A bipartisan group of members of the House of Representatives have issued an open letter to Speaker Paul Ryan (R – WI), calling for a vote on an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS, citing “deepening entanglement” in the conflict by President Obama.
Under the War Powers Act, the president must seek Congressional approval for any overseas military operation within 60 days. The launching of the war against ISIS in summer of 2014 put that vote in the middle of a mid-term election, and most Congressional leaders on both sides simply chose to ignore the law.
Over a year later, the president made only one token effort to get an AUMF through, and that died when the White House openly bragged they made the wording so vague it would allow them to do basically anything they wanted. Without an authorization the war should’ve ended, instead it escalated.
The new letter particularly draws attention to the recent White House announcement of ground troops being deployed to Syria, something previous AUMF attempts explicitly ruled out, saying this is a “significant escalation” of the war and proof that Congress needs to at some point vote on the matter.
Though the authors of this letter are in opposition to the ISIS war, some proponents of the war are also seeking an AUMF, believing Congress should at the very least sign off on the matter on offer some guidelines on the scope of the war. At present, however, most of the leadership appears to remain opposed to a vote, and the White House seems comfortable with continuing the war indefinitely without any legal basis at all.
(BBC-2004) The Power of Nightmares 1: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis's narration. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and has subsequently been broadcast in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
http://dai.ly/x20su5f
Should these people be paid? Why are the same people voted back into the office, when they comfortably refuse to do the work they are elected to do. Is the voting public the only body that is supposed to do performance appraisal? Or is there any other body that is supposed to track that work is done, and they are too asleep at their jobs?