<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div id="content-header"><div class="breadcrumb"></div> <h1 class="title">10th anniversary of dubious military authorization</h1></div><div id="content-area"><div id="node-169028" class="node node-type-story"><div class="node-inner"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style "><div class="atclear"></div></div>
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By Michael Ratner, September 17, 2011</div></div></div><div class="content"><p>Ten years ago this Sunday, Sept. 18, the United States set itself on a destructive course.</p><p>That was the day President Bush signed the bill that Congress had
just passed called the Authorization for Use of Military Force.</p><p>Ten years later, America’s use of military force is still going
strong, with wars from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from Iraq to Yemen, and
from Libya to the Horn of Africa.</p><p>Under this law, the president has unlimited power to use force
against anyone in the world — that’s any nation, organization, person,
associated forces and so forth who the president determines was in any
way involved in the attacks of 9/11.</p><p>There’s no geographical limit. And there’s no time limit.</p><p>
The president has that power forever. He (or someday she) can try to use
it to support an entire domestic spying initiative contrary to
established law, as we first learned in 2005.</p><p>That’s when it became known that Bush was authorizing the National
Security Agency (NSA) to break the law that required warrants for the
monitoring of the phone calls and e-mails of individuals and
organizations inside the United States. At the time, it was a scandal
for the NSA to be searching for evidence of terrorist activity minus the
court-approved warrants required for domestic spying under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. </p><p>Now, thanks to congressional amendments to the law in 2008, that previously unlawful activity has legal backing.</p><p>Like Bush before him, President Obama claims that the Authorization
for Use of Military Force gives him the right not only to make war and
kill people, but also to capture anyone he suspects of terrorism
anywhere in the world and imprison them forever without trial.</p><p>Similarly, the Obama administration uses the authorization to defend
its policy of using targeted killings against suspects in the so-called
war on terror even if they are way outside a war zone — in addition to
American citizens, such as in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki.</p><p>Obama ran for president on his record as a constitutional law
professor and promised to return transparency and lawfulness to
America’s governing structures. Now, unforgivably, he is embracing
summary executions.</p><p>The Authorization for Use of Military Force was always an invitation
to presidential abuse of power. We should withdraw it right away.</p><p><b>Michael Ratner</b> is president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He can be reached at <a class="spamspan" href="mailto:pmproj@progressive.org">pmproj@progressive.org</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.progressive.org/military_authorization.html">http://www.progressive.org/military_authorization.html</a></p><p><br></p></div></div></div></div></body></html>