Three days after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) cast the lone “no” vote on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that the House of Represenatatives approved, 420 to 1.

Rep. Lee stood before her House colleagues and pleaded with them not to give President Bush a blank check to wage war against the remote, lawless nation (Afghanistan) accused of harboring the Sept. 11 terrorists.

“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,” she said to them days after the attacks.

One woman. Trying to reason with her colleagues not to decide hastily to give the president a blank check. Death threats and vilification followed for years. But her vote was also widely praised as an act of political courage.

She told the LA Times she has never wavered on her conviction that she was on the right side of history. “No way” she said in an interview when asked if she ever had second thoughts. “I did a lot of thinking about that. I talked to constitutional lawyers about that. I’m a person of faith. I prayed over that. And we’re humans, because we all make mistakes. So that’s the calculated risk whenever you cast a vote that may or may not be the sentiment of the majority. But no.”

She has lobbied for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to declare war by repealing the military authorization. She has become an antiwar crusader to bring U.S. troops home, pestering each new president to wind down the fighting.

Kudos to Rep. Barbara Lee! But what of her colleagues – her own party members in particular?

Did they really want to give the president a blank check to punish whomever he and his advisors thought were a threat to American national security? If they were on the fence, why didn’t they speak up like Rep. Lee? Were they too wrapped up in emotions as the rest of America likely was? Too blinded by emotions to think straight – at least to give some days’ pause to think things through as Rep. Lee advised?

Or did they know in their hearts she was right but too worried about keeping their seats and potentially the public backlash they’d likely receive? Granted, I imagine it’s much easier to conform under a national crisis. Yet Rep. Lee had the fortitude to speak publicly and vote NO.

We’ll never know; or maybe we the public might discover their real sentiments about that vote after some of those members retire and write a memoir to celebrate themselves.

This of course would be after U.S. lost thousands of lives, a ton of money, and an estimated tens of thousands of Afghan lives lost, ruined, or uprooted.

Specifically, official government data shows the war has cost the U.S. around $1trn. Between the fiscal years of 2002 and 2020, official counts of total military expenditure in Afghanistan by the US Department of Defense totalled $824bn; additionally, spending on reconstruction by various agencies including the state department came to $131bn.

Unofficial estimates, however, suggest the bill is much higher. The Costs of War project by researchers at Brown University in Rhode Island estimates that between 2001 and 2021 the war cost the US $2.26trn. Their estimate includes items in addition to those in the official tallies: the bill for operations in Pakistan, war debt and support supplied to veterans, which are excluded from official tallies.

Although the military evacuation of tens of thousands out of Afghanistan has ended, There is chatter of potentially more military (drone) strikes if safe passage of those still wanting to leave the country is threatened by militants, which would cost still more money and lives.

Regarding the cost of lives lost: on the U.S. side: 2,448 American service members have been killed in Afghanistan as of April 2021, according to data from Linda Bilmes of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and the Brown University Costs of War project, as reported by the Associated Press. An additional 3,846 U.S. contractors also lost their lives.

Oh wait…add 13 more service members from the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K (or IS-K,ISKP, ISK), attack last week.

On the Coalition side – the allies from three dozen countries.who helped the U.S. fight in Afghanistan, there have been an estimated 1,147 deaths (as of May 18, 2020).

And on the Afghan side, according to Wikipedia:

During the War in Afghanistan, over 47,245 civilians, 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan military and police and more than 51,000 Taliban fighters have been killed as of April 2021. Overall the war has killed 171,000 to 174,000 people in Afghanistan. However, the death toll is possibly higher due to unaccounted deaths by “disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war.”

The Cost of War project estimated that the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may be as high as 360,000 additional people based on a ratio of indirect to direct deaths in contemporary conflicts.

We can add about 170 more Afghan lives lost as of Thursday, August 26th, 2021, thanks to Isis-k, according to local Afghan health officials. Plus two Isis-k members, and nine members of a family – including six children, thanks to a drone strike by the United States on Sunday, August 29th.

Are there more? Even at this late stage of the war, I’ve had to make a bit of an effort to scroll the news to find the 170 figure; U.S. media mostly mentions only American lives lost in any U.S.-involved conflict, and rarely mentions lives lost on the other side — unless it’s the enemy, and less often, civilians. If foreign lives lost are mentioned at all, it’s just a blip way down in the article. If you want to find out about Afghan lives lost, you might have to turn to independent media or sources outside the U.S.; that’s been my reading experience, anyway.

At least some members of Congress seem to have regrown a bit of their spines back: on June 17th, 2021, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a significant step to reassert congressional control over the executive branch’s military powers. But the vote does little to reduce the actual authority amassed by the White House over the past 20 years to use force all around the world.

That’s because a far more consequential piece of legislation, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was passed just after the September 11 attacks, remains in place. Though the 2002 AUMF relates to the use of force in Iraq and has been rarely invoked in recent years, the 2001 law is the legal backbone for U.S. military action against what are deemed to be terrorist entities or threats in any country.

While Congress has not previously had an appetite to check the White House’s post-9/11 war powers, this bill to repeal the 2002 AUMF has been noted by many political observers as a potentially important shift in thinking. This bill to repeal the 2002 AUMF was introduced by none other than Rep. Barbara Lee. The bill, H.R. 256 secured 49 Republicans among its 268 votes to pass. The measure has also gotten the support of President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

And on August 4th, 2021, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted voted 18-14 to repeal both the 1991 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) with supporters saying it was long past time for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to declare war. (no kidding?!)

The repeal action now moves to the full Senate for its expected approval, a decided change in sentiment from decades since the twin military campaigns in Iraq.

A little progress is better than no progress at all, yes?

Here’s a glimmer of hope: in mid-July, a bipartisan and ideologically diverse group of senators proposed a new bill that, if passed, would dramatically shift the relative amount of power the president and Congress have over U.S. military operations. The new bill sets out a clear definition of which military activities need to be reported to Congress and how quickly. This is especially important given the ambiguities – such as loopholes in the 1973 War Powers Resolution which attempted to constrain presidential power after the disasters of the Vietnam War – that prior administrations (and the present one) have exploited since then.

With the leadership and persistence of Rep. Barbara Lee, support from like-minded colleagues, and public sentiment against forever wars, perhaps we’ll see a bit more responsible behavior from our elected officials? Like repealing the 2001 AUMF and not giving a blank check to the president to wreak destruction around the world in our names?

I leave you with words from one of my favorite journalists:

The Taliban’s takeover of Kabul is being likened by many to the fall of Saigon. Before the Afghanistan War, there was the Vietnam War. And there were many other wars during and before Vietnam and Afghanistan that garnered less attention.

This means standing up to the liberal and conservative establishments that find a detached comfort in the cold calculus of warfare with no concern for life, safety, or democracy.

~ Sonali Kolkatar, 8/19/21 Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal has many critics — but most are missing the point

Sources

Los Angeles Times
MSN
The Cut
BBC
New Statesman
The Conversation
Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs – Brown University
The Intercept
UPI
Congress.gov – H.R. 256
ABC
Newsweek
NY Mag
Wikipedia – Coalition casualties in Afghanistan
Wikipedia – Civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
Reuters
Alternet
The Independent