On Wednesday, the House will debate a bill requiring that all U.S. forces be recalled from Iraq unless Congress takes action on an authorization for use of military force against the Islamic State.
The office of Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said the point of the debate Wednesday is to force the House to discuss the authorization and shed light on Congress’ lack of action on the issue.
Yet over the past 10 months, the U.S. military has conducted thousands of airstrikes against the Islamic state without a new AUMF.
So is a new authorization really necessary in the fight against ISIS?
The current authorization became law Sept. 18, 2001, and allowed for “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons,” involved in the 9/11 attacks, and also to “prevent any future acts of international terrorism.”
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“I consider al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to be birds of a single feather,” meaning both are a threat to the U.S., said Brookings Institution senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon. The main consideration, O’Hanlon said, is not whether expanded operations against the Islamic State are covered by this authorization — it’s how long the U.S. has to act against them.
“The [2001 authorization] covers any group with the goal of an extremist caliphate,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you have to send in the 82nd Airborne” just yet. The Islamic State’s “aspirations may not be that expansive at the moment.”
In the past 10 months, the existing authorization has been used to conduct attacks against the Islamic State in Syria with the understanding that ISIS fighters in Syria still maintain close ties to al-Qaeda, and therefore are covered by the current language.
“The AUMF authorizes us to strike [al-Qaeda,]” Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said. “[Islamic State] forces in Syria have a very direct link to al-Qaeda.”
Whereas the proposed AUMF, Warren said, “allows us to pursue other flavors of terrorists. The new AUMF allows us to pursue [the Islamic State] throughout the world.”
In the past several days, U.S. airstrikes have targeted terrorists with active or previous ties to al-Qaeda. Yet U.S. attacks have also shown how the U.S. uses the current verbiage to hit targets that may not be directly active in al-Qaeda, and aren’t necessarily located in Iraq or Syria. Libyan-based terrorist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who was targeted on Saturday, was also suspected of reaching out to the Islamic State after branching away from the terrorist organization and forming his own group.
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War authorization will likely also come up tomorrow during a House Armed Services Committee hearing, where Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey have been called to testify on the administration’s anti-ISIS strategy. Many GOP lawmakers say the White House and Pentagon haven’t gone far enough to contain the extremist group, despite plans to continue sending advisers, trainers and weapons to Iraqi units attempting to take back ISIS-controlled towns.
A GOP staffer for House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said the party is uncomfortable voting on a new AUMF without a better idea of what the president’s strategy is.
“We cannot expect our distinguished witnesses … to answer for all of the failures of the administration’s approach to the Middle East over the last six years,” Thornberry said in a preview to Wednesday’s hearing. “We can and should expect to hear, however, the military component of a strategy to reverse this deteriorating trend and to protect American interests.”
Without a new AUMF, military hits on future targets will likely continue to be couched in terms of the current AUMF and their previous ties to al-Qaeda. But those ties may be harder to make in the future.
The Islamic State, O’Hanlon said, “has affiliates that reach as far away as Nigeria.”
