My son was 5 years old on Sept. 18, 2001, when former President George W. Bush signed into law the Authorization for Use of Military Force and our troops went into combat in Afghanistan against al Qaeda.
Today my son is 21; he serves in the Army and has been deployed to Afghanistan. Thousands of miles away, my husband is deployed in Africa. Both my husband and son have been deployed under the same AUMF.
As the spouse of a service member, you expect to see your soldier, sailor, airman or Marine deploy in defense of their country. But you never expect that your child will one day be called upon to fight in the same conflict his father has been fighting on and off for the last 17 years.
When the United States enters into war zones without a clear path forward, our service members and their family members are the ones who bear the heaviest burden.
Now, across the Middle East and beyond, we see a second generation of service members who have taken up the moral imperative to serve. Over and over again, the 2001 AUMF has been used to justify our presence and military strikes in countries across the globe — in Syria, Libya, Yemen, against ISIS, and likely in places we will never know about.
The AUMF has become an open-ended invitation for presidents to send our troops into combat without so much as a debate in Congress. It needs to be changed.
Nearly 80 percent of the 420 members of the House of Representatives who supported the 60-word AUMF bill in 2001 are no longer in Congress. About the same percentage of senators who voted to send our troops to Afghanistan 17 years ago are no longer in office.
Both political parties have held the White House and Congress over the last 17 years and have authorized hundreds of billions of dollars to fund those engagements. Yet they have also neglected their Article I constitutional responsibility to debate where and whether our military should be engaged.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., has introduced a new AUMF and a hearing is expected to be scheduled soon. Such a move is long overdue.
As a spouse and mother of two service members, this is my message to lawmakers: Do not be fooled into accepting an AUMF rewrite that simply codifies the status quo.
Most of the current ideas being debated regarding a new AUMF would cede authority to enter into conflict anywhere and anytime to whoever is in the White House. Congress would in effect be permanently punting to the executive branch one of its most solemn responsibilities – declaring war.
We cannot forget that the involvement of our military across the globe has come at a great human cost.
This is a debate both current and future generations of servicemembers and the American people deserve to hear. This is an opportunity for members of Congress to ask tough questions, to accept the responsibility the American people have entrusted to them, and to live up to the oath they swore on the Constitution, which places the choice between war and peace in their hands.
Shannon Hough is special projects manager at Concerned Veterans for America.
