The chairman and other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unveiled a bipartisan resolution Monday authorizing the use of military force overseas, accelerating a debate that Congress has been reluctant to have, but that's taking on new urgency after President Donald Trump's strikes on Syria.
The resolution from Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., would repeal the broad authorizations Congress approved in 2001 and 2002 for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, replacing them with new authority to go after specific "non-state terrorist groups." A growing number of critics say Congress should no longer be using the more than decade-old resolutions as legal underpinnings for the fight against extremist groups such as the Islamic State.
Rubble lines a street in Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
The new resolution would not necessarily provide congressional authorization for the airstrikes Trump ordered, with coalition forces, in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Douma.
Congress has so far giving lopsided backing for the Syria mission. Many lawmakers are supportive of strikes that send a message to the Syrian regime that such attacks will not go unanswered.
"It was time to act," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday in support of the Syria mission.
Others say even the limited response is beyond the president's commander-in-chief authority because the U.S. was not facing a direct security risk.
Mostly, lawmakers have insisted that the Trump administration cannot engage in prolonged or repeated incursions without consulting Congress on its broader strategy.
"President Trump's action still raises the constitutional question of his authority to unilaterally attack another nation without congressional authorization," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "It is time for Congress and the American people to engage in a national debate about that authorization to use military force in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen."
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said, "No President of the United States, no matter party or political ideology, has the authority to unilaterally start a war."
But it is not at all clear the new authorization resolution, which is expected to focus on military action against non-state actors like the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban — rather than specific countries — would find enough support to pass the House or Senate.
Corker said the new measure would give the administration "the flexibility to be successful that they now have, but it also keeps Congress in the loop in having the ability to stop it."
It has a built-in process for Congress to review the authorization every four years. But because Congress has shown such difficulty tackling war-related votes, skeptics worry it would just end up stretching on for years, like earlier authorizations, if Congress failed to act.
"I'm not opposed to what they're trying to accomplish," said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who also serves on the committee. "I'm opposed to doing it in a way that could lead to what happened in 2001."
For all the handwringing over military incursions like the weekend strikes Trump ordered on Syria, Congress has been hesitant to wade into a messy debate and take responsibility for the campaigns. In 2013, Congress returned early from summer recess to consider then-President Barack Obama's request for action against Syrian President Bashar Assad after a similar chemical weapons attack near Damascus. But lawmakers quickly lost interest and did not vote to resolve the issue. Trump's actions have similarly paralyzed lawmakers.
Congress, though, may face increasing pressure, particularly in a midterm election year when voters are hungry for a check on executive power.
A coalition of liberal and libertarian-leaning lawmakers who have long pushed lawmakers to vote on authorizing military operations is drawing wider support from other more moderate voices who want Congress to re-assert their constitutional role over the executive branch.
The committee is expected to consider the legislation next week, but Republican leaders have shown only tepid interest in bringing it forward for Senate votes.
"Congress has abdicated the power," Sen. Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, said over the weekend on CNN. "What I guess I have to say now we're really good at, is standing on the sidelines, avoiding making the decisions, and then criticizing the decisions the president makes."
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday misstated key details about his uncle’s death in World War II as he honored the man's wartime service and said Donald Trump was unworthy of serving as commander in chief.
While in Pittsburgh, Biden spoke about his uncle, 2nd Lt. Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., aiming to draw a contrast with reports that Trump, while president, had called fallen service members “suckers" and "losers.”
Finnegan, the brother of Biden's mother, "got shot down in New Guinea,” Biden said. The president said Finnegan's body was never recovered and “there used to be a lot of cannibals” in the area. Biden, who also relayed a version of the story earlier in the day after stopping by the memorial in Scranton, was off on the particulars.
The U.S. government's record of missing service members does not attribute Finnegan's death to hostile action or indicate cannibals were any factor.
“We have a tradition in my family my grandfather started,” said Biden, a toddler at the time of his uncle’s death in 1944. "When you visit a gravesite of a family member — it’s going to sound strange to you — but you say three Hail Marys. And that’s what I was doing at the site."
Referring to Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Biden said, "That man doesn’t deserve to have been the commander in chief for my son, my uncle.”
Biden's elder son, Beau, died in 2015 of brain cancer, which the president has stated he believes was linked to his son's yearlong deployment in Iraq, where the military used burn pits to dispose of waste.
Some former Trump officials have claimed the then-president disparaged fallen service members as “suckers” and "losers” when, they said, he did not want to travel in 2018 to a cemetery for American war dead in France. Trump denied the allegation, saying, “What animal would say such a thing?”
According to the Pentagon's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Biden's uncle, known by the family as “Bosie,” died on May 14, 1944, while a passenger on an Army Air Forces plane that, “for unknown reasons,” was forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea. “Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard,” the agency states in its listing of Finnegan. “Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash.”
The agency said Finnegan was a passenger on the plane when it was lost. "He has not been associated with any remains recovered from the area after the war and is still unaccounted-for,” according to the agency.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates did not address the discrepancy between the agency’s records and Biden’s account when he issued a statement on the matter.
“President Biden is proud of his uncle’s service in uniform,“ Bates said, adding Finnegan ”lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea."
Biden "highlighted his uncle’s story as he made the case for honoring our ‘sacred commitment ... to equip those we send to war and take care of them and their families when they come home,’ and as he reiterated that the last thing American veterans are is ‘suckers’ or ‘losers.’”
The Democratic president also misstated when uncles enlisted in the military, saying they joined “when D-Day occurred, the next day,” in June 1944, when they actually joined weeks after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.
After Finnegan's death, a local newspaper published a telegram from Gen. Douglas MacArthur expressing condolences to Finnegan's family:
"Dear Mr. Finnegan: In the death of your son, Second Lieutenant Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., while in service of his country, you have my profound sympathy. Your consolation may be that he died in the uniform of our beloved country, serving in a crusade from which a better world for all will come. Very faithfully, Douglas MacArthur.”
Biden, in his 2008 book “Promises to Keep,” made only brief mention of his uncle, describing him as flyer who was killed in New Guinea.
President Joe Biden visits the War Memorial in Scranton, Pa., Wednesday, April 17, 2024, and touches the wall near his uncle's name, Ambrose J Finnegan Jr., who died in WWII. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden visits the War Memorial in Scranton, Pa., Wednesday, April 17, 2024. Biden's uncle, Ambrose J Finnegan Jr., who died in WWII, is listed on the wall. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden visits the War Memorial in Scranton, Pa., with Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, right, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. Biden's uncle, Ambrose J Finnegan Jr., who died in WWII, is listed on the memorial wall. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden pauses at a wall of veterans' names at a Scranton war memorial, Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Scranton, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden reaches to touch the name of his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan, Jr., on a wall at a Scranton war memorial, Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Scranton, Pa. His uncle died in WWII. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden, and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, pause at a Scranton war memorial, Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Scranton, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden reaches to touch the name of his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan, Jr., on a wall at a Scranton war memorial, Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Scranton, Pa. His uncle died in WWII. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
