No more AUMFs! No more ‘unitary executives’!: We’re Already Losing Our Democracy and All Our Freedoms to the 2001 AUMF

By Dave Lindorff

            Critics of President Obama’s proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force AUMF) against ISIS have been focused upon its deliberately obfuscatory and ambiguous language, which they rightly note would make it essentially a carte blanche from Congress allowing the president to go to war almost anywhere some would-be terrorist or terrorist copycat could be found who claims affinity with ISIS.

            The critics have also complained that even if Congress were to reject his AUMF request, the president would continue his acts of war against the likes of ISIS, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan, claiming he is acting under the aegis of the 2001 AUMF Congress passed to allow the Bush/Cheney invasion of Afghanistan.

            It is for that reason that some critics of the latest AUMF are calling for repeal of the 2001 AUMF before the new AUMF can even be considered.

            But these critics are ignoring the real reason that the 2001 AUMF must be repealed, which is that in declaring the “War on Terror” against Al Qaeda and “those who were behind the 9-11 attacks” as well as those alleged to have aided or sheltered them, and in declaring that the whole globe was the battlefield in this supposed “war,” including the United States, the 2001 AUMF became a justification for the federal courts and the US Supreme Court to essentially declare the president a dictator.

            The legal “theory” cobbled together by the Bush/Cheney White House attorney-for-hire John Yoo and accepted by the Supreme Court majority is that during time of war, and particularly in a war zone, the Constitution makes the American president a “unitary executive” who has within his power not just executive, but also legislative and judicial authority to act on his own without restraint. This is the specious argument that has allowed President Obama, and President Bush before him, to override the Constitutional guarantee of a right to a fair trial by ones peers, and to simply decide whether to torture captives or whether an American should be killed in a drone strike for allegedly being a terrorist or terror supporter. It is the argument that allows the president to decide that it’s okay to torture someone, in violation of US and international law. It’s okay for the NSA and other federal agencies to spy on Americans under this unitary executive theory, too...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2667