The content below comes from the newsletter This Week in War Powers News, provided by the Committee for Responsible Foreign Policy.
The President’s Hands Should Remain Tied on Taiwan
As the only House Democrat to vote against repealing the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq, second-term Congresswoman Elaine Luria is proving to have an alarmingly expansive view of the president’s authority to independently wage war. More broadly, with her career in the U.S. Navy, centrist stances on domestic policy, and unusually hawkish foreign policy views, Luria reflects the growing trend of Democratic House candidates with backgrounds in national security running as domestic moderates and foreign policy hawks. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Luria takes it as a given that the United States should intervene in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan and calls for Congress to “untie” President Joe Biden’s hands to grant him the legal authority to do so without consulting Congress. Luria is not the only member of Congress who has recently supported this idea. Republican lawmakers have introduced the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, which Luria described as “a good starting point,” that would allow the president to intervene if China attempted to invade Taiwan. READ MORE
Iraqis Remember Powell as Both Liberator and ‘Engineer’ of Endless War
While Americans mourned Colin Powell as a soldier and a statesman, in Baghdad he was praised for helping liberate Iraq from a despot but also condemned as an “engineer” of a bloody war that was launched on a lie.
For many Iraqis, Powell will forever be tied to the 80-plus minute speech he delivered to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, in which he laid the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq based on false claims that dictator Saddam Hussein had amassed weapons of mass destruction.
“Colin Powell is the engineer of the U.S. invasion of Iraq,” said Ahmed Falah Hassan, 54, a lawyer in Baghdad after Powell’s death was announced on Monday. “He is the one who defended the false accusations by the United States that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, showing false evidence to the whole world.”
That invasion, Hassan said, didn’t just dislodge Hussein, it destabilized the entire region, splintered Iraq in sectarian warfare, emboldened Iran and helped bring about the Islamic State terror group. READ MORE
State Department IG to Probe Biden Admin’s Chaotic Afghanistan Withdrawal
The State Department‘s inspector general is launching a series of investigations into the Biden administration’s last diplomatic moves in Afghanistan.
The reviews will focus on the State Department’s Special Immigrant Visa program, Afghans processed for refugee admission into the U.S., resettlement of refugees and visa recipients, and the emergency evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, according to an Oct. 15 memo to Secretary of State Blinken first reported by Politico and confirmed by Fox News.
Diana Shaw, the acting inspector general at State, told Congress that her office was launching “several oversight projects” related to the end of the U.S. military and diplomatic missions in Afghanistan. READ MORE
