms. Bennis said.

“If I were still in Congress I would oppose any resolution that authorizes further involvement there,” former Rep. Paul Findley (R-Ill.) said in a statement released by the Institute for Public Accuracy. “Our forces have been killing Muslims by the tens of thousands for the past decade in the misleading label of anti-terrorism. Bombing kills innocent people whose friends are furious over these killings.

“It has greater potential for trouble than the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964 that I voted for, only after getting Republican Leader Gerald Ford’s assurance that it was not the equivalent of a declaration of war (on Vietnam). Congress should have used its responsibility to call a halt long ago to war measures,” Mr. Findley continued.

“Instead of such measures, I believe in enforcing world law through international institutions. The current war over religion in the Middle East could make the Vietnam War look like a Sunday School picnic,” he said. Mr. Findley was a member of Congress from Illinois for 22 years and was a principal author of the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

After co-founding the Council for National Interest, Mr. Findley was targeted and defeated for re-election because he complained that the pro- Israel lobby, notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has undue influence over the U.S. Congress.

He refers to the lobby as “the 700-pound gorilla in Washington.” His books include They Dare to Speak Out which chronicles dozens of prominent U.S. figures whose political careers have been destroyed after earning disfavor with the Israel lobby.

Current Republican reaction to Mr. Obama’s proposal is that it does not go far enough. House Speaker John Boehner (ROhio) complained that the AUMF proposal was too restrictive. “The president has tied his own hands and wants to tie his hands even further with the authorization that he sent up here,” Mr. Boehner told reporters Feb. 12.

“I think it’s time for the White House to develop and outline for the American people how we’re going to address this worldwide terrorist threat, and to make sure that the president has the authorization to deal with it,” he said.

President Obama is asking for authorization for a war against a very vaguely defined enemy, some critics complain. “So the way he defines the enemy is ‘individuals and organizations, fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside of ISIS in hostilities against the United States.’ This is a very broad definition, and he’s asking for no geographical limitations,” Sarah Lazar, author of “How to get serious about ending the ISIS war” published by Foreign Policy in Focus, and a correspondent for CommonDreams.org told Oscar Fernandez of “The Latino Media Collective” on WPFWFM in Washington

“So, given the lack of geographic limitations, this could effectively extend the war beyond Iraq and Syria, potentially making the whole world a U.S. battlefield,” she said.

“He’s also, while he’s repealing the 2002 authorization for use of military force, which authorized the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he’s asking to leave in place the 2001 AUMF, which has been broadly interpreted to justify a host of wars and occupations and troop deployments, from Afghanistan, to Yemen, to Somalia, and also including torture in Baghram and Guantanamo Bay military prisons.

“There are several things that are not included in this authorization. He does not define the objective of the war, what winning looks like. He does not have any discussion of the air war, which is significant, and there is no discussion of transparency, how do we find out who’s dying under U.S. bombs.

“I think that there are some really dangerous similarities (with 2001) that we should be really worried about,” said Ms. Lazar. “The so-called global war on terror has been hugely discredited. It has set the groundwork for the current crises that we are seeing today, gridlock in Syria, the Iraq war and Afghanistan wars continue to take huge amounts of civilian life, and are very unpopular in our own society, not to mention in Iraqi and Afghan societies.

The fact of the matter, according to many observers is that Mr. Obama’s proposed congressional authorization for the use of military force is little more than “window dressing, a scam, just a way to give a sort of a fig leaf to the people called antiwar Democrats.” And that amounts to an open-ended authorization similar to the one Congress enacted one week after the September 11th attacks.

Like the Tonkin Gulf resolution did in Vietnam, that 2001 resolution has been used to justify U.S. action in Somalia, in Pakistan, in Yemen and beyond, and this proposal will likely result in more of the same.

The Final Call