The Iraqi army has already fallen flat, why should the United States get re-involved in the disaster that Bush administration lies set in motion in 2002?
The American-trained Iraqi army and police had some 65,000 soldiers and police on the ground in Mosul. Rebels attacked on June 10 with a force of maybe 3,000. The Iraqi army, police, and perhaps 500,000 civilians all fled without serious resistance.
Can mindless bombing hold off mindless blame for "losing Iraq"?
Thanks to a supine and indolent Congress, and a long quiescent public, President Obama already has all the authority he may think he needs to take the United States into war in Iraq for the third time in three decades.
Remember the AUMF? That's the Authorization to Use Military Force, passed by Congress in an abdication of its constitutional responsibility on September 14, 2001, giving away its authority to declare war. That self-neutering act was opposed by exactly one member of either house of Congress, California Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat. The primary section of the AUMF bill provides:
That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
Almost 13 years later, Rep. Lee remains the only member of Congress to be on record in opposition to allowing the President to have a blank check to use violence against pretty much whomever he chooses, for whatever reason he chooses. The recent resumption of drone attacks on civilian areas of Pakistan is one more effect of this law, even though people in the tribal areas of Pakistan have little if any connection to the attacks of 9/11.
The United States remains in a continuous state of war that Congress authorized in panic in 2001. Even though that panic has given way to chronic fear and political timidity, Rep. Lee's perennial efforts to rescind the AUMF have had little support.
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