http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/president-obamas-war-push-faces-rift-with-the-left-115329.html?hp=t1_rPresident Obama’s war push faces rift with the left
Democrats say they won’t support a war authorization against ISIL if Obama agrees to Republican demands to expand his power.
By Burgess Everett and Manu Raju
2/23/15 5:39 AM EST
Before he can get Congress’ approval for his war against ISIL, President Barack Obama may have to win an ugly battle with his own party.
A wide range of House and Senate Democrats — many of whom, like Obama, rose to prominence opposing the Iraq War — are warning they won’t support any war-powers measure that gives the president even greater latitude than he’s already asked for. But the Republicans who control Congress insist that any war authorization must offer broad authority to combat Islamic militants, saying the White House’s three-year draft would do too much to tie the hands of Obama and his successor.
That will leave Obama with a critical decision: He can stick with his proposal to limit the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting the GOP-controlled Congress over a draft that many liberals already dislike. Or he can acquiesce to Republican demands and prompt a revolt from his own party, something the president has rarely done during his six years in office.
The result could be the largest Democratic rebellion in years, which could send an embarrassing message to U.S. allies just as the United States tries to show unity against a serious national security threat.
“If the existing draft moves towards the John McCain and Lindsey Graham position, there will be a significant bleeding of support amongst Democrats,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), referring to the two hawkish Republican senators. “I was sent to Congress in 2006 to make sure we never repeated the mistakes of the Iraq War. I have a pretty clear mandate from my state to make sure we don’t send massive numbers of ground troops back to the Middle East.”
Obama submitted a draft Authorization for Use of Military Force to Congress on Feb. 11 after months of bipartisan requests for him to offer his legislative vision. The president’s proposal seeks to balance the demands of defense hawks and liberal doves, setting a three-year time limit to war and prohibiting “enduring offensive ground combat operations” while giving the U.S. the authority to target forces “associated” with ISIL.
He proposed repealing the 2002 Iraq War authorization but wants to leave in place the post-Sept. 11, 2001, war-powers declaration, which the administration has used to justify the ongoing military operations against ISIL and terrorists around the world. Many Democrats want to scrap that authorization as well and have given administration officials an earful about it during meetings on the Hill.
“The sweet spot is somewhere between an open-ended authorization and one that gives the president the wherewithal to degrade and destroy ISIL but doesn’t give him and the next president a blank check,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “A lot of members on the Democratic side have a pretty good view of what Barack Obama would or would not do. “
But the three-year limit would give the 45th president of the United States — who could be named Bush — a year of authority to go after ISIL, a major worry for Democrats who fear how a Republican might use it.
“The problem is the next president — we don’t know who will that be, and what they will or will not do with the same language,” Menendez added.
The question for Democrats is what role Obama will play as Republicans seek to tilt the president’s draft toward their party’s more hawkish views. Progressive leaders and Democratic lawmakers say they essentially want Obama to publicly advocate against his own proposal: Shorten the timetable, repeal the 2001 authorization and further restrict ground troops.
“The Republicans are trying to enable or at least allow for the possibility of a ground war,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, a progressive Hawaii Democrat who touted Obama’s endorsement in his election last year. “If the language reflects that, they’re not going to get a lot of Democratic votes.”
After consulting with key lawmakers for weeks before unveiling the draft, the administration won’t say how aggressive Obama will be in trying to persuade Congress to keep the final AUMF language close to his original proposal. Asked for comment, an administration official pointed to press secretary Josh Earnest’s remarks that “it’s time for Congress to step up to the plate.”
So far, Obama has kept some key Democratic players at bay while much of the rank and file revolts. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who met with Obama last week and discussed the matter with the president, has kept his powder dry, as has his leadership team. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has called Obama’s draft “serious and thoughtful,” refraining from echoing liberal members’ criticisms.
How Republicans deal with what they call Obama’s “starting point” draft has not been decided either, as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) prepare to assume outsize roles. Both men plan extensive hearings to force the administration to publicly sketch out how they would use an AUMF.
While Royce set a bright line last week by ruling out a repeal of the 2001 authorization, Corker has been reluctant to express his views over the AUMF request, probably because he will need more bipartisan support than the House does. He wants the hearings to play out first and refuses to say if his proposal will depart from the president’s, saying the administration has to “lay out a plausible way forward.”
“On any issue like this, the president has got to personally engage,” Corker said.
Corker’s committee includes two Republicans who are probably running for president — Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky — and who harbor opposite views on how much authority to give the White House in this war. Some Democrats believe Paul could vote with them in committee on amendments to tighten the authorization’s language, while Rubio wants no such such restrictions.
“We should pass an authorization, and it should be a very simple one: It should say, ‘We authorize the president to defeat ISIS militarily,’” Rubio said.
To hear some Democrats tell it, there’s almost nothing the administration can do to get their vote, even if Obama makes a stronger case against ground troops and Democrats can ward off GOP changes. That creates the possibility of a Democratic rebellion even greater than the one that almost sank December’s omnibus spending bill, which killed hard-fought financial regulations, or liberals’ revolt against a 2010 tax deal.
“A lot of members aren’t even convinced that we need to vote for an AUMF,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a co-chairman of the Progressive Caucus. “That’s it. We’re still debating that. We have not concluded as a body that we want an AUMF.”
Ellison estimates that perhaps three members of his nearly 70-member Progressive Caucus would vote for the draft authorization as it’s now written, and aides caution that many liberals will be impossible to persuade otherwise. Ask a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus about Obama’s war request and you’re likely to get back the same brand of fire-breathing rhetoric that you might hear from a rock-ribbed conservative.
“I have seen no credible plan from the administration on how to deal with ISIS,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.). “Basically it’s the aftermath of the Iraq War, the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of the United States. And I do not want to fight a third war in Iraq.
“I don’t see how this all works out,” DeFazio added.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said Democrats face a “damn hard” task to balance their responsibility to take on terrorists, horrific recent killings of Americans like Kayla Mueller, loyalty to their president and a nationwide war-weariness.
“Even progressive members agonize over this. We’ve seen the atrocities. Kayla is from my home state,” Grijalva said. “You’re dealing with a non-state, you have to destroy it and ISIS. But you have the specter of history hanging over us.”
Concerns extend well beyond the party’s left and into the rank and file of the Senate and the House. Some of these Democrats voted against George W. Bush’s Iraq War, but the calculus is different when dealing with a Democratic president whose politics look much like their own.
“Oh yeah, they have work to do. There’s no question about that,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said of the president and his team. “We are all living the vacuum of the Iraq resolution. No one wants to make a mistake.”
“Frankly, it’s not just Democrats who would be squeamish about it: The American people are not gearing up for another war,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). “They are not.”
Some Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are ready to play hardball, insisting that the Senate take up a committee-passed authorization from December that was more restrictive than the president’s draft and would have repealed the 2001 authorization. That plan stalled in the lame-duck Congress late last year after not a single Republican voted for it.
“Everything I’ve heard from the president’s counsel, the thing he seems to be saying, is he can’t get” Republicans to support Senate Democrats’ proposal, said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a member of the committee. “My assessment is he’s going to have a hard time flipping people off of [the December bill]. We spent a lot of time doing it.”
That means that the liberal opposition could be more than political posturing. If House Republicans lose a sizable number of GOP votes, they’d need Democrats to back the proposal. Moreover, to break a Democratic-led filibuster in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would need at least six Democratic defectors — if he can keep his own conference united, which is no guarantee with four members mulling over presidential runs.
“He has to spend a lot of time up here to convince people,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee. “The complaint was, ‘OK, send us up your proposal.’ And now he has. Now the ball is literally in our court.”
If Congress fails to pass an authorization, it will carry major political ramifications for lawmakers and the president but will have little effect on Obama’s war with ISIL. He can continue fighting the militants with the two broad authorizations still in place, just as he has for the six months leading up to the AUMF debate, though the optics for the United States would be poor if the bill falls apart.
