Prominent senators from both parties say a new bipartisan effort to authorize President Obama’s fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria won’t gain much traction in a deeply divided Congress, and is essentially dead on arrival.
Two members of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sens. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., introduced a new bill Monday in an effort to renew debate on the war powers issue, which had stalled two months ago as the Senate became distracted by the Obama administration’s efforts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.
But the Kaine-Flake bill quickly drew dissent and skepticism from other key senators who appear to have moved on from the debate over whether Congress needs to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, said she doesn’t believe that Obama really needs Congress to weigh in and back the president’s actions in Iraq and Syria.
“I think the president has the necessary authority,” she told the Washington Examiner Tuesday. “I do believe that if one can agree on it then it would be a prudent thing to do, but if there’s going to be a big fuss, fight, disagreement over it, in view of what’s happening in the Middle East right now, I don’t think that’s helpful.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Armed Services Committee and one of the harshest critics of Obama’s airstrike strategy against the Islamic State, also seemed content to move past the AUMF debate and onto a more intense discussion of how best to degrade and defeat the extremist group.
“I just think it’s going to be very hard to coalesce around a strategy that accommodates sort of the libertarian view” of opposing intervention overseas, Graham, who recently entered the GOP presidential nomination contest, told the Examiner. He said Flake and Kaine are two “serious” senators, but said people are too worried about not launching another invasion, and not worried enough about stopping the Islamic State.
“What I’m trying to prevent is the rise of ISIL and its ability to become more lethal to the homeland, and I’m not trapped by the Bush problems,” he said.
“You’ve got to look at what’s going on in front of you,” he continued. “And here’s my policy toward ISIL: When it comes to protecting your family and our way of life against radical Islam, I say whatever it takes for as long as it takes. That would be the authorization I would vote for.”
While Graham said “he’s okay” with Congress getting involved in authorizing military action, he said he wants to be sure not to limit or forecast any limitations to the enemy, “making it harder to accomplish the mission.”
As the Pentagon announces more progress in its efforts to train vetted Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State, Graham raised another vexing problem for the administration and any congressional war powers act. If the Syrian fighters the U.S. is training come under attack from the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad, separate from the Islamic State, Graham wants to know if the U.S. can use military force to protect them.
Graham says Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter have both said the U.S. military would be handcuffed in such a scenario. “I think that would be a fatal flaw on any policy in Syria,” Graham said.
Back in February, after months of criticism from the left and right over Obama’s decision to take military action against the Islamic State without Congress’s consent or approval, the president sent Congress a draft resolution of an AUMF bill. Republicans quickly argued that it was too restrictive on allowing U.S. troop involvement in the fight and Democrats were just as vehement that it was not restrictive enough.
The debate quickly deadlocked and even now shows no sign of a breakthrough, despite the Kaine-Flake effort, which offers more nuanced language on U.S. troop involvement. The new measure specifically says that the “use of significant U.S. ground troops in combat” would be prohibited unless U.S. citizens faced an imminent threat.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday praised the new signs of life for an AUMF authorization, however meager, and said he hoped other senators would “follow-up in a similar way.”
“I do think this language that was put forward by Sen. Kaine and Sen. Flake is an indication that at least some members of Congress are willing to step up and fulfill their constitutional responsibility to be heard on this matter,” Earnest told reporters. “I think Sen. Kaine and Sen. Flake deserve some credit for that.”
With the fight against the Islamic State taking a turn for the worse in recent weeks, the White House undoubtedly would like to gain some cover with Congress getting some skin into the game. Yet, with the 2016 presidential campaign already taking shape and deep divisions remaining in Congress on how best to approach the ISIS fight, a path to AUMF consensus seems unlikely.
The president and the Pentagon this week have said they are close to announcing a plan for the U.S. military to take a greater role in training and equipping Sunnis in the Iraqi army, a slightly stepped up U.S. military role than has previously existed since the U.S.-led campaign against the extremist group began last summer.
But with the Islamic State making advances in Ramadi and Syria in recent weeks, Republican critics of U.S.-led fight say the president has to do far more to lay out a comprehensive plan of action so Congress knows what it’s authorizing.
“The president is skillfully avoiding his duty to lead,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. “He just will not lay out a comprehensive strategy that anyone can unite behind, which is making it more difficult on the battlefield to rally our allies in a cohesive way.”
“I hope an authorization for force, if it works properly, would devolve to that basic thing — the president has to use force, he says how he intends to use it and Congress authorizes it or not,” he said. “That’s the way the system ought to work, but it’s so befuddled, I’m not sure anything will have much impact.”
