The Senate on Wednesday voted to pass a bill that would repeal Authorizations for Use of Military Force in Iraq, a significant step a little more than a week after the 20th anniversary of the United States’ 2003 invasion.
The bill would end the president’s authority to use force in Iraq and return those powers to Congress. It would not impact any current military deployments, with around 2,500 U.S. troops staying in the country at the invitation of the Iraqi government. The bill would also repeal the 1991 authorization that greenlit the Gulf War.
The final vote was 66-30, with 18 Republicans joining all present Democrats in supporting the measure. Lawmakers applauded as Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff gaveled out the vote.
“The entire world has changed dramatically since 2002, and it’s time the laws on the books catch up with those changes,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday. “These AUMFs have outlived their use.”
“War powers belong in the hands of Congress, and so we have an obligation to prevent future presidents from exploiting these AUMFs to bumble us into a new Middle East conflict,” he continued.
While the bill enjoyed bipartisan support, it was opposed by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is absent from the Capitol as he continues to recover from a fall earlier this month.
“I am opposed to Congress sunsetting any military force authorizations in the Middle East,” the Kentucky Republican said. “Our terrorist enemies aren’t sunsetting their war against us. And when we deploy our servicemembers in harm’s way, we need to supply them with all the support and legal authorities that we can.”
But the two lawmakers leading the push – Indiana Sen. Todd Young, a Republican, and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat – say that allowing the authorization to remain on the books leave it “subject to potential presidential misuse.”
“It’s long past time for Congress to reassert its war powers,” the two lawmakers said in a joint statement earlier this month ahead of the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. If our servicemembers have the courage to risk their lives to protect our country, then Congress, by comparison, should be able to make important decisions on matters of war, peace, and diplomacy.”
“I think a lot of lessons have been learned over the last 20 years,” Young said, adding that lawmakers who back the bill “want to ensure that the American people can hold us accountable, rather than delegating those important authorities to an executive branch and then lamenting the unwitting wisdom of the executive branch if things don’t go well.”
“I think that the more time goes by the more people realize that a whole lot of mischief can happen with authorizations that just stay on the books,” Kaine said. “It’s been slow, but I’ve always felt like I was picking up more bipartisan support every year, slowly.”
President Donald Trump’s administration cited the 2002 Iraq war resolution as part of its legal justification for a 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani, but the two war powers resolutions have otherwise rarely been used as the basis for any presidential action.
A separate 2001 authorization for the global war on terror would remain in place under the bill, which President Joe Biden has said he will support. Biden and his administration have argued that the repeal would not affect any response to Iran. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both said at a Senate hearing last week that American troops are authorized to protect themselves and respond to attacks, including under Article 2 of the Constitution, which gives the president the authority to protect troops.
The measure now heads to the House of Representatives, where it’s unclear what will happen next. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has expressed he is open to supporting a repeal despite previously opposing it. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, indicated he would like to instead replace it with something else, but it’s unclear what that might be.
Iraqi deaths are estimated in the hundreds of thousands, and nearly 5,000 U.S. troops were killed in the war after President George W. Bush’s administration falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
