WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — A new congressional Authorization for Use Military Force (AUMF) in the US-led fight against the Islamic State (ISIL) should contain reasonable limitations, particularly after previous AUMF’s have been used beyond the scope originally intended by Congress, US Senator Tim Kaine told Sputnik.
“The experience of living under two authorizations from 2001 and 2002 that have been used… much more broadly than Congress intended, suggests that some care and precision in drafting, including some reasonable limitations, makes sense,” Senator Kaine told Sputnik on Tuesday about his expectations for US President Barack Obama’s draft AUMF.
The White House’s draft resolution for military force has not yet been sent to Congress, but Senator Kaine believes it will be sent this week.
He referred to a draft AUMF resolution passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December 2014. “It didn’t have a geographic limitation, but it did have a pretty strict limitation on who the battle was against,” Kaine told Sputnik.
The resolution which passed the Foreign Relations Committee did have limitations on the use of US ground troops in the fight against ISIL, Kaine noted. “We allowed ground troops under certain circumstances but not open-ended,” he said.
President Obama has stated on numerous occasions that he will send a draft AUMF to Capitol Hill to show that the executive and legislative branches of government are united in the fight against Islamic State extremists.
The Obama administration has justified ongoing US hostilities against ISIL in Iraq and Syria under the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs, originally passed to target those who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and to authorize the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
