A senior official of the US Defense Department on Thursday said that the Pentagon saw no need to change broad congressional authorisation under which the military conducted lethal drone strikes against terrorist targets and estimated that the war with al Qaeda could continue for up to two decades.
According to a report published in the Washington Post, Assistant Defense Secretary Michael Sheehan said, “At this point we’re comfortable with the AUMF as it is currently structured.”
Furthermore, he said that Authorisation for the Use of Military Force passed by Congress in 2001 “served its purpose.”
President Obama has pledged to be more transparent about the secret targeted killing program that has included nearly 400 CIA and military drone strikes during his administration. In a series of speeches over the past year, senior administration officials have laid out their legal justification for the program, including the AUMF.
Lawmakers have questioned whether the AUMF, enacted days after the September 11, 2001 should be scrapped or rewritten to apply to what has become a starkly different anti-terrorist campaign nearly 12 years later.
The law authorised the president to use whatever military force he deemed necessary against those who “planned, authorised, committed or aided” the 2001 attacks or “harbored such organisations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organisations or persons.”
Originally interpreted to apply to al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, in recent years, the AUMF has been expanded to authorise drone strikes against what the administration calls al Qaeda “associates” as far afield as Yemen and Somalia.
Sheehan and the Defense Department’s acting counsel Robert S Taylor said there were no geographic boundaries on future use against groups deemed affiliates of the main al Qaeda organisation.
Sheehan said that while the president must approve each military strike, the Pentagon defined which groups were designated as “associates” that posed a threat to US security.
Several lawmakers expressed outrage at what they saw as the lack of specificity in the interpretation of the law.
“Here we are, 12 years later, and you come before us and tell us that you don’t think it needs to be updated. Well, clearly it does,” Senator John McCain said, who described his testimony as “disturbing.”
The committee appeared divided on whether a new version should be written to curtail the law or whether its current expansive interpretation should be authorised. Because the administration has described al Qaeda’s leadership core in Pakistan as gravely wounded by the strikes and Afghanistan is seeking peace negotiations with the Taliban, several questioned how any of the group’s “associates” could still be targeted under the law.
“In other words, could we be in a situation in which Afghanistan is no longer at war against Mullah Omar’s Taliban, but we still are?” Senator Mark Udall asked.
