Obama does not have authorization, backing for strikes
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” said Senator Barack Obama in 2007.
“Last night, on my orders, America’s armed forces began strikes against ISIL targets in Syria,” President Barack Obama said Wednesday evening.
It is difficult to illustrate more starkly the contrast between the foreign policy that Americans voted for in Obama the Senator and the decisions that have been made by Obama.
Though the 2007 quote was about Iran, and the quote from earlier this week is about ISIS, the idea is the same — the president is not supposed to be able to engage the U. S. in a conflict without the authorization of Congress unless we are in imminent danger.
This was the idea that hundreds of millions of Americans supported in the ballot boxes on Election Day. We wanted a president who would honor his commitment to end the wars in the Middle East and stop needlessly endangering our country’s brave men and women in uniform.
College age students voted in record numbers for a president who would not only stop spending trillions of our tax dollars on continuous Middle Eastern wars (that have been raging since before most of us could remember), but more importantly bring home our parents, siblings and friends who had been gone for so long.
The president we got instead has not only failed to end the conflicts he inherited but has in fact added several of his own. Iraq. Afghanistan. Pakistan. Yemen. Somalia. Libya. All countries in which Obama has ordered U.S. military operations. In September 2013 he sought Congressional approval to add Syria to the list, but because of overwhelming popular opposition, was rebuked.
A year later, Obama has now decided that he never actually needed that authorization; American strikes throughout Syria began earlier this week.
Obama has attempted to justify this operation by invoking the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), passed three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. That legislation authorized the president to go after al-Qaida in response to the thousands of lives lost during those horrendous attacks.
However, after more than a decade of persecution (and the assassination of Osama bin Laden), al-Qaida is now but a shadow of its former self.
With the decline of al-Qaeda in mind, one would think that the AUMF would no longer be necessary. And by “one would think”, I really mean “President Obama thought”; as recently as 2013, Obama had asked Congress to repeal the AUMF. Luckily for the Obama that now wants to attack Syria, Congress never listens to him and failed to do so.
Or, perhaps, not so luckily. The AUMF mentions al-Qaida by name, authorizing force against that organization and its associates (which operate in different countries under different names). Billing ISIS as an al-Qaida associate is a bit of a hard sell, seeing as each has disavowed any connection, and is in fact at war with, the other.
Senator Obama knew the dangers of allowing the president to deploy the American military at a whim, of having no checks and balances against the military authority of our Commander in Chief.
President Obama treats Middle Eastern countries like Pokemon cards to be collected and put into his binder (it’s the one with the picture of a Predator drone taped over a faded “Hope” sticker on the front). Millennials are completely justified in their disillusionment with our President — after all, they voted for the other guy.