A Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee held a hearing on war powers granted by the Constitution and whether or not a new Authorization for Use of Military Force is needed for current U.S. military engagements. Attorneys and legal experts from across the political spectrum, including former judge Andrew Napolitano and law professor Jonathan Turley, testified about Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution which grants Congress the power to declare war, and put forward several examples from history, including 2001’s Authorization for Use of Military Force, in which Congress gradually forfeited its war powers to the Executive Branch. In attendance were Senators Mike Lee, Jeff Merkley, Gary Peters, Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul, and Tom Lee.
Author: Eric Garris
Recapturing Congress’s War Powers: Repeal, Don’t Replace, the 2001 AUMF
From today’s Cato Institute event, featuring Gene Healy, Vice President, Cato Institute; and John Glaser, Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute; moderated by Jeff Vanderslice, Director of Government Affairs, Cato Institute.
Healy and Glaser discuss the practical consequences of Congress’s abdication of its war-making powers and how Congress can reassert its rightful place as the branch of government responsible for determining the time, place, and targets of war.
Congress’s most solemn constitutional duty is to determine whether, where, and against whom the United States will engage in war. Yet for far too long, legislators have ceded that responsibility to the executive branch, allowing multiple administrations to use the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) as a blank check to wage war whenever and wherever the president decides.
As Congress determines how to respond to growing demands for a new AUMF, it should beware of proposals that would institutionalize mission creep by surrendering more authority to the executive branch. Instead, Congress should repeal — and not replace — the 2001 AUMF.
Stephen Kinzer on “The Terrorist Who Almost Killed Me”
Luis Posada Carriles, CIA asset and wanted terrorist, died last week free in Miami at age 90. This article is from 2011. Stephen Kinzer remembers:
It was a simple whim that saved my life: I had finished reporting in Barbados quicker than anticipated and so I changed my flight to Havana, getting on an earlier plane. Two days later, a terrorist blew up the Cuba-bound flight I had been booked on.
All 73 people aboard perished. I would have been the 74th.
On Monday, the man believed to have masterminded this horrific attack in 1976, Luis Posada Carriles, will go on trial in El Paso, Texas. But perhaps because he spent most of his adult life working for the Central Intelligence Agency, he is not being tried for that crime.