I think a new AUMF will breeze through the House and Senate.
And I still disagree with your analysis of the ISIS-AQ relationship. AQ is relevant only insofar as they planned and carried out the attacks of 9/11/01, which is what makes them targeted by the 2001 AUMF. ISIS affiliated itself with AQ after the 9/11 attacks, and is no longer affiliated with AQ. Using that temporary and after-the-fact affiliation is what makes it a stretch. And, given the timeline, it seems very odd to speak of them as a descendent of AQ. They were a temporary, ill-fitting ally of AQ.
I figure this is all about domestic politics in 2016. Next year, we’re going to be deep into a Presidential campaign. It’s overwhelmingly unlikely that the fighting in the Middle East will be over by then. So Obama is trying to involve the Republicans in Congress and minimize the amount they can make an election issue out of it.
If the Republicans vote down an AUMF, then the Democrats can say “Hey, we tried to do something about the Middle East. But you guys tied our hands.” And if the Republicans vote for an AUMF, then the Democrats can say “Hey, you guys agreed to all this. If you thought the war was a bad idea, why didn’t you vote against it?”
Pretty much the same hook Bush the younger had the Democrats on wrt our wonderful Iraqi invasion (and, ironically, the original AUMF). Of course, the Republicans could always vote against and plausibly say that they didn’t think the new AUMF went far enough so thought the old one was fine, or something along those lines.
The group didn’t affiliate themselves with AQI, they WERE AQI (or, I guess more accurately, Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad):
So, since all we are talking about here is basically a name change (as well as leadership changes via hellfire), I think it’s still at least tenuously plausible that the original AUMF covers fighting them…if you squint really hard and talk fast.
I said they affiliated themselves with AQ. They did so by re-branding as AQI.
It’s still not clear to me that you understand the timeline. ISIS–in leadership, goals, and membership–pre-existed any affiliation with Al Qaeda. Since those are presumably the same criteria being used to declare that ISIS emerged from AQI, it makes no sense to say they started as AQI.
[QUOTE=Richard Parker]
It’s still not clear to me that you understand the timeline. ISIS–in leadership, goals, and membership–pre-existed any affiliation with Al Qaeda. Since those are presumably the same criteria being used to declare that ISIS emerged from AQI, it makes no sense to say they started as AQI.
[/QUOTE]
Well, AQI originated from them when they swore fealty to AQ and OBL. That they were something else before (and have become something else since) is really meaningless from a technicalities perspective, and I think it can be rationally argued that, since AQ itself is, was and has always been more of a coalition of groups, any group that associated with them and became part of their coalition (and branded themselves as AQ-something) is covered by the AUMF as it exists, regardless of whether they subsequently re-re-re-branded themselves and disassociated themselves later down the road with AQ.
Yeah, it’s not like you can check someone’s al Qaeda Identity Card to verify if they are a bone fide member or not. It’'s just a loose network that changes all the time. However, no one in the US is going to be able to successfully challenge a US president about whether the 2001 AUMF covers ISIL or not. It just isn’t going to happen.
The one time it comes up is when someone captured and held under the authority of the AUMF files a habeas corpus petition.
But I agree with the overall sentiment that group membership and affiliation is blurry, obviously. That’s why I think the limiting factor probably has to be time rather than target. And maybe geography, though that is only marginally less a can of worms than group identification.
Just to repeat, had you guys not noticed that, when the US bombs the shit out of peoples, it tends to come back to bite you in the ass - after 50 years or so I just figured you may have noticed?
So, we bombed the crap out of the Germans. It doesn’t seem to have bitten us on the ass after 50 years. We bombed the crap out of the Japanese and Italians as well…er, let’s skip Italy, though it hasn’t bitten US on the ass so much (unless you count those damned Fiat commercials :p). We bombed the crap out of the North Koreans, and that hasn’t bitten us on the ass. We bombed the crap out of the Vietnamese, and while Vietnam is now communist (so we lost, if our goal was to not have that happen), it hasn’t really bitten us on the ass either, since we are looking to form several trade relations with Vietnam. We bombed the crap out of the Chinese during the Korean war and that seems to have worked out pretty well for us. Who else? I guess we bombed the crap out of the Libyans and that hasn’t worked out so well, though it hasn’t really bitten us on the ass. Iraq and Afghanistan, which presumably is what you were talking about, has kind of bitten us on the ass, though in Afghanistan’s case it was helping them against the Soviets who were bombing the crap out of them that really bit us on the ass. Iraq was bitten by us on the ass after we bombed the crap out of them in the 90’s and is tied to the Soviets bombing the crap out of Afghanistan and us helping out, so indirectly the Soviets bombing the crap out of people have caused us to be bitten on the ass.
So, no…I’m not seeing the connection to us bombing the crap out of people and having it bite us on the as years later, to be honest. Maybe we’ll be more like the Soviets and bomb the crap out of people who will then bite someone ELSE on the ass down the road.
I assumed that the 50 years was a sliding window, not some sort of fixed 50 years ago from today. So, if we slide the window from 50 years post German bombing we should see US ass being bitten evidence. Don’t see it. Same with the others. Obviously we can’t slide the window into the future, so no idea the amount of ass bite-age we will incur down the road for our Iraq and Afghanistan adventures…nor what we will incur from our Syrian anti-ISIS/ISIL adventures.
But as a basic argument or theory, your assertion doesn’t seem to hold up very well regardless.
Al Qaeda undertook several attacks against the United States before we actually bombed the shit out of them beginning in 2001. Are you suggesting that if we had not gone to war against Al Qaeda, that they would have eventually just started to leave the U.S. alone?
Also, perhaps you can illuminate me on the dire impacts of, say, how the U.S. bombing of Serbia has come back to bite us in the ass?
