Repeal the "War on Terror"

by Will Grigg
Mar. 26, 2013

When Congress approved the post-911 “Authorization for Use of Military Force” on September 14, 2001, Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California was the only member of the House to vote against it. In her address on the House floor explaining her vote, Rep. Lee warned that the measure would be used as an open-ended declaration of war against anybody the president – any president – designated an enemy.

More than a decade later, two administrations have vindicated Rep. Lee’s brave and prescient warnings. The Authorization for Use of Military Force has been used to justify torture, warrantless surveillance, and now summary execution of terror suspects – including at least three US citizens, among them a 16-year-old boy – by drone strikes.

That measure is the American equivalent of the “Enabling Act” passed by the German Reichstag in 1933 – a blank check for both foreign military adventurism and domestic repression. Rep. Lee has now introduced HR 198, a measure to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force, thereby withdrawing Congress’s consent to wage the so-called war on terror, and ending the pretense that it has anything to do with protecting the American public.