In a truly historic Senate vote, the United States Senate voted to officially repeal the 1991 Iraq and 2002 Afghanistan Authorizations For the Use of Military Force. And from where I’m sitting, About. Fucking. Time. The vote wasn’t even close, there were 45 Democrats, 18 Republicans, and 3 independents who voted to repeal the measure, a for the Senate rare comfortable vote of 66 Years. And there are at least three members sitting on the Injured Reserve list that didn’t vote today.
Under the United States constitution, a President cannot declare or wage war on his own. He must go to the congress and request an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF. With that authorization, the US congress opens up the treasury to pay for the war, and basically Cries havoc and lets slip the dogs of war. I love this step, because it keeps a delusional autocrat like Traitor Tot from declaring war on Sweden. The problem is that due to the uncertainties of war, most AUMF’s don’t come with an expiration date.
Which can only lead to trouble. Remember a bunch of years ago, a book came out that was called something like The Seven Degrees Of Kevin Bacon. The book sought to show that if you looked at the family tree of any family, they were no more than seven degrees removed from a familial relationship with actor Kevin Bacon. I didn’t read it, but I remember it was a bestseller, simply because it was so offbeat and kicky.
And that’s the fatal flaw of any AUMF. Once the war is authorized, no matter how the conflict comes out, any time another country gives a future President a ration of shit, he can play The Seven Degrees Of Kevin Bacon to find a way to tie that new irritant to the original AUMF, and go to war. Bush Lite got his AUMF to go to war in Afghanistan, and then Kevin Baconed his way to trying Saddam Hussein to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and invaded Iraq. Other Presidents have used it to put ground troops into Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and God knows how many other middle East hot spots.
Repealing these AUMF’s are critical because it means that if any future American President wants to start some foreign intervention bullshit, he’ll have to go back to congress to authorize and fund it. There is also the real chance that all of those troops in other hotspots like Yemen, Somalia, and Syria will have to be withdrawn because their funding is now defunct. Which is fine with me. If we had done this six years ago, Sergeant LaDavid Johnson would be at home with his wife today.
According to new reporting in The Hill, this vote is a source of a major rift in the GOP, especially the US Senate. One group sincerely wants to reduce our foreign footprint, and quit spending so much money overseas. There’s another faction that wants the US to keep a robust military footprint overseas, which in the Middle East would mean using the 2002 AUMF as a crutch. The Hill reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is already putting pressure on House Squeaker Cavein McCarthy to not bring the Senate bill to the floor for a vote without significant changes that would poison it back in the Senate on the rebound. Current wisdom is that the Senate bill would easily pass the House with 35-50% GOP support in its current form.
Which brings us to the fly-in-the-ointment, the mold-on-the-cheese, the pain-in-the-ass, one Kentucky faux Libertarian Senator Rand Paul. Incredibly enough, Paul actually voted to repeal the AUMF’s, but it wasn’t like he actually gave a shit about the lives of American military servicemembers or anything like that. As The Hill reported it;
Paul thinks the majority of Senate Republicans who voted against repealing the military authorization and who support funding for the war in Ukraine are out of step with GOP voters.
There you have it right there. Rand Paul couldn’t give a shit less about either one of those two AUMF’s, but in them he sees a way to make them a cause celebre for an issue he sure as hell cares about, the war in Ukraine. He hates it. And he now sees a way to throw a monkey wrench in the works.
And if the bill passes the House and is signed, you can almost write Paul’s pompous, duplicitous bullshit yourself. My dear colleagues. We recently passed a bill that rescinded the 1991 and 2002 AUMFS for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We did that because after more than 20 long years of almost continuous war, we have finally wised up to the fact that we can’t keep throwing unlimited amounts of blood and treasure on foreign misadventures. But yet several members of my own party want to continue to give President Biden an open checkbook to keep backing the Ukrainians against Russia. If that’s the case, then why rescind the other AUMF’s in the first place.
Like everything else in his misguided Aqua Buddha acolyte life, Paul is an expert in mixing apples with oranges. President Biden isn’t using and AUMF to fund the Ukrainians. Biden has been using presidential discretionary funds, as well as passing funding measures through congress in order to keep Ukraine up and in the fight. And even the most rockheaded GOP Senators can see the difference between a 20 year quagmire in Afghanistan, and an existential threat to democracy in an ally country. Once again Rand Paul is on the wrong side.
But that is the bait-and-switch that the Democrats in the House are going to have to watch out for. If McCarthy brought the bill to the floor tomorrow, it would pass easily. But McCarthy is already insisting on regular order, meaning committee hearings, and a mark-up phase. And that’s the phase the Democrats have to be laser focused on. Because McConnell will insist on poison pills like carving out exceptions to the AUMF for troops already in p0lace, and Paul will want poison pills tying those AUMF subsets to severe limits on US support for the war in Ukraine.
The House Democrats have to use what power they have, including rallying moderate GOP lawmakers against unlimited war financing to ensure that those poison pill amendments don’t get into the bill. Because if they do, then what we end up with is an endless ping-pong match between the House and the Senate over amendments. And American soldiers keep dying in far off lands we don’t even really care about, it’s just geo-politics. And that’s unacceptable.
