(17.4.2018) the new Authorization for the Use of Military Force, introduced by Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, and the Democrat Tim Kaine, may end up doing the opposite.

Senator Kaine is right that, as he said in a speech about the bill, “for too long Congress has given presidents a blank check to wage war.” The 2001 authorization, passed three days after the Sept. 11 attacks and aimed at the perpetrators of those attacks, has done just that. Three presidents in a row have warped its limited authority into an enabling act for globe-spanning presidential war.

The Corker-Kaine resolution won’t bring an end to the Forever War; it will institutionalize it.

Joining others who have already made their opposition clear, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—who in 2001 was the sole member of Congress to vote against the original Authorization for Use of Military Force in the wake of the the 9/11 attacks—is raising her voice once more against a bi-partisan proposal introduced this week that she says would only strengthen, not curb, the „blank check for war“ that Congress has bestowed on the president.

Saying she has „grave concerns“ about the bill introduced by Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Lee on Tuesday warned it „would continue all current military operations, allow any president to unilaterally expand our wars, and effectively consent to endless war by omitting any sunset date or geographic constraints for our ongoing operations.“

Read the text of the bill—officially titled „The Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2018″—here (pdf).