House Set to Vote on Endless Worldwide War

An upcoming House vote on a little known provision inside the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would be a new law allowing this president, and all his successors, to wage an endless worldwide war without further consent of Congress.

The problematic provision in the NDAA will be considered on House floor as early as Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. Conservatives, Liberals, Academics, organizations such as the Cato institute and the ACLU as well as lawmakers, who despite coming from different places on the political spectrum find themselves in agreement in opposing a President being allowed to wage worldwide war without specific authorization of Congress. This provision deserves much more scrutiny and open public discussion.

The Detroit News ran an op-ed from freshman Republican Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who was endorsed by the Tea Party, that addresses and opposes the House provision for worldwide authorization of use of military force:

Our Armed Forces are stretched thin across three theaters and constrained by a record deficit in Washington. And while we enter our 10th year of sacrificing blood and treasure to build democracies, a home-grown democratic revolution in the Arab world has overturned several dictatorships, largely without America's help.

There has been no better time to regain our Constitutional balance and check the president's war powers. Congress is a co-equal branch — and it should start acting like it.

In addition, this week Northwestern University law professor Joseph Margulies wrote in the The New Republic:

[T]he proposed AUMF authorizes a substantially greater role for the U.S. military than it had even at the height of the cold war: the use of force against an enemy the Obama administration considers it “neither possible nor advisable” to describe, anywhere in the world, without regard to whether the proposed targets had anything to do with September 11 or whether they threaten “future acts” against the United States. There is no end in sight. Whatever else may be true, this is not what the founders intended, and not what the nation has practiced.

[N]early ten years after September 11, days after the death of Osama bin Laden, and in the absence of any imminent threat, Congress is poised to give President Obama, and his successors, substantially more authority to use force than it granted to President Bush only 72 hours after the attacks.

Some say the attacks of September 11 “changed everything.” Maybe so! But does that mean the Constitutional power reserved by the people through their elected representatives in Congress as part of the governmental checks and balances should be weakened?