US Senate rejects motion to repeal Bush-era war authorization legislation

WASHINGTON - The US Senate has voted against a proposal to repeal a Bush-era law that has given US presidents sweeping powers of war since 2001.

US Presidents have cited the same bill as the legal basis for dozens of military interventions around the world for more than 20 years.

An amendment tabled by Republican Sen. Rand Paul to mark the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq to repeal the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Forces (AUMF) was defeated this week by a vote of 86 to 9. Only four lawmakers from each party, plus independent Senator Bernie Sanders, supported the legislation.

"Today, I offered the US Senate the opportunity to reverse authorize the 9/11 war to regain our constitutional power and send a message to the world that we are a nation of peace," Paul said in a statement after the vote Wednesday. "We should have risen above symbolism and ... shown our respect for the Constitution, our allegiance to the rule of law, and our sincere desire that peace, not perpetual war, should be our legacy."

Paul wrote in a previous comment on Twitter that several US Presidents had "abused" the War Authorization Act.

"Originally it was meant to go after those who attacked us on 9/11, but Presidents have abused the AUMF for over two decades to justify military operations in at least 22 countries and against groups that did not exist on 9/11," tweeted Paul.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, then-President George W. Bush passed the law in Congress and signed it into law just days later on September 18, promising to stamp out global terrorism.

Since 2001, every president has used the law as the legal basis for dozens of military interventions around the world and invoked the Bush-era law to commit more than 40 different foreign interventions, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The AUMF has been applied entirely in Muslim-majority countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen, and has resulted in the deaths of nearly a million people and cost more than $8 trillion, according to a 2021 report, Costs reported of War Project at Brown University.