Obama’s unauthorised war

United States President Barack Obama’s strategy to deal with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is unconstitutional because the United States president cannot go to war without congressional approval, argues David Cole in an article in the New York Times Book Review.

But it looks Obama is not going to congress because last year when he was contemplating military strikes against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Congress declined to authorise military force.

“This time, Obama has given no indication that he intends to seek Congress’s authorisation for airstrikes. There has been some talk of obtaining approval to send troops to train Iraqi forces, but Obama apparently thinks he doesn’t need any authorisation to drop bombs from the sky with the aim of killing human beings—even in a country, Syria, where he plainly will have no permission from the sovereign to do so,” Cole writes.

“Under the Constitution, whether to use military force is Congress’s decision, not the president’s,” he says.

Just imagine if the president of any other country had done the same thing, what would have happened?

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