Editorial: The AUMF silence

This week, Law and Disorder Radio finally breaks Pacifica Radio's long silence on Barack Obama's AUMF request to Congress (so that Congress will convey legality on Barack's current wars on Iraq and Syria).

Host Michael Ratner observes, among other things, that, "When liberals want to vote for something bad but feel better about it, they say, 'Oh, let's put a sunset clause in it'." That is the only reason for the sunset clause -- such a clause never really has real world meaning.

Make no mistake, the illegal Iraq War was a rainmaker for Pacifica Radio.

While it would have been great to see the topic discussed as a topic and not an update (and the topic is certainly worthy of a full hour of exploration by the program), we will give the radio show and hosts Michael Ratner and Heidi Boghosian credit for breaking the silence.

Ajamu Baraka (Dissident Voice) pointed out last week:

The announcement by the Obama administration that it will seek congressional authorization to expand the war on ISIS in Syria and possibly send more heavy weapons to its client government in Ukraine did not generate the kind of muscular opposition and sense of urgency that one would expect from the anti-interventionist liberals and significant sectors of what use to be the anti-imperialist and anti-war left.
Outside of a few articles written by some of us confined to the marginalized and shrinking left, the reports that the administration was considering both of these courses of action were met with passing indifference. It is as if the capitalist oligarchy’s strategy of permanent war has been accepted as a fait-accompli by the general public and even significant numbers of the left.



He didn't name her, but he could have been referring to Rosa Brooks as one of the "significant numbers of the left."

No, she's not famous for much of anything other than being the daughter of crazy Babs.  But Brooks is a Socialist who worked in the administration of Barack Obama, during his first term, and provided cover for The Drone War and other events.  And this month, she also penned a worthless column for Foreign Policy -- a column wrongly praised by The Guardian newspaper because, as C.I. notes:


But Rosa, still the foot soldier for Barack, wanted everyone to know, the AUMF doesn't matter.  So just ignore it.
She felt it was great that it had spawned a 'discussion.'
If you're wondering what discussion, you're not alone.
She doesn't mean Congressional discussion because she slaps down Republicans and chides Democrats.
So what discussion?
There's been no discussion.



And she doesn't want one.  Rose Brooks wants everyone to go along with the AUMF which, in her mind, doesn't really matter.


She's far from alone in distracting from the AUMF,

Repeating, the Iraq War was a moneymaker for Pacifica.

Donations reached an all time high from 2003 through 2006 that hadn't been seen since the Vietnam era.


Yet only Brian Edwards-Tierkert could be found advocating that Pacifica develop an Iraq program (failing that, he suggested they start airing War News Radio).

They didn't go for it then.


All these years later, they continue to ignore the Iraq War.