I hope soon to get more directly to the important
news of the prosecution of former Al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith in U.S. federal court in New York and much else of interest in our pages, but I didn’t want to let pass without comment the also important
piece in the
Washington Post this week that the Obama Administration is examining whether it should seek to extend the legal authorization for targeted killing operations beyond those groups currently identified by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Per
The Post: “The debate has been driven by the emergence of groups in North Africa and the Middle East that may embrace aspects of al-Qaeda’s agenda but have no meaningful ties to its crumbling leadership base in Pakistan. Among them are the al-Nusra Front in Syria and Ansar al-Sharia, which was linked to the September attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya. As the article rightly explains, these are “militant groups with little or no connection to the organization responsible for the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.”
The AUMF has been the cornerstone of U.S. domestic authority to detain and target members of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and “associated forces,” but it is limited by its terms, by Administration interpretation, and by the courts to uses of force against these groups. As the U.S. prepares to leave Afghanistan and as the Al Qaeda that attacked the United States on 9/11 collapses, the AUMF is of decreasing import. More, as Steve Coll recently
wrote, distinguishing the AUMF’s target groups from various violent Jihadi successor groups in Yemen, Mali and elsewhere: “A franchise is a business that typically operates under strict rules laid down by a parent corporation; to apply that label to Al Qaeda’s derivative groups today is false.”
So if the AUMF doesn’t authorize the use of force against the next generation of terrorist organization, what should we do?
