A member of the House intelligence committee works on bill to undo the basic authorities to wage war
"Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is preparing a piece of legislation that would sunset the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), a foundational law passed in the days after the 9/11. The current AUMF is outdated and straining at the edges to justify the use of force outside the war theater, Schiff tells Danger Room.
Repealing the AUMF would be the boldest restriction of presidential war powers since 9/11. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have relied on the document to authorize everything from the warrantless electronic surveillance of American citizens to drone strikes against al-Qaida offshoots that did not exist on 9/11. Getting rid of it is certain to invite fierce opposition from more bellicose members of Congress, who have repeatedly demagogued efforts to roll back any post-9/11 wartime authority, let alone the most important one.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the only legislator to vote against the authorization in 2001, has long fought unsuccessfully to repeal the AUMF. But Schiff is a moderate, not a firebreathing liberal, and while sunsetting the AUMF is sure to be a big legislative challenge, even conservative legislators like Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are raising fundamental questions about the merits of a never-ending war.
Schiff thinks that the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 ought to occasion the end of the AUMF, and his bill would use the Afghanistan drawdown as a hinge point. He openly admits to being unsure whether Congress should pass a follow-on piece of legislation allowing the president a limited version of his war powers, or what those post-Afghanistan powers might appropriately be."
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/schiff-aumf/
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)but it will go nowhere.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)I've not had much good to say for him, and would have voted for a challenger without a qualm. Now I'll have to think about it.
midnight
(26,624 posts)My Senator Feingold tried to do this by removing the "purse strings" the funding from this lawlessness.... they removed him... and replaced him with Ron Johnson....
bemildred
(90,061 posts)That old AUMF is what the war-lovers have wanted all along, no need to consult the Congress or get the people to support it, nothing messy like that, just war a la carte; and I know how "unusual" it is to see anything even talked of which might reverse that trend, it's been thirty years and more, since the mid-70s, when we made them (briefly) back off. They had to work their way back up after that, first Greneda, then Gulf War I, then the full Monty in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the AUMF, permanent war, permanent emergency.
So 1.) it's being forced, nothing so contentious would be brought up without some form of compulsion and 2.) it's interesting how timidly the argument is put, but I am pleased to see it made at all.