Tim Kaine, the War on the Warfront, and the Presidents of the United States, the Executive Branch, and a New Look at the American War Crime
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, after trying for 10 years, is on the cusp of getting Congress to repeal the authorizations that led the US into war against Iraq in the early ’90s and again in the early ‘00s.
Along with a Republican, Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, Kaine has support from the White House and a bipartisan coalition. He and Young told CNN’s Jake Tapper about their proposal on “The Lead” on Thursday.
I wanted to know if repeal would actually accomplish something since both authorizations have fallen into disrepair.
One of the reasons it was so carefully debated was that they were doing something intentionally very different from other nations, which had tended to make initiation of war a matter for the king, the emperor, the monarch, the executive.
The debates at the time and in the years immediately after made claim that the commander in chief has the power to act without Congress to defend the United States against imminent attack. Defense can always be done by the executive, but if you want to go into offensive military action, you need a congressional vote.
The reason for it is clearly stated in the debates. The notion is you’d want to have the people’s elected representatives debate, in front of the public, whether a war was in the national interest, where you commit troops into harm’s way, where they risk life and limb.
The power to presidents of all parties has often been deferred by Whigs and Republicans in Congress. I came into the Senate with a plan to reverse a very sloppy trend.
The Iraq War, 1991-2002: When did George W. Bush and George H. W. Jefferson confront him as a president to declare war against Iraq?
WOLF: We’ve had peace treaties end wars. The Korean War is still going on, but technically, I suppose. Why is it important to do this with regard to Iraq right now?
In this case, both Sen. Young and I strongly believe that Congress needs to take the power back to declare war, but then also to declare when a war is over.
In the case of Iraq, we declared war against the nation of Iraq first in 1991 to expel Iraq from Kuwait, and then in 2002, to topple the government of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party.
The Gulf War ended relatively quickly, and Iraq was expelled from Kuwait. The Saddam Hussein Baathist government was toppled. The war against Iraq is no longer going on.
But in particular, Iraq is no longer an enemy. Iraq is now a security partner. We are working with Iraq to fight terrorism, and we are also working with them to counter Iranian influence in the region.
If there is a war authorization that is not really needed it gives a president an opportunity to misuse it and say, hey, Congress was given authority to do this.
When a war is over, congress should stop authorizing military actions so that the president can come back if he needs to.
WOLF: I was reading a Congressional Research Service report about these two authorizations, and when they were invoked, both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush said something to the effect of, “Thanks for passing this resolution, but I didn’t actually need it.”
George W. Bush in 2002: “… my request for it did not, and my signing this resolution does not, constitute any change in the long-standing positions of the executive branch on either the President’s constitutional authority to use force to deter, prevent, or respond to aggression or other threats to U.S. interests or on the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution.”
There is a line that can be crossed between what is an action taken in defense and what is an offensive action.
Jefferson confronted this as president, from the very beginning. The Barbary Coast pirates, who were connected to the nations of North Africa, were invading American shipping in the Mediterranean. Jefferson believed that he could order his ships to fire on and defend themselves from these attacks.
But he then was like, well, do I want to just defend repeated attacks or would I like to send the Navy into the ports to basically destroy the ships that are attacking us? And Jefferson said, look, in that instance I need to have Congress. It can be a little subjective to determine what is defense against an impending attack versus what is an offensive action. It is not always clear.
I was highly critical of the Iraq war authorization in terms of the timing. Remember that this was brought to Congress on October 1, 2002 before the election.
I was very critical of the timing at the time – it looked like it was being done to potentially electioneer. The president included congress, and they voted for the authorization.
WOLF: The US military has not used this authorization to justify military action since 2009. The US military has been active in Iraq with different authorizations than the one granted by the Iraqi government.
In fact, every year, the White House tells Congress where the military has been active using military force in the preceding year. In the un-classified version of the report, there are actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. And they were all justified by the 2001 AUMF relating to terrorism.
The 2001 authorization to take action against terrorist groups is not perfect, and it needs to be changed.
I have a twice introduced revisions to the 2001 authorization that would more narrowly specify which terrorist groups and under what circumstances the US could use military action against them. I don’t yet have a bipartisan consensus on that enough for it to move forward.
It is my last goal to rewrite the War Powers Resolution of 1974 in order to clear up some issues and give a more robust consultative process between the articles about any questions on war.
What you’re doing right here with the Iraq resolutions in one way takes power away from the president, but he has vast power that we’re not even talking about. How would you hem him in?
The 2001 war authorization approved after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gives the president broad legal authority to conduct counterterrorism operations around the world.
It has some definition of the enemy. It suggests a non-state terrorist organization has something to do with the 9/11 attack. So you have al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have all of these splinter groups.
It has been used against groups that claim to support al Qaeda but that have never attacked the United States.
Some of the earlier versions looked at geographic and temporal restrictions. They require more of a notice to Congress, sort of like the State Department can designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations requires more of an advanced notice to Congress. If the administration believes that this particular terrorist group poses threat – some opportunity for congressional engagement either to approve or disapprove, if such notice is given.
I was in a car and I didn’t pull up my prior drafts on this so I am doing this from memory. It would probably be a tighter definition of the group, with more notice to Congress, and an AUMF that will probably sunset periodically unless Congress authorizes it.
WOLF: You’ve been working on this for 10 years. It seems like a no-brainer since this authorization hasn’t been used since before you were in the Senate. Why has it taken so long? Is it inertia? Is it a fear of taking power from the president?
So having President Biden, who was on the Foreign Relations Committee for 36 years, who wants to be robust in Article 2 power but also understands Article 1 power, that’s really helpful.
It should be the most guarded thing we do. You can see how wide the ideological gulf is from the 22 senators that co-sponsored it and from the House members who co-sponsored it.
When I started on this in 2013, it wouldn’t have been the case. I think the Congress needs to lose some of the power that it has.
The congressional authorization that was used to justify the war will be up for debate in the Senate on Tuesday, 20 years after the first bombs were dropped.
Every year, a future administration can abuse the law if we leave it on the books. “Congress — the rightful dispenser of war powers — cannot allow this to continue.”
The vote is symbolic, but supporters of Senate say it’s important for congress to regain its authority to declare and end wars.
The U.S. Response to the September 11 Attack on the Iraqi Terrorist Group and the Trump-Carlo Young Term
Some 2,500 U.S. forces are still active in Iraq. Last month, the U.S. took part in over 30 raids with Iraqi forces against the terror group.
Democrats are united in support of the legislation, but the debate could highlight a rift inside the Republican Party between traditional foreign policy conservatives and the small but growing force of “America First” lawmakers who are more ideologically aligned with former President Donald Trump’s non-interventionist views.
It also happens as Senate Minority Leader McConnell is in rehabilitation after a fall at a Washington D.C. hotel.
Young told reporters last week that it was not just about reasserting congressional war authority, but about sending a message to past and prospective military troops.
“We will not incentivize the next generation to step up and fill that necessary breach to defend our way of life so that the rest of us can sleep safely at night if they don’t regard our actions here in Washington as responsible and consistent with the desires of the American people,” he said.
When we need to be in the Middle East, I have a problem trying to talk in to the region when we are out of town. “It’s much more than terrorism that we’re dealing with in the region, but we still have very real threats that are there.”
It’s not clear if House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will bring the same bill up for a vote again, after it passed with bipartisan support. GOP congressmen Tom Cole of Oklahoma and Chip Roy ofTexas are the lead Republican sponsors.