By Kevin D. Williamson
Sunday, January 05, 2020
Nancy Pelosi complains that the Trump administration’s
decision to assassinate Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani was
“provocative and disproportionate” and that it “risks provoking further
dangerous escalation of violence.” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders
also have denounced the killing.
Pelosi further charges that the operation was unauthorized.
Specifically, Pelosi says the action was taken “without
an authorization for use of military force against Iran.” But the airstrike
happened in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, not in Iran. The Trump administration
argues that the Iraq AUMF empowered the president to take this action, a
position shared by many critics not ordinarily inclined to view the president
with a great deal of indulgence, my friend David French among them. The
administration’s case here is not obviously implausible.
Pelosi also complains that she was not notified of the
operation prior to its execution, even though protocol calls for her and a few
other top congressional leaders to be briefed. She must be especially irritated
that she was left in the dark and Senator Lindsay Graham was advised of the
operation while paying court to Trump in Florida.
But Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House, not a
passive bystander unable to do anything at all about a situation that, if we
take her at her word, she believes to be potentially catastrophic. She can do
more than stamp her foot. She could, if she were so inclined, begin the process
of repealing the Iraq AUMF — which is long overdue, irrespective of the wisdom
or propriety of the killing of Qasem Soleimani.
The Iraq AUMF has been on the books since 2002, when it
was enacted to empower the administration of George W. Bush to depose Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein, who is long gone. It is supplemented by an earlier
AUMF, passed shortly after 9/11, which authorized the U.S. government to go
after those responsible for the attacks of that day and any “associated
forces.” But the version of al-Qaeda responsible for 9/11 is long gone, too,
even if the name lives on. Also gone is the principal actor behind the attack, Osama
bin Laden, killed by U.S. forces and buried at sea. Conversely, the
Tehran-backed militias (Kata’ib Hezbollah et al.) causing havoc in Iraq today —
and killing Americans in the process — did not exist in 2001 or 2002. And if
either AUMF was meant to include the Iranian state, then that certainly was not
made explicit in the relevant texts.
On the one hand, we have an ongoing U.S. presence in Iraq
and a wide array of legitimate U.S. interests in that country and in the
broader Middle East; on the other hand, we have an Iranian regime looking to
export its Islamist revolution far and wide in ways that pose direct and
specific threats to Americans and U.S. interests.
Fortunately, there is a solution — right there in the
Constitution. But it is a solution that will require Nancy Pelosi to do
something more than carp: It will require the speaker of the House to do her
job.
We should forthrightly admit that the 2001 and 2002
authorizations have outlived their rationales, that both the organization
behind 9/11 and the troublemaking regime of Saddam Hussein have been eliminated
— mission accomplished, at last.
But Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were not the only threats in the world,
nor the only threats emanating from the Middle East. Tehran is a problem. So is
the rat’s nest of new terrorist outfits and regional militias that have sprung
up after the vanquishing of al-Qaeda. The use of the 2001 and 2002
authorizations in the current military and political context is obviously
pretextual, the barest little fig leaf to cover up the fact that Congress has
abandoned its duties in the matter of war-making, delegating them to an
increasingly imperial presidency.
These things have a way of getting out of hand. When the
USA PATRIOT Act was passed (damn the authors of these cutesy acronyms),
purported civil libertarians such as Barack Obama fretted that the law would
empower Dick Cheney and sundry spooks to go peeking at Americans’ library
accounts. (Note for Millennials: Libraries once were places where people went
to borrow books rather than places where homeless people go to masturbate to
Internet porn; ask your parents.) But once he himself was invested with the
awesome power of the presidency, Obama saw things differently and enacted
several innovations of his own, notable among them ordering assassinations of
American citizens. Of course Pelosi and her cronies were largely silent about
that — such criticism as there was came largely from Senator Rand Paul, the
libertarian-ish Republican from Kentucky. Those “associated forces” considered
in the AUMF grew to encompass a man known as “the Osama bin Laden of . . .
Facebook.” And Democrats bent to President Obama’s will for much the same
reason that today’s Republicans bend to Trump’s.
The 2001 and 2002 authorizations have served their
purposes. They are open-ended enabling acts, and they should be repealed and
replaced — if they must be replaced — with an instrument that is much more
narrowly tailored and takes into account the current political and security realities,
which are not what they were nearly 20 years ago. If the Democrats really
believe that Donald Trump is a uniquely dangerous threat in the White House —
morally unmoored and psychologically unstable, as many of them charge — then
they should act on that belief and begin the process of tying his hands.
Yes, that would mean a fight with Senate Republicans. But
Pelosi is ready to have a fight with Senate Republicans over impeachment, and
launching a war on Iran surely is a much more serious matter than Donald
Trump’s telephone call with the Ukrainians and his assorted acts of petty,
apple-stealing corruption. If Pelosi is not willing to have a political fight
when it really matters, then of what use is she?
Congress and Congress alone has the power to declare war.
The plain language of the Constitution is clear about that. If Nancy Pelosi
wants to rein in the Trump administration — and leave a lasting legislative
legacy that is worth a damn — she should reclaim that power for the legislature
and guard it jealously.
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