Follow us on social

160307-f-fn000-092-scaled

Biden and Congress must repeal law authorizing endless wars

The 2001 AUMF must not only be repealed, but Congress and the president must also reassess US counterterrorism strategy.

Analysis | Global Crises

In his first year in office, Joe Biden will mark an inauspicious milestone, the 20th anniversary of the passage of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the foundational law of our current endless wars. On the campaign trail, President-elect Biden promised to end those wars, and the 117th Congress will convene with the House having already voted for repeal and more than a third of the Senate on board. But if the last two decades of failed, endless war have finally gotten us to the point of repealing the 2001 AUMF, what happens next will determine whether we can finally turn the page on the so-called “War on Terror." 

Passed in the hours after the 9/11 attacks, the 2001 AUMF is the foundational law of our nation’s endless wars. The modern equivalent of a declaration of war, Congress passed the AUMF with only one notable and heroic dissenting vote by California Representative Barbara Lee who warned then that the AUMF was a blank check for a global, endless war. Indeed, today’s bipartisan consensus for repeal is built around the acceptance that this warning has has been vindicated. 

Sadly, fewer have taken heed of Rep. Lee’s other objection, that the president already had the legal authority to defend our country from an imminent attack. What Congress was voting on in 2001 was something very different, the right to wage preventative war in the name of stopping future, hypothetical attacks.

“I do not dispute the president's intent to rid the world of terrorism,” Rep. Lee said at the time. But we have many means to reach that goal, and measures that spawn further acts of terror or that do not address the sources of hatred do not increase our security.” In other words, not only would the coming “War on Terror” run the risk of being global and endless, it was likely to be a spectacular failure that could not address the root causes actually driving terrorism. 

As much as the foreign policy establishment now accepts how prescient this warning of endless, global war turned out to be, her second warning of the war’s futility remains a contrarian view. Even as think tanks, experts, and lawmakers across the spectrum have now called for finally repealing the 2001 AUMF, they share a common formulation of how to do it: the 2001 AUMF must be both repealed and replaced. 

Let’s agree to set aside for a moment the decision to repurpose a phrase whose origins is in the repeated failed Republican attempts to destroy the Affordable Care Act while claiming they were somehow replacing it with a mythical, fantasy health care plan that more than a decade later has yet to emerge. It’s worth understanding the fundamental argument of repeal and replace when it comes to the 2001 AUMF. At its core, the argument is that the “War on Terror” has, by and large, been successful and must be continued.

Apparently, the fault lies not in the very notion of preventive war against violent anti-American extremists, but the legal structures surrounding that effort. Were such a mission to be crafted with sufficient constraints (such as geographic boundaries, a set timeline, or perhaps specific named enemies), it can and should be continued.

There remain real and significant disagreements among the proponents of repeal and replace over those limits, divisions that have thus far prevented any majority consensus to emerge around an actual legislative replacement, but, despite those divisions, the belief across the ideological spectrum that surely some war authorization must replace the 2001 remains strong. 

Twenty years later, perhaps we should still be listening to Rep. Barbara Lee’s wisdom. 

Looking back on two decades of waging war in the hope it would create peace and before writing yet another blank check for war, it’s time to repeal and reassess. Rep. Lee warned in 2001 that “measures that spawn further acts of terror or that do not address the sources of hatred do not increase our security.” Can anyone in Washington truly claim we have assessed whether or not our 20 years of warmaking against terrorism has actually increased our security? Before embarking on another few decades of war, shouldn’t we be sure what the answer to that question is? 

The post-9/11 wars had three ostensible goals” to prevent another attack, to deny terrorists safe havens, and to bring accountability to those who attacked us. Let’s set aside the first of those for a moment. Today, while Osama Bin Laden and multiple other senior terrorist leaders have been killed, al-Qaida not only still exists but has been joined by ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Shabab, and a host of other entities whose violence takes lives nearly every day, though often, admittedly, not American lives. Those militants typically operate in large swaths of ungoverned territory, while what is “governed” is often controlled only through corrupt authoritarian dictatorships ruling through their own violent repression. 

Yet back to that first goal, proponents of continued preventive war in the name of countering terrorism will be quick to point out the United States has, in fact, not suffered another attack approaching the scale of 9/11 since. That is true, and something for which we should all be thankful.. Yet touting this as a success requires ignoring the displacement of that violence on the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and elsewhere who have died in massive numbers during the past 20 years as a direct result of these wars. The calculus that claims the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is a price that must be paid for our own safety can only be described as immoral. 

Just as damning, however, is the opportunity cost of focusing for two decades on a singular threat, at a cost of six trillion dollars and counting, while ignoring nearly every other threat. While Washington’s war caucus has spent 20 years claiming no expense must be spared in the “War on Terror,” many of those same voices have sat by while thousands died from hurricanes like Katrina in New Orleans and Maria in Puerto Rico. The same policymakers have refused to take action as tens of thousands died every year from gun violence. 

And most glaring of all, despite years of warning and pleas for preparation, the federal government was caught unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic and then dithered for months, failing to adequately respond to this day. The combined toll of this failure alone is the lives of more than 350,000 of our family, friends, and neighbors, a staggering toll whose daily count has recently sometimes exceeded the nearly 3,000 people killed in the September 11th attacks. All of these crises, with their massive human suffering, were made worse by the Washington establishment’s obsession with transnational terrorism at the expense of these other clear and present dangers. 

Which brings us to the question of what to do now. As the 117th Congress prepares to get to work and President-elect Biden continues to put together his administration, it is time not only to simply repeal and replace the 2001 AUMF, but also to repeal and reassess what has worked, what hasn’t, and to determine if countering terrorism will be better accomplished by fighting preventive war or finally, at long last, heeding Rep. Lee’s calls to use all of the means at our disposal, focus on terrorism’s root causes, and stop trying to bomb our way to peace.


Vice President Joe Biden speaks with U.S. and coalition personnel during a visit to an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia, March 7, 2016. Biden’s visit is part of his tour of the Middle East, which began March 7, 2016. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Kentavist P. Brackin)
Analysis | Global Crises
Kim Jong Un
Top photo credit: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the construction site of the Ragwon County Offshore Farm, North Korea July 13, 2025. KCNA via REUTERS

Kim Jong Un is nuking up and playing hard to get

Asia-Pacific

President Donald Trump’s second term has so far been a series of “shock and awe” campaigns both at home and abroad. But so far has left North Korea untouched even as it arms for the future.

The president dramatically broke with precedent during his first term, holding two summits as well as a brief meeting at the Demilitarized Zone with the North’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Unfortunately, engagement crashed and burned in Hanoi. The DPRK then pulled back, essentially severing contact with both the U.S. and South Korea.

keep readingShow less
Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one
Top photo credit: U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Brad Cooper speaks to guests at the IISS Manama Dialogue in Manama, Bahrain, November 17, 2023. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one

Middle East

If accounts of President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities this past month are to be believed, the president’s initial impulse to stay out of the Israel-Iran conflict failed to survive the prodding of hawkish advisers, chiefly U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Michael Kurilla.

With Kurilla, an Iran hawk and staunch ally of both the Israeli government and erstwhile national security adviser Mike Waltz, set to leave office this summer, advocates of a more restrained foreign policy may understandably feel like they are out of the woods.

keep readingShow less
Putin Trump
Top photo credit: Vladimir Putin (Office of the President of the Russian Federation) and Donald Trump (US Southern Command photo)

How Trump's 50-day deadline threat against Putin will backfire

Europe

In the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonstrated his love for three things: deals, tariffs, and ultimatums.

He got to combine these passions during his Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday. Only moments after the two leaders announced a new plan to get military aid to Ukraine, Trump issued an ominous 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. “We're going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don't have a deal within 50 days,” Trump told the assembled reporters.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.