{"id":43862,"date":"2025-09-12T12:57:52","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T19:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=43862"},"modified":"2025-09-12T12:57:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T19:57:54","slug":"after-years-of-neglected-oversight-house-votes-to-repeal-authorization-used-by-presidents-to-wage-forever-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/09\/12\/after-years-of-neglected-oversight-house-votes-to-repeal-authorization-used-by-presidents-to-wage-forever-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"After \u2018Years of Neglected Oversight,\u2019 House Votes to Repeal Authorization Used by Presidents to Wage \u2018Forever Wars\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"President<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

US War Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks as US President Donald Trump signs an executive order renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War during a press availability in the Oval Office of the White House on September 5, 2025, in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One foreign policy expert said these congressional authorizations \u201chave become like holy writ, documents frozen in time yet endlessly reinterpreted to justify new military action.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

STEPHEN PRAGER<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sep 11, 2025 (CommonDreams.org)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost exactly 24 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US House of Representatives voted<\/a> Tuesday to finally repeal a pair of more than two-decade-old congressional authorizations that have allowed presidents to carry out military attacks in the Middle East and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 261-167 vote, with 49 Republicans joining all Democrats, the House passed an amendment to the next military spending bill to rescind the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in the leadup to the 1991 Persian Gulf War and 2003 War in Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RECOMMENDED…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Allied<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

House Passes NDAA to Push Military Spending Approved This Year Beyond $1 Trillion<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Nancy<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Omar Brings War Powers Resolution After Trump Bombed Boat in Caribbean With \u2018No Legal Justification\u2019<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The decision is a small act of resistance in Congress after what the Quincy Institute\u2019s Adam Weinstein described in Foreign Policy<\/a><\/em> magazine as \u201cyears of neglected oversight\u201d by Congress over the \u201csteady expansion of presidential war-making authority.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Weinstein explains, these AUMFs, originally meant to give presidents narrow authority to target terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and use military force against Saddam Hussein, \u201chave been stretched far beyond their original purposes\u201d by presidents to justify the use of unilateral<\/a> military force across the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President George W. Bush used the 2002 authorization, which empowered him to use military force against Iraq, to launch a full invasion and military occupation of the country. Bush would stretch its purview throughout the remainder of his term to apply the AUMF to any threat that could be seen as stemming from Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Congress refused to pass a new authorization for the fight against ISIS\u2014an offshoot of al-Qaeda\u2014President Barack Obama used the ones passed during the War on Terror to expand US military operations in Syria. They also served as the basis of his use of drone assassinations in the Middle East and North Africa throughout his term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his first term, President Donald Trump<\/a> used those authorizations as the legal justification to intensify the drone war and to launch attacks against Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria. He then used it to carry out the reckless assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And even while calling for the repeal of the initial 2001 and 2002 authorizations, former President Joe Biden used them to continue many of the operations started by Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese AUMFs,\u201d Weinstein said, \u201chave become like holy writ, documents frozen in time yet endlessly reinterpreted to justify new military action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amendment to repeal the authorizations was introduced<\/a> by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meeks described the authorizations as \u201clong obsolete,\u201d saying<\/a> they \u201crisk abuse by administrations of either party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roy described the repeal of the amendment as something \u201cstrongly opposed by the, I\u2019ll call it, defense hawk community.\u201d But, he said, \u201cthe AUMF was passed in \u201802 to deal with Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and that guy\u2019s been dead… and we\u2019re now still running under an \u201802 AUMF. That\u2019s insane. We should repeal that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor decades, presidents abused these AUMFs to send Americans to fight in forever wars in the Middle East,\u201d said Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) shortly before voting for the amendment. \u201cCongress must take back its war powers authority and vote to repeal these AUMFs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although this House vote theoretically curbs Trump\u2019s war-making authority, it comes attached to a bill that authorizes $893 billion worth<\/a> of new war spending, which 17 Democrats joined all but four Republicans Republicans in supporting Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vote will also have no bearing on the question of President Donald Trump\u2019s increasing use of military force without Congressional approval to launch unilateral strikes\u2014including last week\u2019s bombing<\/a> of a vessel that the administration has claimed, without clear evidence, was trafficking drugs from Venezuela and strikes<\/a> conducted in June against Iran, without citing any congressional authorization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexander McCoy, a Marine veteran and public policy advocate at Public Citizen<\/a>, said<\/a>, \u201cthe 1991 and 2002 AUMFs\u201d are \u201cgood to remove,\u201d but pointed out that it\u2019s \u201cmostly the 2001 AUMF that is exploited for forever wars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot to mention, McCoy added, \u201cwe have reached a point where AUMFs almost seem irrelevant, because Congress has shown no willingness whatsoever to punish the president for just launching military actions without one, against Iran, and now apparently against Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of Trump\u2019s strikes against Iran, Democrats introduced resolutions in the House<\/a> and Senate<\/a> aimed at requiring him to obtain Congressional approval, though Republicans and some Democratic war hawks ultimately stymied them<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>However, Dylan Williams, the vice president of the Center for International Policy, argued<\/a> that the repeal of the AUMF was nevertheless \u201ca major development in the effort to finally rein in decades of unchecked use of military force by presidents of both parties.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vote, Williams said, required lawmakers \u201cto show where they stand on restraining US military adventurism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STEPHEN PRAGER<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US War Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks as US President Donald Trump signs an executive order renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War during a press availability in the Oval Office of the White House on September 5, 2025, in Washington, DC. \u00a0(Photo by Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images) One… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43862"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43863,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43862\/revisions\/43863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}