Senate Hearing on Proposed New AUMF

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

On Wednesday, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management members held a hearing on US "War Powers and the Effects of Unauthorized Military Engagements on Federal Spending."

It addressed a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) - proposed by Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Tim Kaine (D-VA).

Some facts:

Enacting the September 2001 AUMF was flagrantly illegal. Only Security Council members may authorize war by one nation on others - in self-defense alone if attacked or if one is imminent, never preemptively.

The executive, Congress and US courts have no legal power to approve war against another nation without Security Council authorization.

There no exceptions to this fundamental international law, automatically US law under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause - Article VI, Clause 2.

Throughout Security Council history, authorization for US war was gotten only once - on June 27, 1950, approving US-led UN military action against North Korea because no Soviet Russian delegate was present to veto what never should have been endorsed.

The DPRK was victimized by Harry Truman's aggression. The official record never corrected the historic wrong on a nation threatening no others - justifiably responding to US-orchestrated/multiple cross-border incursions by the South against the North.

America's only enemies are invented ones - no others; not ISIS, al-Qaeda, or other terrorist groups it created and supports; not Russia, China, Iran, or multiple nations the US is waging war against.

No nation attacked America since December 7, 1941. None threatened it since WW II ended. The global war on terror is a colossal hoax. Washington uses it to wage permanent wars on humanity. 

Earlier and newly proposed AUMF authority has nothing to do with combating terrorism - everything to do with US rage for transforming all sovereign independent nations into pro-Western vassal states.

With or without AUMF authority, they're vulnerable to US aggression, on its target list for regime change.

AUMF power is a thinly veiled pretext for waging endless US wars on humanity - on any nation, group or entity, on the phony pretext of combating "non-state terrorist groups" wherever they exist.

ISIS, al-Qaeda, and likeminded groups are US imperial proxy forces - used where Washington wants them deployed. 

Phony war against them is all about toppling governments the US wants replaced, including Gaddafi's in Libya, Assad's in Syria, and others. 

It's also a pretext for waging endless US wars of aggression on humanity - a diabolical plot for unchallenged global hegemony, risking destruction of planet earth to own it, wanting its resources looted, people everywhere exploited, dark forces in America benefitting by force-feeding misery everywhere.

That's what US imperialism is all about, seeking global conquest, control and exploitation, no matter the human cost - a sinister scheme to benefit privileged interests at the expense of most others everywhere, creating a world unsafe and unfit to live in.

Testifying before the Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, Law Professor Jonathan Turley slammed the proposed new AUMF, saying:

It "amounts to a statutory revision of one of the most defining elements of the United States Constitution," adding: 

"Putting aside the constitutionality of such a change absent a formal amendment, the proposed legislation completes a long history of this body abdicating its core responsibilities over the declaration of war."

Waging undeclared war is the "menace that the Framers sought to prevent," prohibiting warmaking powers at the executive's discretion.

Judge Andrew Napolitano explained US presidents have no legal authority to wage war on their own. It's the most serious of all decisions a nation makes.

In 1821, John Quincy Adams said America "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy" - its current agenda, all sovereign independent countries on its target list.

Napolitano: "(L)egislation under scrutiny today would give the president far more powers than he has now, would directly violate Congress' war-making powers by ceding them away to the president, would defy the Supreme Court on the unconstitutionality of giving away core governmental functions, would commit the US to foreign wars without congressional and thus popular support, and would invite dangerous mischief by any president wanting to attack any enemy - real or imagined, old or new - for foreign or domestic political purposes, whether American interests are at stake or not."

ACLU Washington Legislative Office deputy director, Christopher Anders stressed that no decision made by any government is more consequential than going to war.

He urged Congress to use "the power of the purse to defund unauthorized military engagements."

Separately he tweeted: "To apply a medical term 'do no harm,' the first responsibility of this Congress is to make sure that the Corker-Kaine #AUMF does not pass."

There is no legal authorization for ongoing US wars in multiple theaters. Proposed new AUMF legislation would grant Trump and his successors unchecked illegal power to wage endless wars of aggression.

Since Truman's war on North Korea, US presidents waged naked aggression against one nation after another.

Enacting proposed Corker/Kaine AUMF legislation would make it easier to continue what no government anywhere should authorize or tolerate.

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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

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