Group of Elected Officials Work to Push for Limiting Presidential Power to Wage Wars
Jose Nino
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California Congresswoman Barbara Lee is calling for a congressional measure to restrict the Executive Branch’s power to wage wars. As the 20th anniversary of the United States’s occupation of Iraq approaches, Lee and several anti-war organizations and elected officials are organizing a bipartisan coalition of elected officials to repeal the congressional resolution that green lit the use of military force in the Middle East.
Lee gained notoriety for being the only member of congress to vote against the authorization of military force that was used to justify the campaign against Afghanistan in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist acts.
The resolution in question, the “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” (AUMF), received nearly monolithic congressional support in 2002, which granted the US president the power to conduct military action, without having to acquire Congressional approval.
“It’s unfortunate that we’ve had to go 20, 21 years in this, this fight to repeal these authorizations that should have never happened,” Lee stated at a webinar held on October 19, 2022 that various anti-war groups organized.
This congressional authorization has been used to justify military ventures against countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.
“It’s been used over and over and over again for military attacks, for assassination attempts, not connected anywhere near to 9/11,” Lee stressed. “We have to think about the losses of people in the region and how their lives were shattered as a result of this.”
Per a 2021 report published by the Brown University’s Costs of War Project, the US government’s “global war on terror” has resulted in the deaths of roughly one million people, and cost north of $8 trillion.
Back in January 2021, Lee introduced a bill to repeal the 2001 AUMF. Thus far, it has acquired 90 co-sponsors. According to a Press TV report, the “resolution issues a sunset provision for the AUMF, forcing it to expire after a period of eight months.”
This is one of the few times where bipartisanship could yield positive results. Hopefully, more elected officials join Lee’s cause to limit the Executive Branch’s ability to wage war.
This is a first step in rolling back the Globalist American Empire. Obviously, the end goal should be to reduce the US’s military footprint abroad and re-allocated those resources towards securing our border and facilitating positive relations in the Western Hemisphere.
To reach such a point, America simply needs a new ruling class. The present ruling class is simply too neoconservative and neoliberal interventionist in nature for that to happen.
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