Jacob Silverman/March 5, 2021
Does Biden Want Less War or Just War With More Rules?
The administration has promised to revise the post-9/11 legal basis for permanent war. It’s not enough.
A clandestine airstrike here, a little diplomacy there, a wink and a nudge to America’s favorite Saudi failson dictator, and some paeans to democratic accountability at home—President Joe Biden’s foreign policy is taking shape. If you believe the soothing platitudes emanating from the new administration, this will be a restrained, rule-bound presidency overseen by steady-handed bureaucrats who will wind down our “forever warsâ€â€”a term Biden himself has deployed—and try to avoid new conflicts.
This week, The New York Times reported that Biden’s team was reviewing the rules governing secret drone strikes and commando raids that were developed during the Obama administration, and loosened under Trump’s presidency. That same day, Senators Tim Kaine and Todd Young introduced a bipartisan bill to repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force—which authorized the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq—and another that was passed before the first Gulf War in 1991. Two days later, as if in response, Politico published a statement from Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki promising to repeal the Iraq AUMF and the post-9/11 AUMF that has helped provide legal ballast to two decades of global warfare. According to Psaki, Biden wants to “ensure that the authorizations for the use of military force currently on the books are replaced with a narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending the forever wars.†For good measure, the administration will re-embark on the forever quest to perhaps, one day soon, close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay.
https://newrepublic.com/article/161614/biden-aumf-close-gitmo-war-powers
