In response to the July 25 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and Current Terrorist Threats, FCNL Lobbyist for Human Rights and Civil Liberties Yasmine Taeb urged members of the Foreign Affairs Committee to view these proceedings as merely the first step towards repealing the 2001 AUMF and making congressional control over war authority a reality.
In response to the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s hearing on Authorization for the Use of Military Force and Current Terrorist Threats on July 25th, FCNL Lobbyist for Human Rights and Civil Liberties Yasmine Taeb made the following statement:
“FCNL urges members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to view these proceedings as merely the first step towards repealing the 2001 AUMF and making congressional control over war authority a reality.
“We are not blind to the context in which the House Foreign Affairs Committee holds this hearing: we are fully aware of Speaker Paul Ryan’s recent decision to scuttle debate on Rep. Barbara Lee’s amendment to repeal the 2001 AUMF, an action that we view as inherently undemocratic. In the face of this troubling precedent, we urge leadership on both sides of the aisle to engage in open debate on war authorization.
“Not only do we hope that members of this committee will ask weighty, insightful questions during the hearing itself, but we also hope that the hearing will inspire substantive action in the 115th Congress. By “substantive action,” we do not mean a non-binding resolution or request for more information from the President, but rather legislation exerting control over where, when, and against whom the President is authorized to use military force.
“Further, any new legislation in this area must include meaningful limitations on the President’s war authority—including, most critically, a repeal of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Some might view the very passage of a new AUMF as a clear affirmation of Congress’s ultimate power to determine when and where our nation uses military force. But Congress cannot claim to restore its constitutionally-granted power to authorize war by granting the President unbounded authority to pursue virtually any opponent anywhere in the world.
“As FCNL has noted many times, the 2001 AUMF is a deeply flawed, staggeringly overbroad piece of legislation, and it is past time for Congress to put it to rest. Passage of a new AUMF without repeal of the 2001 legislation would be particularly disastrous: by creating broad, potentially overlapping war authorities, such legislation could create endless confusion around the legal basis for military action and virtually eliminate effective restraints on the President’s war authority.
“We urge all representatives, particularly those invested in Congress’s power to determine when and where our nation goes to war, to engage in a rigorous debate on war authority and to take the critical step of repealing the 2001 AUMF as soon as possible.”
