[From article]
Promising to "destroy" this group with the help of "a broad coalition" of "partners," President Obama said last week, "I welcome congressional support for this effort." He obviously thinks such support is optional, partly because this "effort," conducted by U.S. combat aircraft, is something other than war. There he goes again.
He spent seven months bombing Libya without congressional authorization and without complying with the War Powers Resolution. His lawyers argued that thousands of airstrikes, which professor Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School notes "killed thousands of people and effected regime change," did not constitute "hostilities." Professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University School of Law says, "Claims that large-scale air attacks don't count as warfare were specious when the administration trotted them out in defense of its intervention in Libya in 2011; and they have not improved with age."
[Obama says]
he also is empowered to strike the Islamic State by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that President George W. Bush sought before attacking the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The AUMF says:
"The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
But the Islamic State did not exist in 2001 and was born in hostility to the perpetrator of the 2001 attacks, al-Qaeda.
[. . .]
William F. Buckley's axiom that liberals who favor tolerating other views seem amazed that there are other views.
[. . .]
Regarding war with the Islamic State, the Constitution requires what prudence strongly recommends — congressional authorization.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will091814.php3
Obama is defying the Constitution on war
By George Will
Published Sept. 18, 2014
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