President Obamaâs war push faces rift with the left
Before he can get Congressâ 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 â many of whom, like Obama, rose to prominence opposing the Iraq War â are warning they wonât support any war-powers measure that gives the president even greater latitude than heâs 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 Houseâs three-year draft would do too much to tie the hands of Obama and his successor. Story Continued Below 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. âIf the existing draft moves towards the John McCain and Lindsey Graham position, there will be a significant bleeding of support amongst Democrats,â said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), referring to the two hawkish Republican senators. âI 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 donât send massive numbers of ground troops back to the Middle East.â 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 presidentâs proposal seeks to balance the demands of defense hawks and liberal doves, setting a three-year time limit to war and prohibiting âenduring offensive ground combat operationsâ while giving the U.S. the authority to target forces âassociatedâ 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. âThe sweet spot is somewhere between an open-ended authorization and one that gives the president the wherewithal to degrade and destroy ISIL but doesnât give him and the next president a blank check,â said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. âA lot of members on the Democratic side have a pretty good view of what Barack Obama would or would not do. â But the three-year limit would give the 45th president of the United States â who could be named Bush â a year of authority to go after ISIL, a major worry for Democrats who fear how a Republican might use it. âThe problem is the next president â we donât know who will that be, and what they will or will not do with the same language,â Menendez added. The question for Democrats is what role Obama will play as Republicans seek to tilt the presidentâs draft toward their partyâs 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. âThe Republicans are trying to enable or at least allow for the possibility of a ground war,â said Sen. Brian Schatz, a progressive Hawaii Democrat who touted Obamaâs endorsement in his election last year. âIf the language reflects that, theyâre not going to get a lot of Democratic votes.â After consulting with key lawmakers for weeks before unveiling the draft, the administration wonât 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 Earnestâs remarks that âitâs time for Congress to step up to the plate.â 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 Obamaâs draft âserious and thoughtful,â refraining from echoing liberal membersâ criticisms. How Republicans deal with what they call Obamaâs âstarting pointâ 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 presidentâs, saying the administration has to âlay out a plausible way forward.â âOn any issue like this, the president has got to personally engage,â Corker said. Corkerâs committee includes two Republicans who are probably running for president â Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky â 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 authorizationâs language, while Rubio wants no such such restrictions. âWe should pass an authorization, and it should be a very simple one: It should say, âWe authorize the president to defeat ISIS militarily,ââ Rubio said. To hear some Democrats tell it, thereâs 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 Decemberâs omnibus spending bill, which killed hard-fought financial regulations, or liberalsâ revolt against a 2010 tax deal. âA lot of members arenât even convinced that we need to vote for an AUMF,â said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a co-chairman of the Progressive Caucus. âThatâs it. Weâre still debating that. We have not concluded as a body that we want an AUMF.â Ellison estimates that perhaps three members of his nearly 70-member Progressive Caucus would vote for the draft authorization as itâs now written, and aides caution that many liberals will be impossible to persuade otherwise. Ask a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus about Obamaâs war request and youâre likely to get back the same brand of fire-breathing rhetoric that you might hear from a rock-ribbed conservative. âI have seen no credible plan from the administration on how to deal with ISIS,â said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.). âBasically itâs 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. âI donât see how this all works out,â DeFazio added. Rep. RaÃºl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said Democrats face a âdamn hardâ 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. âEven progressive members agonize over this. Weâve seen the atrocities. Kayla is from my home state,â Grijalva said. âYouâre dealing with a non-state, you have to destroy it and ISIS. But you have the specter of history hanging over us.â Concerns extend well beyond the partyâs left and into the rank and file of the Senate and the House. Some of these Democrats voted against George W. Bushâs Iraq War, but the calculus is different when dealing with a Democratic president whose politics look much like their own. âOh yeah, they have work to do. Thereâs no question about that,â Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said of the president and his team. âWe are all living the vacuum of the Iraq resolution. No one wants to make a mistake.â âFrankly, itâs not just Democrats who would be squeamish about it: The American people are not gearing up for another war,â said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). âThey are not.â 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 presidentâs 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. âEverything Iâve heard from the presidentâs counsel, the thing he seems to be saying, is he canât getâ Republicans to support Senate Democratsâ proposal, said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a member of the committee. âMy assessment is heâs going to have a hard time flipping people off of [the December bill]. We spent a lot of time doing it.â That means that the liberal opposition could be more than political posturing. If House Republicans lose a sizable number of GOP votes, theyâd 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 â if he can keep his own conference united, which is no guarantee with four members mulling over presidential runs. âHe has to spend a lot of time up here to convince people,â said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee. âThe complaint was, âOK, send us up your proposal.â And now he has. Now the ball is literally in our court.â If Congress fails to pass an authorization, it will carry major political ramifications for lawmakers and the president but will have little effect on Obamaâs 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.