Buried in the National Defense Authorization Act is a provision that would empower US Presidents to wage worldwide wars without consent from Congress. The provision was introduced late at night earlier this month by Rep. Buck McKeon (R - California). His amendment would allow for the use of American military forces against terrorism suspects anywhere and everywhere.
Email your representatives in Congress and ask them to oppose this provision.
Northwestern University law professor Joseph Margulies wrote about the dangerous provision in the The New Republic:
"The proposed AUMF authorizes a substantially greater role for the U.S. military than it had even at the height of the cold war: the use of force against an enemy the Obama administration considers it “neither possible nor advisable” to describe, anywhere in the world, without regard to whether the proposed targets had anything to do with September 11 or whether they threaten “future acts” against the United States. There is no end in sight. Whatever else may be true, this is not what the founders intended, and not what the nation has practiced.
Nearly ten years after September 11, days after the death of Osama bin Laden, and in the absence of any imminent threat, Congress is poised to give President Obama and his successors substantially more authority to use force than it granted to President Bush only 72 hours after the attacks. It is an odd and distinctly un-American state of affairs when the clamor for war outpaces the war itself.
We often hear that the attacks of September 11 “changed everything.” It would be sad indeed if, among the things that collapsed and changed that day, was the salutary idea that we might be “a humble nation,” determined to “project the power for good that America can represent,” as Bush and Gore put it back in the 2000 debate. For these are not merely platitudes to be trotted out days before an election. They are the ideals that sustain us through adversity."
Take action now to stop this expansion of powers.
May 23, 2011 - 11:17am
