WASHINGTON, D.C. – A broad, bipartisan coalition of 35 House lawmakers called on Speaker Ryan today to schedule and debate an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) as quickly as possible following the recent announcement by President Obama of a deepening entanglement in Syria and Iraq.
The letter to Speaker Ryan is led by Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA), Tom Cole, (R-OK), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Walter Jones (R-NC), Peter Welch (D-VT), and John Lewis (D-GA). Click here to view the letter.
“Last week, the president announced [that] the U.S. will deploy a U.S. Special Operations contingent into northern Syria to be embedded with and to advise opposition militant forces in that region; and U.S. military advisors and special operations forces already in Iraq will be embedded with Kurdish and Iraqi forces on the front lines of combat,” the lawmakers wrote, calling the move part of “a significant escalation in U.S. military operations in the region” that places “U.S. military personnel on the front lines of combat operations.”
“We do not share the same policy prescriptions for U.S. military engagement in the region, but we do share the belief that it is past time for the Congress to fulfill its obligations under the Constitution and vote on an AUMF that clearly delineates the authority and limits, if any, on U.S. military engagement in Iraq, Syria and the surrounding region,” the lawmakers added.
“Congress can no longer ask our brave service men and women to continue to serve in harm’s way while we fail in carrying out our constitutional responsibility in the area of war and peace,” the lawmakers concluded. “As long as the House fails to assert its constitutional prerogatives and authority, the Administration may continue to expand the mission and level of engagement of U.S. Armed Forces throughout the region. We strongly urge you, Mr. Speaker, to bring an AUMF to the floor of the House as quickly as possible.”
Other Members signing the letter are Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI), Michael Burgess (R-TX), David Cicilline (D-RI), John Conyers (D-MI), Joe Crowley (D-NY), John Abney Culberson (R-TX), Peter A. DeFazio (D-OR), John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-TN), John Garamendi (D-CA), Paul A. Gosar (R-AZ), Janice Hahn (D-CA), Richard L. Hanna (R-NY), Joe Kennedy (D-MA), Daniel Kildee (D-MI), Raúl R. Labrador (R-ID), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Bill Posey (R-FL), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Matt Salmon (R-AZ), Mark Sanford (R-SC), Janice D. Schakowsky (D-IL), Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Ed Whitfield (R-KY), Ted S. Yoho (R-FL), and Ryan K. Zinke (R-MT).
The full letter, sent today, can be found below:
The Honorable Paul Ryan
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
H-232 U.S. Capitol Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Speaker Ryan,
Among the issues that require urgent attention by the U.S. House of Representatives is the question of the extant of involvement by the U.S. military in the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Given the recent announcement by President Obama of a deepening entanglement in Syria and Iraq, it is critical that the House schedule and debate an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) as quickly as possible.
Last week, the president announced initiatives that escalate U.S. engagement in combat operations in Syria and Iraq. Specifically, the U.S. will deploy a U.S. Special Operations contingent into northern Syria to be embedded with and to advise opposition militant forces in that region; and U.S. military advisors and special operations forces already in Iraq will be embedded with Kurdish and Iraqi forces on the front lines of combat. Secretary of Defense Carter also stated that U.S. air operations in both Syria and Iraq will increase their bombing campaigns. Taken all together, these represent a significant escalation in U.S. military operations in the region and place U.S. military personnel on the front lines of combat operations.
We do not share the same policy prescriptions for U.S. military engagement in the region, but we do share the belief that it is past time for the Congress to fulfill its obligations under the Constitution and vote on an AUMF that clearly delineates the authority and limits, if any, on U.S. military engagement in Iraq, Syria and the surrounding region. U.S. bombing campaigns have been going on for more than a year, and U.S. troops on the ground have been increasingly close to or drawn into combat operations, including the recent death in combat of a special operations soldier in Iraq.
Consistent with your pledge to return to regular order, we urge you to direct the committees of jurisdiction to draft and report out an AUMF as soon as possible. We do not believe in the illusion of a consensus authorization, something that only happens rarely. We do believe the Congress can no longer ask our brave service men and women to continue to serve in harm’s way while we fail in carrying out our constitutional responsibility in the area of war and peace.
As long as the House fails to assert its constitutional prerogatives and authority, the Administration may continue to expand the mission and level of engagement of U.S. Armed Forces throughout the region. We strongly urge you, Mr. Speaker, to bring an AUMF to the floor of the House as quickly as possible.
Sincerely,
###
jconway says
You are a consistent proponent of peace and the rule of law when it comes to Congress authority in foreign affairs.
Christopher says
Libya was pretty swift and painless with some support from us, but I’d hardly call it starting a war. Did we even sustain casualties in that one? I keep thinking of Libya as a great example of successfully ousting a tyrant.
jconway says
If we are using our military overseas, it’s a war Christopher. If Jefferson needed Congressional permission to fight our first war in Libya against pirates, Obama needed it to fight Qadaffi in Libya. He never asked for it and never got it, but both parties said he needed it. At least Iraq had Congressional authorization.
And while we sustained no casualties, we definitely broke it and have done nothing to fix it, breaking Colin Powell’s pottery barn rule.
Christopher says
You don’t usually downrate. I actually disagree that every use of military is a war and I’m not saying Congressional approval should not have been sought. Maybe we should have done more to fix it, but in my experience doing what we need to do usually gets pushback here. I believe the War Powers Act gives the President 90 days and I’m not sure we were involved in Libya that long.
centralmassdad says
When you launch air strikes, which drop explosives on people and infrastructure, causing casualties and damage, that counts as “war.”
I don’t think it any more successful than Iraq. “Ousting a tyrant” is great, but when you do so without having any earthly idea of what comes next, and allow a brutal and chaotic anarchy to descend, stimulating the rise of hyper-violent terrorists, then I am pretty sure you failed.
And it was a HRC policy. And Republicans had her in a chair, under oath, to answer for it, and they completely failed to do so.
SomervilleTom says
I’m pretty sure that Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton, determined this strategy.
How is it accurate to characterize this as “a HRC policy”?
centralmassdad says
Sure, the buck stops with the President, but she’s the one who got the buck there in the first place. And, apparently, very skillfully managed the intervention while it was going on. But, there is no doubt that the entire intervention was a failure.
SomervilleTom says
It sounds as though you’re arguing that the Secretary of State decides whether or not America goes to war. Is that really what you mean?
We don’t know what alternatives she presented to the president. We don’t know what discussions the two of them had about those alternatives.
I agree that the approach we took was a failure. I am not nearly ready to place the blame for that failure on the shoulders of Ms. Clinton.
SomervilleTom says
Do you also blame Colin Powell for the 2003 invasion of Iraq?
jconway says
It was quite obvious that Powell reluctantly followed his President into the war while the reverse was the case with Obama and Clinton. At the time, it is hard to fault the humanitarian response working in concert with our Arab League and NATO allies to avoid a wide massacre of civilians. I defended this approach at the time, but there was next to no post-war planning. And I would argue our NATO allies, as the drivers of the switch from a civilian protection to a regime change mission, should’ve been the ones to bare the brunt of that burden.
I would also add our Congress could’ve inserted itself more in this operation by approving or disapproving of it’s continuation, and instead, the war was allowed to continue without authorization, even as it expanded past the initial UNSC resolution.
SomervilleTom says
Even by the time Arab Spring was in bloom, there were few viable options available to us in Libya. The combination of our reckless invasion of Iraq and the continuing and escalating issues with Israel, Iran, and the rest of the Middle East were already polarizing opposition to Gadhafi within Libya. Our prolonged support for and failed rehabilitation of Mr. Gadhafi during the prior administration meant that he had already crushed all but the most rabid of his internal opposition.
There were precious few “moderates” left. If we aided any of them, we exposed them to attacks from more radical rebel elements that they were aligning themselves with “The Great Satan” and (by proxy) with Israel. If we aided any of the more radical movements, we exposed ourselves to attacks that we were providing weapons to Iranian-sponsored terrorist organizations.
The government of Saddam Hussein, as objectionable as it was, was the last stable secular force in the ME. When we simply destroyed that, without replacing it, we created a power vacuum in the ME that radical groups filled. There were no “good guys”, or even moderates, to help — either economically or militarily. By the time we did act, it was far too late. We face a very similar dilemma in Syria today.
In my view, the harvest we are reaping in the Middle East was sowed LONG BEFORE our failed intervention in Libya.
jconway says
What I might disagree with is the comparison you made earlier. I think Obama was reluctant to get involved and Hillary was more hawkish on Libya and Syria alike, and examining the consequences of our policies there and her role in both would’ve been a good function of Congress oversight power. Instead it was wasted on a witch hunt even Fox News had to concede was pointless.
What CMD forgets is that many Republicans backed the intervention or took simultaneously opposed positions on it like most of the 2012 field. Evaluating our role in this conflict will help us avoid similar mistakes in the future, an evaluation that should surely apply to the Iraq debacle as well.
centralmassdad says
But I’m also not necessarily persuaded by “but the Republicans didn’t object.”
In my view, this administration has been really quite poor on these issues, even allowing for the inheritance of a rotten situation without many good options. My own view is, maybe err on the side of not staging air strikes or military intervention, but if you choose military intervention, then don’t be tepid about it.
Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. On all three it seemed like the administration really couldn’t make up its mind what American policy would be, went a little passive, and then wound up reacting to events in an ad hoc manner. Maybe this was an over-reaction to Bush’s renowned “decisiveness,” but the problem with Bush wasn’t so much that he was decisive as it was that he always made the wrong decision decisively.
In any event, the Libya intervention, as actually implemented, was championed by HRC, and turned out to be a failure. This doesn’t seem in any way like an unfair question to a presidential candidate. If the answer is, yes I supported it, but not in the following particulars, then fine.
SomervilleTom says
I agree with your criticisms of the Obama administration on this.
As Secretary of State, I think it was Ms. Clinton’s job to champion the policy in public. I think we don’t know what, if any, reservations she shared in private consultations with Mr. Obama, his staff, and his cabinet.
jconway says
This account from Time is pretty instructive:
Now I would agree it’s not fair to blame her exclusively for the collapse of the moderate forces we backed and the Obama’s administrations policies once she was out of government. But it is germane to ask her, when and where should the US intervene and how she would plan for it. It would also be germane to ask her about what lessons she has learned from Iraq or Libya and how they might apply to our future in Afghanistan and Iraq/Syria.
I am 70% confident she is my next President, and I want her to do a good job, the Republicans are the ones afraid of the tough questions being asked of their candidates, we shouldn’t be. The answers will make her a better President.
centralmassdad says
I find myself arguing from your left (to the extent dove=left).
I am not necessarily saying that there is responsibility for pushing the administration’s policy, but rather that there is some responsibility for driving the administration to adopt that [policy.
SomervilleTom says
I agree that the questions each of you asks are fair, I hope they are asked, and I hope they are answered.
I’d like to see those same questions asked and answered by each of the other candidates, both Democratic and Republican.
I can’t help but also observe that it’s too bad that the multi-million dollar
witch huntinvestigation by the latest House Benghazi committee provided NO information whatsoever (new or old) about any of these questions.centralmassdad says
From their perspective, they couldn’t attack the concept of the intervention generally without calling 2003 into question. Instead, they had to make something up that was specifically bad about Clinton, and missed, except with respect to their own existing voters.
jconway says
Whether you intended to or not, I think you oversimplified how successful the operation was since you viewed it through an exclusive American prism. It has led to far more death and destruction for Libyans, who were the first to flee to Europe in drove before Syrians. It has not produced a peaceful, stable, or democratic state in Qadaffi’s wake. Like Tito, Saddam, and increasingly Assad-these societies are basically nation state in name and shape only, and amalgamations of different competing ethnic groups that fight each other for power as soon as the unifying tyrants are deposed.
Syckes-Picot has been a disaster and should give any liberal idealist great pause. Partly the result of the post-WWI order that Wilson developed with his foolish right to self determination and letting himself be run over by George, Clemenceau, and even Orlando, head of the most incompetent Allied power that contributed the least to the victory. Nearly every major atrocity in the last century can be directly traced to the failures at Versailles. The Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Balkan Wars in the 90s, and the current mess in the Middle East can all be brought back to that treaty.
Also in the case of Libya it made us look like we went back on our diplomatic word. We negotiated agreements with Libya to get it to give up WMD programs unilaterally and peacefully, and also to compensate the Lockerbie victims in exchange for rejoining the world. It paid a price for cooperating and disarming-the US overturned the regime. You bet Assad and Iran watched that and became far more reluctant to work with the United States at peacefully disarming and rejoining the world community.
I also don’t see you calling for us to abandon support for the Gulf States, which are autocracies whose tyranny we directly enable via arms and funds. Like ISIL, which they may or may not fund, they enjoy crucifying their opponents. So at the end of the day, the realist admits that the goal of any state is to increase and defend its power, and as an American, that is what I want for my country. Not to weaken it by brushfire war after brushfire war in the nebulous name of the common good.
SomervilleTom says
It looks as though this is a reply to Christopher’s 3:34p post, rather than to the thread-starter.
I think the comment-nesting bug (for the last comment on a page) has struck again.
Christopher says
…commented that we should not prop up the Gulf States that you refer to. We look like hypocrites when we do that and I believe it is a major contributor to the negative attitudes toward the USA on the part of the “Arab Street”. The biggest failure stemming from Versailles is our own failure to join the League of Nations, a refusal spearheaded I’m ashamed to say, by our own Henry Cabot Lodge. There was also the punishing reparations and restrictions on Germany the allies insisted upon that led to WWII, but that Wilson was trying to avoid. I believe that ultimately it will increase our influence and power if we consistently adhere to an act upon the values we claim to advocate.
jconway says
I agree with you and Kristof that there are pressures we can put on the Gulf States to begin to liberalize, but at the end of the day, the choice often seems to be between secular strongmen and religious fundamentalists.
Perhaps if Iran begins opening up we can see how the latter form of government can mature. If we really want to say “let the people of the Middle East decide their government” we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that they will vote for Hamas, Hezbollah, Edrogan, or the Muslim Brotherhood. Every time*. All groups that make the Ba’ath Party look like the Chamber of Commerce…
*Tunisia has kept a moderate party in power but it’s security is growing more and more precarious as Libya collapses-it’s moderate party failed to stay in power
Christopher says
…and I am willing to accept that possibility, but in practice I am not as convinced as you are that Arabs consistently want an extreme government. There may be an element of theocracy even democratically elected that we would not accept in the US, but that would be their sovereign right. If we show the Arabs that we are willing to work with elected governments we aren’t necessarily fans of I believe they will warm to us and become less extreme. After all, Iran hates us largely BECAUSE we helped overthrow the elected Mossedegh government.