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Congress Should Vote Down the AUMF for the War Against ISIS

Newly-elected members of Congress should be the ones to vote on a new resolution authorizing military force.

Now that the election is over, Obama says he wants Congress to authorize the war against ISIS:

During a press conference from the White House on Wednesday, Obama said he would make a new authorization one of his main priorities of the coming lame-duck session of Congress.

Obama said the goal is to “right-size” the new authorization to fit the current scope of the conflict in Iraq and Syria, rather than Iraq or Afghanistan.

Since the war against ISIS seems likely to continue for many years, seeking Congressional authorization specifically for it is appropriate and long overdue. Obama had no excuse for delaying this until now, and this could have been settled three months ago when the bombing campaign first started. However, now that members of Congress and the public have had many weeks to watch this desultory intervention unfold, an authorization debate would be the perfect opportunity to halt the war before it goes on any longer. This would give both the administration and members of Congress a chance to correct their errors of the last few months and bring our latest unnecessary war to an end before the U.S. is pulled in any deeper. To that end, Congress should vote down this new AUMF resolution, and Obama should respect that result by halting the bombing in Iraq and Syria.

At the very least, the debate over authorization should subject the administration’s policy to the kind of close scrutiny that it has so far escaped. Obama embarked on this open-ended intervention without debate or real consultation with our representatives. Meanwhile, gutless members of Congress from both parties have been more concerned to jump on the pro-war bandwagon or to demagogue the threat from ISIS than they have been to question the wisdom of the intervention and the likelihood of its success. Now is the time for Congress to debate whether the ostensible goal of the intervention is even possible at an acceptable cost, and if it isn’t the president and Congressional leaders should be prepared to acknowledge that the intervention can’t succeed on its own terms.

Of course, we know that none of this will happen. Republican leaders in Congress want a more aggressive policy, not a reconsideration of the merits of intervention. Obama isn’t going to stop an intervention that he started on his own authority. Most members of Congress will fall in line behind the bad policy and vote for the authorization. That being the case, it would be better for the vote to be held next year in the new Congress so that the new members are forced to cast a vote on this issue. That is especially important for the newly-elected members that have relied on fear-mongering and demagoguery about jihadism during their campaigns. Let all these new hawks officially take partial ownership of the bad policy that they endorse, and let them try to defend those votes to their constituents.

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