Following al Qaeda’s assault on the US, 90 per cent of Americans favoured retaliation. This impulse for revenge resulted in the suffering of millions.

It began more than two decades ago. On September 20, 2001, US President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” and told a joint session of Congress (and the American people) that “the course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain.” If he meant a 20-year slide to defeat in Afghanistan, a proliferation of militant groups across the Greater Middle East and Africa, and a never-ending, world-spanning war that, at a minimum, has killed about 300 times the number of people murdered in America on 9/11, then give him credit. He was absolutely right.

Days earlier, Congress had authorised Bush “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organisations, or persons he determine[d] planned, authorised, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 or harbored such organisations or persons.” By then, it was already evident, as Bush said in his address, that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. But it was equally clear that he had no intention of conducting a limited campaign. “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there,” he announced. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.”

Congress had already assented to whatever the president saw fit to do. It had voted 420 to 1 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate to grant an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that would give him (and presidents to come) essentially a free hand to make war around the world.

“I believe that it’s broad enough for the president to have the authority to do all that he needs to do to deal with this terrorist attack and threat,” Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott said. “I also think that it is tight enough that the constitutional requirements and limitations are protected.” That AUMF would, however, quickly become a blank cheque for boundless war.

In the two decades since, that 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force has been formally invoked to justify counterterrorism (CT) operations — including ground combat, air strikes, detention, and the support of partner militaries — in 22 countries, according to a new report by Stephanie Savell of Brown University’s Costs of War Project. During that same time, the number of terrorist groups threatening Americans and American interests has, according to the US State Department, more than doubled.

Under that AUMF, US troops have conducted missions across four continents. The countries in question include some of little surprise like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and a few unexpected nations such as Georgia and Kosovo. “In many cases the executive branch inadequately described the full scope of US actions,” writes Savell, noting the regular invocation of vague language, pretzelled logic, and weak explanations. “In other cases, the executive branch reported on ‘support for CT operations,’ but did not acknowledge that troops were or could be involved in hostilities with militants.”

For nearly a year, the Biden administration has conducted a comprehensive evaluation of US counterterrorism policies, while continuing to carry out air strikes in at least four countries. The 2001 AUMF has, however, already been invoked by Biden to cover an unknown number of military missions in 12 countries: Afghanistan, Cuba, Djibouti, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Niger, the Philippines, Somalia and Yemen.

“A lot is being said about the Biden administration’s rethinking of US counterterrorism strategy, and while it’s true that Biden has conducted substantially less drone strikes so far than his predecessors, which is a positive step,” Savell told TomDispatch, “his invocation of the 2001 AUMF in at least 12 countries indicates that the US will continue its counterterrorism activities in many places. Basically, the US post-9/11 wars continue, even though US troops have formally left Afghanistan.”

AUMFing in Africa

“[W]e are entering into a long twilight struggle against terrorism,” said Representative David Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, on the day that the 2001 AUMF’s fraternal twin, a $40 billion emergency spending bill, was passed. “This bill is a down payment on the efforts of this country to undertake to find and punish those who committed this terrible act and those who supported them.”

If you want to buy a house, a 20% down payment has been the traditional ideal. To buy an endless war on terror in 2001, however, less than 1% was all you needed. Since that initial installment, war costs have increased to about $5.8 trillion.

“This is going to be a very nasty enterprise,” Obey continued. “This is going to be a long fight.” On both counts he was dead on. Twenty-plus years later, according to the Costs of War Project, close to one million people have been killed in direct violence during this country’s ongoing war on terror.

Over those two decades, that AUMF has also been invoked to justify detention operations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; efforts at a counterterrorism hub in the African nation of Djibouti to support attacks in Somalia and Yemen; and ground missions or air strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. The authorisation has also been called on to justify “support” for partner armed forces in 13 countries. The line between “support” and combat can, however, be so thin as to be functionally nonexistent.

In October 2017, after the Islamic State ambushed US troops in Niger — one of the 13 AUMF “support” nations — killing four American soldiers and wounding two, US Africa Command claimed that those troops were merely providing “advice and assistance” to local counterparts. Later, it was revealed that they had been working with a Nigerien force under the umbrella of Operation Juniper Shield, a wide-ranging counterterrorism effort in north-west Africa. Until bad weather prevented it, in fact, they were slated to support another group of American commandos trying to kill or capture Islamic State leader Doundoun Cheffou as part of an effort known as Obsidian Nomad II.

Obsidian Nomad is, in fact, a 127e program — named for the budgetary authority (section 127e of title 10 of the US Code) that allows Special Operations forces to use select local troops as surrogates in counterterrorism missions. Run either by Joint Special Operations Command, the secretive organisation that controls the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, the Army’s Delta Force, and other elite special mission units, or by more generic “theatre special operations forces,” its special operators have accompanied local commandos into the field across the African continent in operations indistinguishable from combat.

The US military, for instance, ran a similar 127e counterterrorism effort, codenamed Obsidian Mosaic, in neighboring Mali. As Savell notes, no administration has ever actually cited the 2001 AUMF when it comes to Mali, but both Trump and Biden referred to providing “CT support to African and European partners” in that region. Meanwhile, Savell also notes, investigative journalists “revealed incidents in which US forces engaged not just in support activities in Mali, but in active hostilities in 2015, 2017, and 2018, as well as imminent hostilities via the 127e program in 2019.” And Mali was only one of 13 African nations where US troops saw combat between 2013 and 2017, according to retired Army Brigadier General Don Bolduc, who served at Africa Command and then headed Special Operations Command Africa during those years.

In 2017, the Intercept exposed the torture of prisoners at a Cameroonian military base that was used by US personnel and private contractors for training missions and drone surveillance. That same year, Cameroon was cited for the first time under the 2001 AUMF as part of an effort to “support CT operations.” It was, according to Bolduc, yet another nation where US troops saw combat.

American forces also fought in Kenya at around the same time, said Bolduc, even taking casualties. That country has, in fact, been cited under the AUMF during the Bush, Trump, and Biden administrations. While Biden and Trump acknowledged US troop “deployments” in Kenya in the years from 2017 to 2021 to “support CT operations,” Savell notes that neither made “reference to imminent hostilities through an active 127e program beginning at least in 2017, nor to a combat incident in January 2020, when al Shabaab militants attacked a US military base in Manda Bay, Kenya, and killed three Americans, one Army soldier and two Pentagon contractors.”

In addition to cataloging the ways in which that 2001 AUMF has been used, Savell’s report sheds light on glaring inconsistencies in the justifications for doing so, as well as in which nations the AUMF has been invoked and why. Few war-on-terror watchers would, for example, be shocked to see Libya on the list of countries where the authorisation was used to justify air strikes or ground operations. They might, however, be surprised by the dates cited, as it was only invoked to cover military operations in 2013, and then from 2015 to 2019.

In 2011, however, during Operation Odyssey Dawn and the NATO mission that succeeded it, Operation Unified Protector (OUP), the US military and eight other air forces flew sorties against the military of then-Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi, leading to his death and the end of his regime. Altogether, NATO reportedly conducted around 9,700 strike sorties and dropped more than 7700 precision-guided munitions.

Between March and October of 2011, in fact, US drones flying from Italy regularly stalked the skies above Libya. “Our Predators shot 243 Hellfire missiles in the six months of OUP, over 20 per cent of the total of all Hellfires expended in the 14 years of the system’s deployment,” retired Lieutenant Colonel Gary Peppers, the commander of the 324th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron during Operation Unified Protector, told the Intercept in 2018. Despite those hundreds of drone strikes, not to mention attacks by manned aircraft, the Obama administration argued, as Savell notes, that the attacks did not constitute “hostilities” and so did not require AUMF citation.

The War for Terror?

In the wake of 9/11, 90% of Americans were braying for war. Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler was one of them. “[W]e must prosecute the war that has been thrust upon us with resolve, with fortitude, with unity, until the evil terrorist groups that are waging war against our country are eradicated from the face of the Earth,” he said. More than 20 years later, al-Qaeda still exists, its affiliates have multiplied, and harsher and deadlier ideological successors have emerged on multiple continents.

As both political parties rushed the United States into a “forever war” that globalised the death and suffering al-Qaeda meted out on 9/11, only Democratic Representative Barbara Lee  stood up to urge restraint. “Our country is in a state of mourning,” she explained. “Some of us must say, ‘Let’s step back for a moment, let’s just pause, just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control.’”

While the US was defeated in Afghanistan last year, the war on terror continues to spiral elsewhere around world. Last month, in fact, President Biden informed Congress that the US military “continues to work with partners around the globe, with a particular focus” on Africa and the Middle East, and “has deployed forces to conduct counterterrorism operations and to advise, assist, and accompany security forces of select foreign partners on counterterrorism operations.”

In his letter, Biden acknowledged that troops continue detention operations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and support counterterrorism operations by the armed forces of the Philippines. He also assured Congress and the American people that the United States “remains postured to address threats” in Afghanistan; continues its ground missions and air strikes in Iraq and Syria; has forces “deployed to Yemen to conduct operations against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS”; others in Turkey “to support Counter-ISIS operations”; around 90 troops deployed to Lebanon “to enhance the government’s counterterrorism capabilities”; and has sent more than 2100 troops to “the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to protect United States forces and interests in the region against hostile action by Iran and Iran-backed groups,” as well as approximately 3150 personnel to Jordan “to support Counter-ISIS operations, to enhance Jordan’s security, and to promote regional stability.”

In Africa, Biden noted, US forces “based outside Somalia continue to counter the terrorist threat posed by ISIS and al-Shabaab, an associated force of al Qaeda” through air strikes and assistance to Somali partners and are deployed to Kenya to support counterterrorism operations. They also remain deployed in Djibouti “for purposes of staging for counterterrorism and counter-piracy operations,” while in the Lake Chad Basin and the Sahel, US troops “conduct airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations” and advise, assist, and accompany local forces on counterterrorism missions.

Just days after Biden sent that letter to Congress, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the release of an annual counterterrorism report that also served as a useful assessment of more than 20 years of AUMF-fuelled counterterror operations. Blinken pointed to the “spread of ISIS branches and networks and al-Qaeda affiliates, particularly in Africa,” while noting that “the number of terrorist attacks and the overall number of fatalities resulting from those attacks increased by more than 10 percent in 2020 compared with 2019.” The report, itself, was even bleaker. It noted that “ISIS-affiliated groups increased the volume and lethality of their attacks across West Africa, the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin, and northern Mozambique,” while al-Qaeda “further bolstered its presence” in the Middle East and Africa. The “terrorism threat,” it added, “has become more geographically dispersed in regions around the world” while “terrorist groups remained a persistent and pervasive threat worldwide.” Worse than any qualitative assessment, however, was the quantitative report card that it offered.

The State Department had counted 32 foreign terrorist organizations scattered around the world when the 2001 AUMF was passed. Twenty years of war, around six trillion dollars, and nearly one million corpses later, the number of terrorist groups, according to that congressionally mandated report, stands at 69.

With the passage of that AUMF, George W. Bush declared that America’s war would “not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” Yet after 20 years, four presidents, and invocations of the AUMF in 22 countries, the number of terrorist groups that “threaten the security of US nationals or the national security” has more than doubled.

“The 2001 AUMF is like a blank cheque that US presidents have used to conduct military violence in an ever-expanding number of operations in any number of places, without adequate oversight from Congress. But it’s also just the tip of the iceberg,” Savell told TomDispatch. “To truly end US war violence in the name of counterterrorism, repealing the 2001 AUMF is the first step, but much more needs to be done to push for government accountability on more secretive authorities and military programs.”

When Congress gave Bush that blank cheque — now worth $5.8 trillion and counting — he said that the outcome of the war on terror was already “certain.” Twenty years later, it’s a certainty that the president and Congress, Representative Barbara Lee aside, had it all wrong.

As 2022 begins, the Biden administration has an opportunity to end a decades-long mistake by backing efforts to replace, sunset, or repeal that 2001 AUMF — or Congress could step up and do so on its own. Until then, however, that same blank cheque remains in effect, while the tab for the war on terror, as well as its AUMF-fuelled toll in human lives, continues to rise.

This article was first published by Common Dreams and is reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.

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GEORGE NADER, an American adviser to the government of the United Arab Emirates, convicted sex offender, and frequent visitor to the White House during President Donald Trump’s first year in office, has pleaded guilty for his role in helping the UAE pump millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions into the U.S. political system during the 2016 presidential election, according to documents submitted in federal court last month.

Federal prosecutors disclosed in a December sentencing memo that Nader had agreed months earlier to plead guilty to a single count of felony conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government by funneling millions in donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and concealing the funds’ foreign origin. Nader’s plea has not been previously reported.

A lawyer for Nader did not respond to a request for comment.

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The recent talks held in Geneva and Brussels between the Russian delegates and their American and European equivalents have been completed without any agreement being reached. The Russians have given a one-week deadline for the United States and NATO’s response to their demands. The chances of the Americans agreeing to the Russian demand that not only should NATO cease its Eastward ambitions, but that the Americans should withdraw their weapons and their troops from Russia’s borders are virtually nil.

There is also a very real question that has to be asked of any American meant: what are the chances of them actually keeping to any agreement that they make. The American record in this respect gives no ground for any confidence that what they may agree to will actually be kept. There is a long and sorry history of broken American pledges that can be pointed to in support of a pessimistic view as to the reliability of any United States promises actually being kept.

A very real clue as to the sincerity of United States promises can be seen in the recent coup attempt in Kazakhstan. There, a well organised foreign group took advantage of some local unrest at a major increase in fuel prices to attempt to stage a coup d’état against the Kazakhstan government.

The speed with which the Russian led intervention at the request of the Kazakhstan government strongly suggests that the attempted coup came as no surprise to the Russians and their colleagues in the group that responded. The American response to the Russian led movement on behalf of the Kazakhstan government also left little ground for doubting that the Americans were heavily involved in the coup attempt.

Secretary of state Antony Blinken demanded an explanation for the Russian led rescue mission. He was clearly unaware of the 1994 agreement between Kazakhstan, Russia and the others that was designed to meet precisely the sort of situation the Kazakhstan government was met with. Without a hint of irony, Blinken suggested that the Russian presence would be long lasting and difficult to remove.

In fact, a week after arriving, the Russians announced that their troops would be withdrawing within a further week, mission accomplished. If Blinken has responded to this development I haven’t seen it. This is not to suggest that the successful Russian led operation has solved all the problems of the Kazakhstan government. Its president, who is fluent in both Russian and Chinese, still has some domestic issues to resolve, including in particular what to do with his predecessor who has kept a low profile during the recent troubles. There is little doubt that his faction did not approve of Tokayev’s rapid response. More particularly, he would have been alarmed at the way Tokayev has used the unrest to do some much needed house cleaning of his predecessor’s faction from his government. There have been several arrests of former prominent members of the former regime and their trials will be watched with interest.

The Russians and the Chinese government clearly saw the unrest for what it was; a thinly disguised attempt to overthrow a Russian – Chinese friendly government and replace it with one whose commitment to the old regime’s path could not by any means be assured.

Kazakhstan is in fact a crucial member of several of the organisations that Russia and China have developed in recent years, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Eurasian Economic Union. It occupies a crucial space in the Eurovision heartland, and is the world’s eighth largest country in land area and thus has a significant physical presence as well.

The timing of the attempted coup also gives a major clue as to the perpetrator’s real motives. The Russian government’s talk with the United States and European counterparts were taking place at exactly the same time as the coup was being organised. It was clearly designed to distract the Russian government from the talks by providing them with a major security issue on their south-eastern border.

At this point it is not known what was the actual extent and knowledge of the attempted coup by the United States foreign affairs leaders Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland. Both of these individuals are known for their visceral dislike of everything Russian and it would be absolutely no surprise to learn that they both knew and approved of the attempted coup. Had it succeeded it would have caused significant problems for the Russians and the Chinese and undermined the steadily increasing moves to Eurasian unity under the guidance of both the Chinese and Russian economic developments underway in the region.

The BRI poses the most significant challenge to United States hegemony which for much of the post-World War II period has managed to dictate the nature and course of economic and social developments in large parts of the world. The BRI is changing all that and for the first time in recent history the United States has no idea how to appropriately respond. We have seen the gestures such as the attempt to invoke the “rules based international order” as a viable alternative to the system of international law that Russia and China, among many others, insist is the proper basis for the conduct of international affairs.

The Americans see the Chinese as the greatest threat to their vision of the world and the constant propaganda against China is one of their main weapons to combat China’s inexorable rise. In recent years the Americans have progressively made life more difficult for Chinese exports to their country. The campaign waged against the Chinese vice president of Huawei, only recently released from detention in Canada, is but one example of this relentless American pressure.

The Americans can still rely on their faithful Australian lapdog, whose most recent show of obedience to the United States view of the world, and the attempt to exercise control over it, was to agree to buy United States and/or United Kingdom built nuclear powered submarines., which has absolutely no other purpose than as a vehicle for further intimidation of China. That the Morrison government is progressively destroying the economically vital relationship of Australia with China seems to cause remarkably little reaction in Australia. Its role as a white outpost in an Asian sea reflects a throwback to an earlier era when white supremacy of Asia was taken for granted.

That the BRI, which Australia refused to join and forced the state of Victoria to withdraw from, is building up a strong set of relationships with Australia’s neighbours, poses a reality that the Australian government refuses to face. Its part of the world, as with so much else, is irrevocably changing. Australia risks being left behind in this new world. The failure of United States attempts to forcibly change the Geopolitical landscape, as most recently in Kazakhstan, points to a new reality, the forces of which are unstoppable.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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