Last week President Obama sent Congress legislation to authorize him to use force against ISIS ‘and associated persons and forces’ anywhere in the world for the next three years. This is a blank check for the president to start as many new wars as he wishes, and it appears Congress will go along with this dangerous and costly scheme.
Already the military budget for next year is equal to all but the very peak spending levels during the Vietnam war and the Reagan military buildup, according to the Project on Defense Alternatives. Does anyone want to guess how much will be added to military spending as a result of this new war authorization?
The US has already spent nearly two billion dollars fighting ISIS since this summer, and there hasn’t been much to show for it. A new worldwide war on ISIS will likely just serve as a recruiting tool for jihadists. We learned last week that our bombing has led to 20,000 new foreign fighters signing up to join ISIS. How many more will decide to join each time a new US bomb falls on a village or a wedding party?
The media makes a big deal about the so-called limitations on the president’s ability to use combat troops in this legislation, but in reality there is nothing that would add specific limits. The prohibition on troops for ‘enduring’ or ‘offensive’ ground combat operations is vague enough to be meaningless. Who gets to determine what ‘enduring’ means? And how difficult is it to claim that any ground operation is ‘defensive’ by saying it is meant to ‘defend’ the US? Even the three year limit is just propaganda: who believes a renewal would not be all but automatic if the president comes back to Congress with the US embroiled in numerous new wars?
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner by Ron Paul – February 17, 2015.
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