and 22nd when we feature our visit to alaska. watch alaska weekend on c-span, c-span.org and listen on the free c-span radio app. the cato institute examined congress's war powers. they talked about presidential war making powers. the 2001 authorization for the use of military force. and several new congressional war authorization proposals. this hour long event was held at the raburn house office building on capitol hill. good afternoon, everyone. thank you for joining us today for our capitol hill briefing titled recapturing congress' war powers, repeal don't replace, 2001 uamf.

i am a director of government affairs at the cato institute. for those of you who are less familiar with our mission the cato institute is a public policy research organization dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace. in pursuit of these values cato's scholars produce independent nonpartisan research and analysis on a wide range of policy topics. today's topic, as you hopefully gathered from the title of the event is on war powers. we're here today not only because this is an issue worthy of debate but because of interest within congress to re-examine what is now a nearly 17-year-old authorization for the use of military force. joining us to discuss this important topic today are two of cato's distinguished scholars, gene healey and john glazer. gene healey is vice president at

the cato institute whose research interests include executive power and the role of the presidency. gene is the author of several books including "the consulaulte presidency" and appeared on numerous television and radio programs including pbs news hour with jim lehrer. gene holds a bachelor degree from georgetown university and a j.d. from the university of chicago. gene glazer is the director of foreign policy studies at the cato institute. his research interests include grand strategy, facing posture, foreign policy in the middle east, rise of china and the role of status and prestige motivations in international politics. john has appeared on numerous

television and radio programs and has written for the "new york times," "the washington post," "l.a. times," foreign affairs and the national interest among others. john earned a b. a,in political science from the university of massachusetts amherst and an m. a,in international security from the charter school at george mason university. there will be plenty of time for questions at the end so please hold those until after the discussion is concluded and with that we'll turn things over to gene. thank to all of you for being here. as jeff noted we're in the middle of a renewed debate here on the hill about what hole, if any, that congress should play in the choice between war and peace. that's the most fundamental

decision that any government can make, and it's one that our constitution entrusts to congress. but for nearly 17 years now that choice has been left to the executive branch, with the result that the united states has been almost constantly at war. in president obama's last year alone, the urs forces dropped over 26,000 bombs on seven different countries and obama left office as the first two term president in american history to have been at war every single day of his presidency. that's in large part thanks to a joint resolution that congress passesed three days after 9/11. 2001 authorization for the use of military force or uamf. three presidents in a row have warped that initially limited authorization into an enabling act for globe spanning presidential war.

it's been made broad enough to cover everything from air strikes to boots on the ground. trump administration's position like the obama administration's before it is that congress has already had its debate on war powers 17 years ago and it's one congress, one vote, one time. last sunday memorial day "the washington post" ran a story profiling a soldier named gabriel cohn. when he was killed in average he was 22. when congress voted to go to war he was in kindergarten. so it seems to me it's about time that we're having this debate. at least once in a generation congress should probably weigh in on the multiple wars that we're fighting. but this debate also presents a pretty substantial risk. the risk that congress is going

to pass a new aumf that gives more power to the president, laying the legal ground work for another generation or more of presidential war. today john and i are going to make the case that the best way to avoid that danger is to wipe the slate clean. to repeal and not replace the 2001 uamf. recognize that the original authorization has run its course, and sunset it. leaving adequate time, six to nine months to wrap up ongoing combat operations, and for the president to make the case for any new authorization that he thinks is needed. and if he does, he can make that case to congress the way the constitution envisions. our constitution's framers believed that war was serious business and that going to war should be somewhat difficult. it should involve a broad

national consensus, a consensus across both houses and in multiple branches. james madison held it as an axiom the executive is the department of power most distinguished by its propennsylvaniaity for war. therefore it's the practice of all states in proportion as they are free to disarm this propensty of its influence. the framers did by granting the bulk of military powers to congress including the decision to go to war in the first place. that didn't leave the president totally disarmed. the president retain in this scheme some defense of authority. the power to repel sudden attacks is the way that madison's notes phrased it. but absent imminent threat, absent provocation the constitution gave the president no power to launch sudden attacks. it will not be in the power of a single man to involve us in such

distress, pennsylvania's james wilson summed up in 1787. because the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large. the system will not hurry us into war he said. it is calculated to guard against it. that was the way it was supposed to work. of course it didn't always work that way. well before 9/11 you can point to multiple examplesf presidents launching wars without congressional authorization. invaded grenada under ronald reagan. panama under george h. w. bush. kosovo under president clinton. presidential wars in the late 20th century were for the most part exceptions to a general rule. they were geographically limited and temporary departure from a baseline of peace. since the terrorist attacks of september 11, 2001, we watched

the emergence of a radically different regime, one of which going to war is easy, it's frequent, and it's rarely debated. this system will not hurry us into peace. in fact, it's made war america's default setting. the use of lethal force is now so normalized we're hardly able to notice it any more. just one example. in the run up to the 2016 election over labor day weekend the obama administration launched some 70 air strikes across six countries, iraq, syria, afghanistan, yemen, somalia and libya. 20 years ago this would have been staggering. the nightly news broadcast all would have led with this. in 2016 after decades of permanent war, we barely looked up from the grill.

so senator tim kaine is right when he says for too long congress has given presidents a blank check to wage war, and he's right and he should be commended for wanting to change that. but if our experience with the 2001 doctrine has taught us anything the president will push as far as language will allow and probably beyond. the relevant clause of the 2001 aumf is 60 words long, it targets the perpetrators of the september 11th attacks and those who harbored or aided them. says nothing about associated forces. however that concept, the concept of associated forces has become a bottomless font of presidential ability to wage war against groups that didn't exist on 9/11, that aren't associated

with al qaeda, that may even in the case of isis, for example, even be at war with them. and that in many cases do not present any serious or sustained threat to the united states home front. most of the replacement at aumfs currently on the table in congress including the one senator kaine drafted with senator bob corker grant far more authority than the original aumf and it's practically certain they will be stretched even further. the corker-kaine aumf starts by providing authorization for war against at least eight enemies incorporate six countries. the president is authorized to use all necessary appropriate force under the taliban, al qaeda and isis. he's also per section 5a, empowered to wage war against al qaeda in the arabian peninsula,

al shabaab in somalia, ake in syria including the front, and ake in the islamic ma distridri. under section 5 the president can decide at any time to wage war against new enemies in new countries and he's supposed to let us know within 48 hours of doing so or at least supposed to let congress know. the resolution boasts about its transparency requirements, but it leaves open the possibility that the president can bury the announcement of new targets and new battlefields at a classified annex, unavailable to the general public. for my money, one of the saddest sentences in the resolution comes up front, legislative statement of purpose. the purpose much this joint resolution it says, is to reaffirm that congress, the

president and the american people stand united in their resolve to defeat the taliban, al qaeda, isis and designated associated forces. whoever they might be, whenever the president decides to designate them, and even if he won't strictly tell us who they are. we pledge our lives, fortunes and sacred honor to total victory against the designated associated forces. of course, under corker-kaine, congress retains the right to object to mission creep, but unless congress can muster a veto proof majority to overturn the president's decision he gets to expand the war at will. also under corker-kaine, the legislation doesn't sunset, every four years there's a congressional oversight provision, but, again, unless congress can muster a veto proof

majority the war authority will continue and be perpetually renewed indefinitely. this is not a way of reasserting congress' constitutional powers. it's a method of institutionalizing the forever war and turns the constitution upside down. this is not the way the constitutional democracies are supposed to go to war. other members have introduced somewhat narrower aumfs on the house side bipartisan group led by congressman mike kaufman has drafted an alternative that features five year sunset. the authority will actually expire unless it's affirmatively renewed. congressman schiff has a three year sunset. both of these include broad, fairly broad associated forces provisions that allow the president to expand the target list and which institutionalize

mission creep. the aumf introduced by senator jeff merkley avoid these pitfalls. it's about as tightly and smartly crafted as a war authorization can be. limited to two countries, iraq and afghanistan, and three groups of the countries and targets must be push liberiaed, can't be classified and it turns things right side up. for the most part the president is required to come to congress to add new countries and new groups. even so, even the merkley resolution bypasses the debate that we ought to be having about even the core groups that are included in each alternative aumf, that is al qaeda, the taliban and isis. we taught be debating why continuing war authorities are necessary for those groups. instead, john and i argue for a

war powers reset. restoring -- sunsetting the aumf, keeping it separate from a debate about new war authorizations, and restoring america's default setting to peace, not war. the president decides that al shabaab or boko haram, for example, represent serious long term threats to our national security, he'll be free to make that case to the peoples' representatives and secure new authorization for war in the way the constitution envisioned. we're told in this debate, for example, in the corker-kaine resolution that numerous nonstate terrorist groups now pose a grave threat to the united states. but when the framers crafted the constitution with its initial

allocation of war powers, they lived in a pretty bad neighborhood. the united states after shocks small frontier republic on the edge of a continent occupied by periodically hostile great powers and indian marauders. there were grave threats. there were dangers. nonetheless our first president george washington wasn't even sure that he had the authority to take offensive action against indian tribes, hostile indian tribes without affirmative authorization from congress. when the framers made these decisions to limit the amount of war power that one person could exercise, i think you could argue that the threats were somewhat greater than they are today. one thing -- that's something that john is going to talk

about. can the threats that they identified, the threats we face today, are they vast enough and grave enough to justify the upendingupending and overturning of the original constitutional scheme for congressional were powers? and making that case, the case that the threats today are that grave, i think is extremely difficult, but he will have more to say about that. thank you jeff, and gene. i am pleased to see such a good showing for this issue. so as he said, while he focused on some of the legal, constitutional and political problems that the 2 existing

aumf's have, and those risk being either papered over or exacerbated by repealing it and replacing it with a new one that fails to impose serious constraints on executive war powers, i'm going to focus on the other side of the coin, kind of foreign policy, strategic and national security implications, of this issue. but i do want to start, i'm going to talk about the effectiveness and utility of u.s. military force in the face of these terrorist threats, and whether or not they pose a grave enough threat to justify kind of a permanent war footing. but i do want to start by building off some of what jean mentioned, briefly, throughout his remarks -- gene mentioned. i want to take stock of the scope, and the cost and the effectiveness of u.s. military action taken abroad under the rope -- 2 post 9/11 amf's, the

damage of unchecked executive war powers is not limited to the human cost, involved as well . currently, u.s. troops are fighting terrorists and various nonstate militants in 14 different countries, we've bomb syria for example, 13,000 times the past couple of years, last year alone, trump bombed yemen more than 130 times, targeting al qaeda and isis militants, up from 38 times in 2016. if you remember back to the first couple of weeks after the inauguration, trump authorized a special forces raid in yemen, that was much -- that was botched, a navy seal killed, 14 allegedly militants killed,

trump claimed it was a huge success, yielding major intelligence value, but it was widely viewed as a spectacular failure, and it's notable that even high-profile fumbles like this, you barely hear a peep about what legal authority the president has to engage in these kinds of operations without explicit congressional authority, without a public debate, as gene pointedly put it, we barely looked up from our grills. trump has bombed somalia over 40 times, libya eight times, as of march, that we know of, the pentagon initially only reported for those. since 2014, the pentagon says that anti-isis operations have cost more than $14 billion, likely an undercount. largely because of president trump's loosening of the role of engagement, since the start of the anti-isis campaign, more than 6000 people were killed,

and is conducted by the us-led coalition in iraq and syria, that is an increase of more than 200% over the previous year. the iraq and afghanistan wars, the 2 main theaters of the 2 main issues, $5 trillion, and unfathomable amount of money, the iraqis killed in the was war, exceed 200,000 not to mention the millions of refugees and internally displaced people, destabilizing the entire region, boasted iranian power, and higher rates of islamic terrorism, and undermined u.s. security in a number of ways, the war in afghanistan continues to be an abysmal failure, u.s. army general john nicholson said trump's new strategy, new strategy, quote, including increased airstrikes, and a

true presence, not a new strategy at all, is improving the situation in afghanistan, sort of like when his predecessor john campbell, said that he, too, had seen a change and improved results, general joseph dunford talked about quote, the inevitability of our success, his predecessor, general john allen, declared we are winning, and david betray us in 2011, we have reversed the momentum of the tele-band, stanley mcchrystal, success is still possible, 2009, the united states is not losing afghanistan, this routine goes back to 2001, the reality is, since the beginning of the obama ministration up to now, the war in afghanistan has claimed the lives of almost

30,000 civilians, injured more than 50,000 civilians, the tele- band currently controls or contests about 45% of afghanistan's districts, more territory today than it any .2 thousand one, despite 16 years of nationbuilding and throwing resources of the problem, afghanistan's government remains more corrupt the 90% -- 96% of all countries, the number of bombs dropped in afghanistan, in early 2018 was the highest it has been since 2013, suicide attacks went up 50%, and insurgent attacks overall tripled in 2017. in short, the 2 existing ones, so little check on specified targets, geography and time, that these ventures can impose enormous costs, wide-ranging consequences, without triggering much pushback from congress.

all of this effort, manpower, allocation of resources, all of these usually consequential and often devastating policies are justified as measures to mitigate the terrorist threat. and given all the terrible cost the negative consequences, the most relevant question is, aside from the legal and constitutional questions, have these policies been successful in mitigating the terrorist threat? have they have achieved that objective in some way? the first problem is of course, there is much of a threat to begin with, but i will get to that in a bit. can these policies, that these three presidents in a row have been empowered to carry out, thanks to the aumf, be said to have successfully mitigated the terrorist threat? i think it is really hard to answer that question in the affirmative.

in some cases, there were some short-term benefits, the drone war in pakistan had an impact on decimating al qaeda's ranks, and the initial stages of the afghan war, militant scattered, and that hindered capabilities, but over the long term, it turns out military forces not all that an effective tool in mitigating the terrorism threat, and there is compelling -- there is compelling evidence that her actions have exacerbated the problem. against libya, for example, which i should say is the only major military use of force since 9/11, not covered under the aumf, and was a war that the obama administration said they don't need congressional authorization for anyways, nevertheless, an example of how terry force can create a new terrorist threat that did not previously exist. libya hardly came up on the radar as a theater in the global war on terror before the u.s. and european allies overthrew qaddafi, but in the chaotic aftermath, and the chronically weak regime,

terrorism is spite, isis gained a foothold, since on the receiving end of u.s. military action, with dubious legal authority under the aumf. isis, to take a more egregious example, engendering the most fear in the biggest headlines, it grew out of the sunni insurgency that rose to fight u.s. forces in iraq -- in iraq. general for tiered -- general patrice said, there would be no isis if we had not invaded iraq. as early as 2006, on trends in glob terrism, they found that the iraq war was shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives, it was a cause celebre railing against the u.s. involvement in the middle east, and for the jihad.

that is true generally, the hard numbers bared out, in 2015, the number of fatality -- by 2015, the number of fatalities from terrorism had increased by staggering 397% since 2001, and in the seven countries that the united states either bombed or renovated since 9/11, terrorist attacks, the number of individual terrorist attacks rose by an astonishing 1900%, and the data don't show any such spike in the comparable countries that the u.s. did not intervene in. so a spike in terrorism follows u.s. in -- military intervention in these countries. if anything, open-ended authorizations of military force has made us less safe, and not more. and i fully understand the impulse to ask, are you suggesting we do nothing? there are several responses. first of all, there is a sizable academic literature on

how terrorist groups and or fadeaway, or as they have in the past, they are not military force, political integration and moderation, marginalization within a stable security environment, and so on. this kind of dries a recruitment and opportunities for violence, they go away. and we just need to be realistic about the limits of what u.s. military force can achieve in terms of setting up those conditions. secondly, there's plenty we can do to tackle existing terrorism threats, but we need to scrutinize how much of a threat terrorism actually is. and the facts present a much more sanguine picture than the political rhetoric and hysterical media coverage of terrorism we hear about. is not the existential menace that we are told, it is a minor and manageable threat. first of all, your chances of being

killed in a terrorist attack here on u.s. soil are infinitesimally small, since september 11, it is one and 40 million, you are more likely to be struck by lightning. if you average it out since 9/11, the number of americans killed by islamist terrorism is about 6 per year, if you extract obama teen -- omar mateen, from the pulse nightclub, it would only be 3. compare that with the 53,302 people who died by taking drugs in 2016, or the fact that non- terrorist homicides have killed roughly 20,000 americans in the past 30 years, and the incredible district for jeanette -- disproportionate

resources, look up any reputable source that lists leading causes of death in united states, any government source, ngo, health organization, you will find heroism -- terrorism conspicuously absent. 911 allowed us to misunderstand the situation, it was an extreme outlier, not a harbinger, of a new threat of global terrorism, the record in the years since speaks for itself. if you catalog all of the attempted terrorist attacks in the united states since 9/11, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the times square, fort hood, boston marathon, they all essentially fall into one of three categories, the first

category is that the attacker had some operational connection to ford terrorist groups, and through their own incompetence typically failed to successfully carry out the attack, for example lighting underwear on a commercial flight. or that they had zero connection to overseas terrorist groups, and the committed some awful attack on their own, isis inspired, or al qaeda inspired, or load with attacks. in the third category is that the attacker was either induced or in some cases entrapped by undercover informants to conduct a phony plot cooked up by u.s. law enforcement, and the details of those cases, i recommend the award-winning book , terror factor -- terror factory, were chasing ghosts, it's almost comical the level of stupidity and ineptitude

that these would be attackers have, and a lot of experts believe they never would've had the ability or potentially even the initiative to conduct the attacks without the fabricated sting operation. isis has never once conducted a successful terrorist attack on u.s. soil. there is only such a thing is isis inspired attacks, and ably check for war in far-off muslim countries does literally nothing to stop these. in 2016, as i mentioned, omar mateen killed almost 50 people, ask yourself how air strikes, drone bombings, attacks in afghanistan, airstrikes in somalia, special forces raids and so on, how could they possibly have foiled that attack or ones like it? or had any effect, any impact

whatsoever. you might as well argue that u.s. military action justified under the tran35 could have -- stopped sandy hook, they are just not connected. for what it's worth, omar mateen said what caused his shooting was the killing of an isis leader. but he probably would've done that anyway. there is a disconnect between the threat for at home, and the utility that u.s. military operations have in preventing a tax year. the talib and is another group specifically mentioned, it is not clear why, they are domestically focused, they have never engaged in international terrorism, in fact, only in -- a threat to americans in the fact that we live amongst them in afghanistan, one of the most

isolated and insignificant plots of land in the world, and no one claims that the talib and is going to come here and attack us or our allies. the claim is that in the absence of a aumf authorizing u.s. military action against them, they will continue to rule afghanistan, and be a safe haven, where groups like al qaeda and isis can the plot transnational attacks. scholars refer to this as the safe haven myth, it is simply not true that afghanistan would have operational utility for these groups to hatch terrorist attacks against us. it is kind of a myth that al qaeda's presence in afghanistan in the lead up to 9/11 was useful in the success of those attacks. the attacks were planned and afghanistan, but also hamburg, germany, florida, malaysia, boston, and in the stained of -- in this day and age of immediate medications, territorial safe havens are that operationally useful, they can be a liability.

one of the unique things is that it insists on obtaining territory, which is stupid, because we have a target, the benefit, the strategic asset of good -- groups of -- like al qaeda is that you don't know where they are. to wrap it up, the national security rationale, i think, for a presidential break -- blank check for a global war on terror is weak, it is not a war to be won, the bulk of the military actions have exacerbated this already limited threat rather than mitigated it, and if congress took the advice of gni, saying that the right course is to replace, the aumf, it should not be confused with tying the hands of the president. whoever holds the office has

specific powers to repel attacks or defend against new threats on a case-by-case basis. thank you very much. >> [ applause ] thank you both for your fantastic presentations, we will open the floor to questions now. for those of you who do have questions, we do have a microphone around here somewhere, please wait for that to arrive, and state your name and affiliation. and if you would please, state your question in the form of a question, as opposed to a statement. first? >> thank you so much for coming today, i just have a question, regarding the associated forces, and some of the different proposed aumf's in the post 9/11 one, associative forces were part of that, i just kind of wondering to what extent there is a difference in how they are defined, and to the scope of that, in the one

that senator corker introduced, or associated forces, if it is a part of senator merkley's? i haven't looked into representative schiff's. >> and -- >> the associated forces, what differences there are between the post-9/11 in regards to the aumf , and the one proposed by senator corker?>> associated forces appears nowhere in the 2001 aumf, it was sort of an extrapolation from the language about harboring or aiding the perpetrators of 9/11. which you can argue either was some extra authority in their

to sweep up new groups, but what has happened in the decade and a half since, is that it has been daisychained out to include groups that are not rictly associated with the original target, so the resolution including isis, a group that was excommunicated by al qaeda, and was actively at war with them. so i think the history of the 2001 aumf with regard to associated forces says that when you are starting with basically nothing, and it has been allowed to expand and that dramatically fashion, that you have to be very careful about what associated forces provisions you specifically right into an au math.

off the top of my head for my recollection, the tightest definition of associated forces, and i don't want to rifle through too many papers, is in the jeff merkley au math, they have to be co-belligerents with the three groups that are identified, talib and, isis and al qaeda, and he also includes a provision that it will be interesting to see what effect this would have, but when there is an associated force, the president -- the authority can expire without congress doing anything, there has to be continuing, repeated certification, that the group has the ability to attack -- demonstrated incredible ability to attack the united states homeland. so senator merkley should be

the narrowest grant of that authority, and senator corker, the broadest, including as i recall, that they are engaged in expensive definitions of people engaged in hostilities with our coalition partners, consider this -- instead of just the united states. and they have very little light in terms of restraining the president's ability to add friends of friends of friends of friends, and the way that the 2001 aumf has led to such extensive mission creep . let's wait for the microphone, if you don't mind,

the cameras can hear you. >> thank you for speaking with us today, i'm curious as to what implications would arise from congress regaining control over its wartime powers, given that over the years, in the future, it's likely to be more and more polarized? >> polarization makes it hard to get things done for good and for bad. when it comes to war, arguably the thumb on the scale should be against precipitous action, i'm not sure that -- one of the things that does seem to be the most bipartisan, the biggest bipartisan consensus washington, -- consensus in washington. i am not sure that the drift towards more ideological polarization among the parties in recent decades -- i'm not

sure it makes a great deal of difference. i think in these things, the problem has always been, and increasingly it is a bigger and bigger problem, getting congress to accept the responsibility that the constitution clearly gives it. medicine had this idea that they would set up sort of a self perpetuating machine, where interest -- it would counter ambition, the interests of a -- individual actors and a branch would lead them to defend their respective branches' turf and authority, and what we have seen, in recent decades, is that works fairly well for the presidency, anybody who occupies the presidency, always

ends of trying to do a dick cheney, what was his goal, to leave the presidency stronger than they found it, but it is very difficult to get congress, individual congressmen and women, to buckle down and care about this core constitutional responsibility. there are a lot of them, they don't have the individual incentive, sort of a -- sort of a shell game, trying to pin down who exactly is responsible for 17 years of war. the polarization does not worry me, what worries me is the institutional incentives that make it difficult for the system , for congress, to take responsibility, and for the system to function as it was intended. >> just to second that point that polarization can at times

be helpful for constraining war powers, if you think back to 2013, when the obama ministration was approaching the decision to formally ask congress for authorization to bomb syria for no good reason, there's a lot of things that caused opposition, lots of public opposition, and lots of people calling in to their elected representatives and so forth, but the republicans definitely like to oppose whatever obama supported, and it might've stopped a very stupid initiation of force, and if you contrast that with what has -- what it has been military attacks on the syrian regime, for no strategic or tactical or national security reason whatsoever, he did so without even feigning to

congressional authority, and he took it upon himself, and that is a situation in which everyone in congress, can just quietly abide, because they are not being asked to take responsibility for. when you put responsibility back into congress's hands, whether there is polarization or not, they tend to take questions more seriously, as opposed to just giving the responsibility to the president. >> additional questions? yes? i am -- my name is max, i'm from mark sanford's office, various jihadist recruiting colorado's -- radicals, stuff like that, does the aumf include war efforts on part of the u.s. government fighting this, and should it? and i guess should we -- should

we be concerned about the rights of for nationals, and americans being caught up in the dragnet of the american surveillance state in regards to the aumf? >> i kind of wish more of our wars were fought on line. [ laughter ] with regard to cyber warfare, that is an interesting and tangled question, the aumf talks about all necessary and appropriate force, so i suppose if there were any reason to wage a cyber warfare against a nonstate terrorist actor, you can make a case that that falls under the rubric of necessary and appropriate force, for law enforcement and intelligence operations, against lone wolves,

or transnational terrorist affiliated individuals, you're not really in the rail of -- the realm of the aumf, other than i think it does speak to be careful what you authorize, among the things that the 2001 rohingya five has been cited for, that congress arguably never contemplated, was that it was invoking -- it was invoked a number of times the bush ministration for the so-called terrorist surveillance program, and it had been invoked for the detention of u.s. citizen josi padilla, captured on u.s. soil, so these things do have a tendency to be interpreted far

more broadly than the initial authorization, than anyone contemplated the initial authorization. if you go back and look at what congress was saying at the time, and what little debate we had before we passed the 2001 aumf, you don't get the sense that anyone contemplated that they were committing the united states to open-ended, multigenerational warfare. joe biden, who was in the senate, was saying this is nothing like the gulf of tonkin resolution, we are not saying go do anything anywhere, this is much more limited. will now, it has been in existence close to twice as long as the gulf of tonkin resolution, and it is hard to tell the difference between just an open-ended wholesale i think that is something that we have to pay attention to,

even when it comes to areas like surveillance. >> that said, by and large, what you're going to find is that the issues are treated differently. the authorization for use of military force i think is more traditionally defined as bombs and bullets, and not quite cyber warfare, most of it, i think the internet, in protecting the country from potential attackers, bureaucracies, from the fbi to the cia, the nsa, that operate in that realm and you need a warrant, they have to go through the process, in the realm of the internet, what you will find, you'll find that their separate

>> additional cash find that they are separate.>> additional questions? my name is jesse, and in eisenhower's final address, he warned against the military-industrial complex, what role if any is there pressure, i'm going to tread very lightly, big defense contractors, who are located in districts a very posh, influential members of congress, on committees that have crazy amounts of influence, and the military? for example, we are seeing the tapes of lyndon johnson, and his military advisors telling him pretty much lies, to try to keep him in vietnam. what role, if any, do you think the military-industrial complex has in keeping the aumf, the status quo?

>> in my opinion, it's much more kunitz of, the effect of the military-industrial complex, is less specific to a aumf or the role the military and the war on terror, but you are perfectly right to point out -- it has always amazed me that members of congress who in public are very practiced in praising the military, putting high military officials on a pedestal, and then the generals will get in front of a committee, and testify, and say that we don't really need money for this weapons system, it's not relevant to the way we fight, and members of congress, again who are typically said mrs. to these people, say screw it, it's helpful to me and my campaign money, less in a rohingya five debate, and mornay broad massive military effort.

we've gaged in more individual military interventions in the past 30 years, then we had in the previous 190 years of our existence, and that does relate to the growth of the military- industrial complex, but there are other factors as well, there could be bureaucratic factors, much of the u.s. government in the national security realm, to inflate threats and pretend that we have existential threats hiding behind every corner, because no one wants to go to their superior at the end of the budget year and say you know, actually, i think i'm chasing ghosts here, why don't you fire half my staff and about me. there are bureaucratic and budgetary interests to keep this expansive national security state that we have, and preventing narrowing of the definition of u.s. national interests. i think we have time for one more question. kirk?>> no?

>> oh, that's me, yes. i'm with defense priorities, i want to look at something beyond the authorization for the use of military force, and ask about authorizations for the use of military cooperation, in chapter 16 of title 10, for example, or the foreign assistance assistance act, there are all sorts of authorities, to help with anything that might be listed in counterterrorism. youth see these kind of authorities as being appropriate under the constitutional balance of powers, and what would you characterize the policy indications as being?

>> by and large, i think the united states has to rethink its approach to alliances. it used to be the case that you may alliances, to help you fight wars, or help protect against wars that could be around the corner, and now we ju have alliances for their own sake, and they are supposed to cover lots of things, not just national security questions, they are supposed to cover democracy promotion, intelligence sharing, they are supposed to cover economic cooperation, i think we need to rethink how permanently we cooperate on a military in national security level, with allies, not to say that we shouldn't cooperate, but constant military cooperation in sharing to chase threats that i think are either insignificant or imaginary, is not helpful. i think it contributes to the

ballooning effect of our national security state. okay, that concludes today's event, thank you for coming, it's give our speakers round of applause >> [ applause ] washington journal continues. host: joining us, taught harrison, the defense budget analysis director for the center for strategic and international studies, to talk about the call by the president for a space force. what does the president envisioned by the space force, and why do you think his call comes now? caller: he is talking -- guest: