House votes to repeal 2002 war resolution that paved way for Iraq invasion
WASHINGTON – The House voted Thursday to repeal the nearly 2-decade-old war resolution that paved the way for the U.S. military invasion of Iraq, which proponents said marked a first step toward halting America’s “forever wars.”
The House has approved similar measures before, but they died in the Senate when Republicans were in power. This time is different: The Senate’s Democratic leadership has vowed to take up the measure, and the White House also has endorsed it.
“The Iraq War has been over for nearly a decade,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Wednesday in announcing his support for the repeal.
Schumer and other proponents argued the 2002 measure is irrelevant, unnecessary and subject to abuse.
In Thursday’s debate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the “outdated” authorization has been used “as a blank check to conduct unrelated military operations,” and leaving it on the books risks further abuse.
U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. Trump officials said the strike against Soleimani – which occurred in Iraq – was a “defensive action” because the Iranian general was plotting attacks on American diplomats and service members.
But the move infuriated Iraqi leaders who cited it as a breach of their country’s sovereignty. And in the U.S., legal and military experts said there was “no plausible argument” that the 2002 Iraq measure gave the White House legal authority to kill Soleimani.
The 2002 measure authorized then-President George W. Bush to “use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to … defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the chief sponsor of a Senate bill to repeal the Iraq measure, said he couldn’t remember the last time Congress repealed a war authorization. Kaine’s co-sponsor is Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana.
“We pass them and then they just float out there like these zombies that can be used for mischief,” Kaine told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday. He said the prospects for Senate passage are “very high,” and he expects significant GOP support.
“A declaration of war used to be considered a dead letter when peace was made,” Tess Bridgeman, a National Security Council legal adviser during the Obama administration. But after the Sept. 11 attacks and the war against terrorism, presidents in both parties starting relying on old military force authorizations in ways Congress never intended, or against enemies that didn’t exist when those measures were passed, she said.
The 2002 Iraq War resolution has long been controversial because the Bush administration argued at the time that Hussein’s regime was hiding weapons of mass destruction, an assertion that turned out to be wrong. And while many hailed the demise of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the war left Iraq vulnerable to influence from Iran and wracked by internal sectarian violence.
claimed the lives of more than 4,400 U.S. troops.
The House bill won bipartisan support and passed by a vote of 268-161, with 49 Republicans joining nearly all Democrats in voting for the bill.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will take up its version of the Iraq War bill on June 22. Its proposal also would repeal the 1991 authorization for the first Gulf War.
“Saddam Hussein’s regime is gone … and Iraq is now a close security partner who should not be labeled an enemy state,” Kaine said. Schumer said he would work with the committee’s chairman, Sen. Bob Menendez, D–N.J., on timing for a full Senate vote.
The Biden administration announced its support for the measure on Monday, saying that the U.S. has “no ongoing military activities” that rely solely on the 2002 authorization and that repealing it would not affect current American military operations.
Many Democrats hope Thursday’s vote will be just the start of a broader push to limit the president’s war powers and either nix or narrow other military force authorizations. Next up on their wish list: repealing the 2001 authorization for military force that Congress passed to give Bush the power to target al-Qaida, the terrorist group responsible for 9/11.
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