The War on Terror: Sides, Obstacles, and Prospects for Change
This paper examines the ongoing political debate surrounding the War on Terror, beginning with the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed after 9/11 and continuing through the Trump administration's foreign policy shifts. The paper outlines the positions of both anti-war and pro-war advocates across party lines, analyzes the structural obstacles—including AIPAC lobbying, U.S.-Israel ties, and the Saudi alliance—that prevent meaningful reform of the AUMF, and evaluates the Corker-Kaine proposal as the most viable but still limited congressional response. The paper concludes that significant curtailment of presidential war powers is unlikely without major changes in congressional, Israeli, or White House leadership.
- Introduction: AUMF origins, War on Terror scope, Trump-era shifts
- Sides to the Issue: Anti-war vs. pro-war arguments across party lines
- What Might Prevent Change: AIPAC, Israel, Saudi alliances blocking AUMF reform
- How Change Would Occur: Corker-Kaine bill and congressional oversight options
- The Possibilities for Change in the Future: Midterms, leadership shifts, and reform prospects
- Conclusion: War powers unlikely curtailed without leadership change
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What makes this paper effective
- It organizes a complex, multi-sided political debate into a clear problem-cause-solution structure, moving from issue definition through obstacles to prospects for change.
- It draws on a wide range of sources—polls, legislative proposals, opinion pieces, and news reporting—to ground its claims in current evidence rather than abstract argument.
- It acknowledges the cross-partisan nature of the debate, noting that opposition to and support for the War on Terror spans Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and Tea Party groups, which adds analytical nuance.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively uses a power-structure analysis to explain policy inertia. Rather than simply describing who supports or opposes the War on Terror, it identifies the interlocking interests of the White House, Congress, Israel (via AIPAC), and Saudi Arabia as a "triumvirate of power" that constrains any legislative change. This kind of structural reasoning—explaining why change does not happen, not just that it hasn't—is a strong analytical move in political science writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a six-part structure: an introduction establishing historical context and scope; a section mapping the opposing sides; a section identifying legislative and geopolitical obstacles; a section evaluating the Corker-Kaine reform proposal; a section assessing future prospects; and a brief conclusion. Each section builds logically on the previous one, maintaining a consistent argumentative thread throughout.
Introduction
On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush proposed the new Office of Homeland Security to help confront a new threat to national security—the first step in what became the War on Terrorism (Select Committee on Homeland Security, 2004). One week earlier, Congress had signed off on the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), allowing the president broad scope for using military force against countries or organizations that "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" terrorism (Ackerman & Hathaway, 2011). Seventeen years and more than $2 trillion later, the War on Terrorism continued with no sign of easing up (Amadeo, 2018).
Though President Trump ran a campaign on getting American soldiers out of the Middle East and letting other countries handle the ISIS threat, the War on Terror rhetoric out of the White House continued unabated, with sights set on regime change in Iran—a nation that Trump singled out as the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world. During his campaign, Trump had identified Saudi Arabia as the "world's biggest funder of terrorism" (Williams, 2018). This shift indicated a new alliance between the Saudis and the White House, and the potential likelihood of an escalation of conflict in the region, just as the ISIS threat in Syria appeared to be mitigating (Colling, 2016). So while some voters and politicians wanted the War on Terror to end, others supported its continuation. This paper discusses the sides of the debate and whether meaningful change is likely to come about in the near future.
Sides to the Issue
The sides to the issue of ending the War on Terror cross political affiliation and encompass Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and Tea Party groups. Anti-war advocates are numerous as a result—but pro-war, pro-regime change, and anti-terror advocates are also numerous and powerful. The complexity of the issue also arises from the fact that those who are said to support terror (states like Iran) are defended by anti-war proponents who argue that Iran may support Hezbollah, but that this is not equivalent to Saudi Arabia supporting ISIS. As they argue, Hezbollah exists to defend Lebanon from Israel (Sputnik, 2018) and not to attack the United States or threaten its national security interests.
Mullen (2016) articulates the anti-War on Terror argument by stating that the War has been "as complete a failure as the War on Drugs," characterized by "continually increasing budgets, exploding proliferation of what is made war upon, increasingly harsh measures following each successive failure and enormous collateral damage." The proliferation of NSA surveillance of American citizens has further fueled the anti-War on Terror position, with whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange hailed as heroes in exile by their supporters (Price, 2015). The core interests of those who oppose the AUMF include preserving the right to privacy, curbing spending on foreign wars, halting regime change abroad, and bringing American forces home.
On the other side are those who support the War on Terror. At the time of Bush's invasion of Afghanistan, Americans supported the War 2-to-1 (Langer, 2001), motivated by a desire for security and a sense of accountability for the 9/11 attacks. By 2012, however, only 1 in 4 Americans supported a continuation of the War (Madison, 2012). This decline may reflect a widespread belief that the United States had already won or was winning the conflict (Rasmussen, 2018). Yet even as public support wavered, bipartisan backing persisted in parts of Congress. Senators Bob Corker (Republican) and Tim Kaine (Democrat) sought to update the president's authority to wage war against terrorism and its sponsors in the Middle East, proposing to allow the administration to continue conflicts against stateless terrorist organizations and initiate new ones, while simultaneously giving Congress oversight power through a built-in congressional review every four years—at which point Congress could amend, expand, or repeal the president's authority (Caldwell & Salama, 2018).
Kaine argued that this proposal represented the best chance of achieving bipartisan support for a bill that both extended and potentially limited the president's broad powers in the War on Terror (Caldwell & Salama, 2018). Proponents of the War on Terror objected to the limitations aspect of the bill, while opponents of the War objected to the extension. If Congress took no action, the president's mandate to wage the War on Terror would simply continue.
What Might Prevent Change
Repealing the AUMF did not appear to be a viable option for Congress at that time. The War was perceived as being won by the majority of Americans, according to Rasmussen polling, and curtailing the president's power to wage war against terrorism risked allowing terror cells to proliferate once more. This meant that ending the War on Terror was unlikely in the near future. Senator Rand Paul attempted to pass a bill to repeal the AUMF, but "the Senate voted 61–36 in a procedural motion to kill Paul's amendment" (Herb, 2017). With Iran in the cross-hairs of the White House—identified as the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world—meaningful change to the AUMF through repeal appeared increasingly remote.
Additionally, Israel is one of the strongest proponents of targeting Iran, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) functions as a powerful lobby that influences many members of Congress—so much so that what Israel wants, it often receives, even when it conflicts with an "America First" policy like that promoted by Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign (Rossinow, 2018). Trump agreed to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite widespread protests, in deference to Israeli preferences (Hunter, Atta & Hutchinson, 2018).
This represents one example of Trump's apparent willingness to align with Israel and promote its interests in the Middle East. Since Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has publicly advocated for regime change in Iran and identified Iran as the number-one terror threat in the world, it is not surprising that Trump withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal that the rest of the international community wished to preserve—with the notable exceptions of Israel and Saudi Arabia (Irish, El Gamal & Holland, 2018).
With Trump shifting away from his campaign-era position that viewed Saudi Arabia as the primary sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East, and instead showing strong support for Israeli aims, the White House, its longstanding Saudi alliance, and its close ties with Israel all represented the largest obstacles to any AUMF reform that might limit the president's war-making powers. Those powers had been granted since 9/11 and, given Senator Paul's failure to secure congressional support for his repeal proposal, appeared unlikely to be curtailed at any point in the foreseeable future.
Conclusion
While the AUMF was passed at a time when Americans wanted to secure the nation and hold terrorists and their sponsors accountable in the wake of 9/11, many Americans have since come to want the president's power to wage the War on Terror curtailed or subjected to meaningful congressional oversight. However, government policy on this matter is shaped largely by members of Congress who are deeply aligned with Israeli interests—and since Israel's Netanyahu has been adamant about confronting Iran—any curtailment of presidential war powers under the AUMF is unlikely to occur without significant changes among the current leadership in Washington, Tel Aviv, and Riyadh.
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