There is no geographic limit to that war, Sheehan and others testified, thanks to the seminal law authorizing it in the days after 9/11, known as the Authorization to Use Military Force. Thanks to that relatively terse authorization, U.S. counterterrorism stretches “from Boston to the FATA,” Sheehan said, using the acronym for Pakistan’s tribal areas. Sheehan told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he believed “associated forces” of al-Qaida can be targeted anywhere around the world, including inside Syria, where the rebel Nusra Front recently allied itself with al-Qaida’s Iraq affiliate, or even what Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called “boots on the ground in Congo.”
“You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution here,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). King pointed out that the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force against al-Qaida, or AUMF, was specifically bounded to avenging the 9/11 attacks, and does not contain the words “associated forces”repeatedly invoked by Taylor, the top Pentagon lawyer.
“You guys have invented this term, associated forces, that’s nowhere in this document,” King said. “It’s the justification for everything, and it renders the war powers of Congress null and void.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), expressed incredulity over the Pentagon’s broad interpretation of the AUMF. “None of us” who voted for the law in 2001 “could have envisioned [granting] authority [to strike] in Yemen and Somalia,” McCain said.
