How Congress Empowered Presidential War-Making After 9/11

Filed 47m ago · Via Foreign Policy · The Buffoon Desk

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Heavy Heart

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Historian Julian Zelizer traces how the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed days after the September 11 attacks with overwhelming bipartisan support, gave presidents sweeping latitude to deploy troops without further congressional approval. The Bush administration pushed for language broader even than the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, seeking authority to preempt future threats rather than simply respond to the attackers.

The piece argues this was not an inevitable drift toward executive power but a series of deliberate congressional choices, made under the shock of 9/11, that continue to shape policy today, including President Trump's use of executive authority regarding Iran. Congress has not formally declared war since 1942, yet the AUMF's broad language has outlived the conflict it was written for by nearly a quarter century.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Congress handed over the keys in a panic twenty-five years ago and never once asked for them back, through administrations of both parties who found the arrangement pretty convenient. Every president since has used that same authorization the way a teenager uses a parent's credit card left on the counter. Nobody in that chamber has to answer for how far it stretches, which is exactly why it never gets narrowed.

Source: Read the original at Foreign Policy → Scored: Heavy Heart · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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