Barack Obama’s proposed framework for the US-led war against the Islamic State will not restrict the battlefield to Iraq and Syria, multiple congressional sources said on Tuesday, placing the US into a second simultaneous global war that will outlast his presidency.
Several congressional sources familiar with the outlines of the proposal, all of whom expected the White House to formally unveil it on Wednesday, told the Guardian the so-called Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) would bless the anti-Isis war for three years.
Congressional language to retroactively justify the six-month-old US war against Isis will not, they said, scrap the broad 9/11-era authorities against al-Qaida, as some congressional Democrats had proposed, meaning the two war authorizations will coexist.
Asked if the anti-Isis AUMF opens the US to a second worldwide war against a nebulous adversary, one congressional aide answered: “Absolutely.”
Two legislative aides with knowledge of the outlines of the White House proposal said the new AUMF would clarify that the 2001 authority, which Obama has cited to justify everything from drone strikes in Yemen to detaining Taliban combatants beyond the end of US combat in Afghanistan, will no longer apply to the war against Isis.
Those military contours would abandon Obama’s current contention that his legal authorities to confront Isis in the absence of explicit congressional approval stem partially from the 2001 AUMF, a contention that has papered over the furious division between Isis and al-Qaida. The 2002 authorization for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein, his other claimed residual legislative authority, would explicitly expire.
But the retention of the 2001 AUMF would back away Obama almost entirely from his May 2013 call to repeal the legal wellspring of an open-ended global war. Though Obama has boasted this year of drastically reducing the number of US forces in ground combat, the addition of another broad war authority ensures that he, like George W Bush, will also hand over two wars to his successor.
Authorization for the second global war “contrasts with the restraint that Obama likes to emphasize”, said Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Politicians often describe their war aims with restraint, but the people who have to operationally conduct war like no restraints,” Zenko said. “Obama has given everyone who will service in his administration the ability to prosecute this war in as expansive a manner as they choose.”
White House officials did not immediately respond to questions from the Guardian.
The congressional sources said that the anti-Isis AUMF – many of the terms of which were first reported on Tuesday by Bloomberg – will contain restrictions on US ground conflict in Iraq, though exceptions will remain. One congressional source told the Guardian that leaders on Capitol Hill had likened the exceptions to permitting special operations forces to rescue downed pilots, or to allowing the current 3,000 troops Obama has authorized deployed to Iraq to spot for air strikes.
Similar to language grandfathered into the 2001 AUMF through Obama-era defense bills that permitted the targeting of al-Qaida’s “associated forces”, the sources familiar with the current negotiations said Obama and his successor would have the power to target Isis’s associated forces as well.
None of the congressional sources said they knew yet whether the White House text would define those associated forces. But one source said the text was heavily influenced by a draft proposed by Senator Robert Menendez that passed the Senate foreign relations committee in December.
Menendez’s bill defined an associated force as “individuals and organizations fighting for or on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or a closely-related successor entity”.
Isis has shown itself to have adherents, or at least those willing to claim allegiance to the group, across the world. Though the group is not known to have attempted attacks on the US domestically, it has killed US citizens it kidnapped in Syria, apparently including American aid worker Kayla Mueller, whose family announced her death on Tuesday.
Adherents have appeared or have been claimed to operate in Europe, Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan. On Tuesday, White House counter-terrorism adviser Lisa Monaco blasted the Isis “propaganda machine” as a threat to the US online.
No source interviewed by the Guardian about the AUMF on Tuesday would speak on the record, citing the sensitivity of the negotiations. None predicted a rapid or easy path to congressional approval, owing to partisan and ideological concerns over the war’s aims and scope. Several administration aides trekked to Capitol Hill on Tuesday in an attempt to win support.
The White House denied there had been a delay in its negotiations with Congress over the AUMF, which the president called for publicly three weeks ago in his State of the Union address.
“Well, ‘relatively soon’ would include any of the days that are remaining in this week,” the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, told reporters when pressed on earlier indications that the AUMF text would come this week.
Officials argue that leaks from Capitol Hill are a sign of progress rather than rumoured disagreement over what should be included in the authorisation.
“There are a number of conversations that have taken place, and I think the fact that some of these details have been leaked by congressional sources, I think is an indication of the large number of conversations that are ongoing between administration officials and officials in Congress,” said Earnest.
However, the White House acknowledges there is debate over whether the text should be narrowly tailored against Isis or not.
“The reason the president is seeking this ‘right-sized’ AUMF – I believe the way that he has previously described it – is because of his desire to see Congress act in support or at least demonstrate their support for the strategy to degrade and ultimately destroy Isil,” Earnest said.
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