In recent decades, Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) for assorted wars have just become open-ended, even if the rationale or pretext for the conflict is far out of date. Sen. Time Kaine (D-VA) is seeing some hope on that.
Sen. Kaine, who has been one of the Democrats pushing bipartisan efforts to repeal AUMFs, says he sees the stars aligning for a possible greenlight from President Biden to repeal the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs, both Iraq-focused.
Kaine explained his hope is that Republicans in Congress will be less worried about the AUMFs when there isn’t a Republican president. It’s not clear if the Democrats might not face the same issue, despite Biden’s history in Congress, of only being concerned by overbroad AUMFs as they apply to the other party.
Expectations that President Biden will support the repeal because of the suspicion Senator Biden would done so have back when may be wishful thinking as well, as presidents have tended to bristle at the notion of limits to their military powers, and the removal of documents used as a pretext for wars.
Still, the hope is there, and Kaine suggested that even if they end up short of repeal, a new AUMF might be offered to replace the old ones, accompanied by some seldom-seen proper debate on US military policy.
We like our Napoleons as long as they win.
“Still, the hope is there, and Kaine suggested that even if they end up short of repeal, a new AUMF might be offered to replace the old ones, accompanied by some seldom-seen proper debate on US military policy.”
He can’t be that stupid. A “new AUMF” , whether there is debate on anything about our military policy, will leave us in the exact same place we are in now.