President Barack Obama used his
prime-time address Wednesday night to announce that the United States will expand its airstrikes against the militant group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), while also preparing to move into Syria to do so as well. When American forces begin carrying out this new strategy, however, they will be doing so while relying on a nearly thirteen-year old document as the basis for its domestic legal authority.
This became clear when a senior administration official told reporters last night ahead of Obama’s address “we do not believe the President needs that new authorization” to wage a lengthy campaign against ISIS. “We believe that he can rely on the 2001 AUMF as statutory authority for the military airstrike operations he is directing against ISIL,” the official continued, using the government’s preferred acronym for the group. “And we believe that he has the authority to continue these operations beyond 60 days, consistent with the War Powers Resolution, because the operations are authorized by a statute.”
That determination came as a surprise to many, based on the complicated relationship between al Qaeda, the original target of the AUMF, and ISIS. Passed to allow President George W. Bush to go after both al Qaeda and the Taliban who hosted it, the 2001 AUMF was written in
an extremely broad fashion to allow the executive branch to target anyone associated with the 9/11 attack. Since then, it has been used as the justification not just for the war in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, but also to strike out at al-Qaeda and “associated groups” in such countries as Pakistan,
Somalia, and Yemen.
Under the logic applied by the White House, the fact that matters most is that ISIS began its life as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the branch set up following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. While the groups prospects waned for a time, the war across the border in Syria gave the organization new life as it took advantage of the chaos to regroup, recruit, and reorient itself. Currently ISIS is listed on the State Department’s
Foreign Terrorist Organization list as the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (formerly al-Qa’ida in Iraq),” with the site clearly saying that the group had been on the list since 2004.
As a different senior administration official
explained to the Guardian, the determination was based on the group’s “longstanding relationship with al-Qa’ida (AQ) and Usama bin Laden.” The fact that the U.S. fought against ISIS when it was still AQI, that the group still wants to conduct attacks against “U.S. persons and interests” and ISIS’ belief that it’s the real successor to Osama bin Laden’s legacy, the official argued, means “the President may rely on the 2001 AUMF as statutory authority for the use of force against Isil.” As recently as earlier this year, however, the Obama administration was attempting to narrow the scope of the AUMF, or at least
prevent it from expanding, acting on a
promise the president made in a speech in 2013 to “revise and eventually repeal” the law.
It isn’t just the White House that’s using that formulation...