House votes to repeal 2002 authorization for military force with strong bipartisan support
Source: Washington Post
The House voted Thursday to repeal a 19-year-old military authorization Congress passed to give legal backing to the Iraq War with the support of Democrats, Republicans and the White House — an unprecedented coalition to end post- 9/11 authorities to engage in hostilities that critics argue are outdated. The 268 to 161 vote reflects growing bipartisan support for the repeal effort, and tees up the legislation for the Senate, where Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) this week declared his support for the measure and his intention to bring it to the floor for a vote sometime this year.
“Today’s historic vote is a turning point,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) said on the floor just prior to the vote. “I look forward to Congress no longer taking a backseat on some of the most consequential decisions our nation can make.” Congress, however, is still largely divided along party lines about whether the move to repeal such authorizations will actually allow lawmakers to reclaim their power to permit the use of military force — a decision that some believe has been usurped by successive presidents.
Lawmakers have been trying for almost a decade to repeal both the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force as well as the 2001 AUMF that Congress passed to greenlight hostilities against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Both the Obama and Trump administrations had opposed the repeal measures. People in both parties argued that the authorizations had been stretched beyond recognition to target terrorist groups that didn’t even exist when the approvals were granted, while different presidents insisted they needed the latitude to adapt to a changing threat landscape.
When President Biden came into office, he indicated that he was willing to work with lawmakers to wind down authorizations. For the past several months, his administration has been negotiating with leading proponents of repeal to determine the way forward. The 2002 authorization is generally viewed as the simplest of AUMFs to phase out. The Iraq war was formally ended years ago, and the military has not cited the permissions granted in 2002 as its sole justification for any operations in over a decade. Still, many lawmakers — most of them Republicans — have rejected the idea of winding down the existing AUMFs without having replacements prepared to address “the modern-day threat.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/aumf-repeal-congress/2021/06/17/1bd1ec70-cf76-11eb-a7f1-52b8870bef7c_story.html
Full headline: House votes to repeal 2002 authorization for military force with strong bipartisan support and a White House endorsement
= new reply since forum marked as read
