Repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force Law

[JRLeft]

Three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress approved the Authorization for Use of Military Force. It was enacted with good intentions - to give President George W. Bush the authority to invade Afghanistan and go after Al Qaeda and the Taliban rulers who sheltered and aided the terrorists who had attacked the United States.

But over time, that resolution became warped into something else: the basis for a vast overreaching of power by one president, Mr. Bush, and less outrageous but still dangerous policies by another, Barack Obama.

Mr. Bush used the authorization law as an excuse to kidnap hundreds of people - guilty and blameless people alike - and throw them into secret prisons where many were tortured. He used it as a pretext to open the Guantánamo Bay camp and to eavesdrop on Americans without bothering to obtain a warrant. He claimed it as justification for the invasion of Iraq, twisting intelligence to fabricate a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama does not go as far as to claim that the Constitution gives him the inherent power to do all those things. But he has relied on the 2001 authorization to use drones to kill terrorists far from the Afghan battlefield, and to claim an unconstitutional power to kill American citizens in other countries based only on suspicion that they are or might become terrorist threats, without judicial review.

The concern that many, including this page, expressed about the authorization is coming true: that it could become the basis for a perpetual, ever-expanding war that undermined the traditional constraints on government power. The result is an unintelligible policy without express limits or protective walls.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/repeal-the-authorization-for-use-of-military-force-law.xml

[limpyhobbler]

1. The NY Times gets one right. (nt)

[Demo_Chris]

2. Works for me. Repeal it. n/t

[rhett o rick]

3. Dont think we can go back home. This is the dream of the military-industrial-media complex. nm

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. The AUMF was the ultimate CYA act.

Congress surrendered it's authority to declare war to the Executive. And, we got a series of unnecessary and lost wars as a result.

[Wilms]

5. ^