When in doubt, hit somebody by @BloggersRUs

When in doubt, hit somebody

by Tom Sullivan

The Times editorial board paid closer attention than I did to Obama's State of the Union speech:

They went largely unnoticed, four words President Obama ad-libbed during the State of the Union address last month as he asked lawmakers to provide legal cover for America’s military intervention in Iraq and Syria.

“We need that authority,” the president said, adding a line to the prepared remarks on his teleprompter that seemed to acknowledge a reality about which his administration has been inexcusably dishonest.

"Marry in haste, repent at leisure" goes the old saying. That applies to legislating as well. The PATRIOT Act, for one. In this case, passage on September 14, 2001 of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), signed on September 18 by President George W. Bush. Specifically:

Section 2 - Authorization For Use of United States Armed Forces

(a) IN GENERAL- 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.

Obama now wants to use the AUMF to retroactively justify bombing Syria over a decade later. Congress will likely go along. The Times is not amused:

By failing to replace the sweeping war authorizations Congress established for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago, with a far narrower mandate, lawmakers are abdicating one of their most consequential constitutional powers: the authority to declare war. White House officials maintain that the current campaign in Iraq and Syria is legal under the Afghan and Iraq war resolutions, a dubious argument considering those were tailored to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks and to deal with Saddam Hussein, then the Iraqi leader, on the grounds — since proved to be false — that he had weapons of mass destruction.

Obama called on Congress in 2013 to "refine, and ultimately repeal" the Bush AUMF and vowed himself not to expand it lest we "grant Presidents unbound powers" (to wage war on their say so). Now, Obama and the usual suspects want Congress to draft a new AUMF against ISIL. Because when in doubt, hit somebody. And because we have so many places to hit them from.

In 2008, the Pentagon claimed "545,000 facilities at 5,300 sites in the U.S. and around the globe." What counts as a facility? Or a site? How many of those are overseas? In 2009, Anita Dancs with the Institute for Policy Studies estimated about 865 bases overseas, at an annual cost of $250 billion. (What counts as overseas is a matter of interpretation.) Ron Paul caught flack in 2011 for saying 900.

Trouble is, the Pentagon can't even give you an accurate count of what the empire administers, as Nick Turse found about the same time:

There are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases dotting the globe. To be specific, the most accurate count is 1,077. Unless it’s 1,088. Or, if you count differently, 1,169. Or even 1,180. Actually, the number might even be higher. Nobody knows for sure.

It's Super Bowl Sunday. Bread and circuses for everyone.