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Having signed the four basic US military foundational agreements necessary for interoperability the last of those in October 2020 the Narendra Modi government will now be taking Indias military relationship with the United States several notches higher. If things move at the governments pace, India will soon be a de facto US ally without any clarity on how this will enhance the countrys defence against the combined China-Pakistan threat. Or how it would help establish geopolitical equilibrium with China.

When US secretary of defence Lloyd J. Austin III comes to India (March 19-21) after his visits to Japan and South Korea both formal US allies in Asia on the table for discussion will be the Pentagons multi domain operations (MDO) warfighting concept. That this is in the offing was indicated by the army chief, General M.M. Naravane during his February 24 address at a webinar organised by the Vivekanand International Foundation (VIF). According to Gen. Naravane, multi domain operations are the future of war for which the Indian Army is preparing.

Coming to grips with the shift in US military thinking

While the army chiefs sudden switch to MDO from network-centric operations (NCO) may have come as a surprise to many, the national security advisor, and by extension the Prime Ministers Office (PMO), had been working the ropes to get under the broader and more definitive US security umbrella. I believe that the NSAs office was acquainted with the idea of MDO during the Ladakh crisis, when in desperation the government was looking at all options to counter China. These included seeking non-traditional (by Indian thinking) means as well. A few start-ups, familiar with some of the technologies involved, have been working with the NSAs office on developing an Indian version of MDO. This was the reason the Modi government rushed to sign Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) last year even when it was unclear if Trump administration would return to power.

The Biden administration is determined to do more than incorporate allies and partners (like India) into its MDO warfighting concept. Even before the US Indo-Pacific commander (INDOPACOM), Admiral Philip Davidson recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Chinese military aggression towards Taiwan and India could manifest in fact in the next six years, the White House had asked the Pentagon to conduct a task force review on how to meet the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) challenge in Asia. Senior US officials, including the joint chiefs chairman, General Mark Milley, have gone public in suggesting what steps needed to be taken to stem the US military downslide.

The steps suggested by US military officers are meant to address two major issues: How to meet the PLAs anti access and area denial (A2AD) challenge, and how to strengthen US militarys conventional deterrence by MDO.

A2AD is the US military term for what the PLA calls its counter-intervention strategy comprising its long and medium range ballistic missiles, hypersonic and supersonic cruise missiles, early warning and long-range radars, integrated air and missile defence system, long range reconnaissance satellites and aircraft, cyber, electronic, and counter space capabilities. The counter-invention strategy or A2AD weapons are meant to disallow US military access to its bases, and to deny force operational freedom of action once there.

At the heart of this strategy is Chinas systems destruction warfare exemplified by its awesome projective-centric (missiles) warfare and ability to destroy US networks which connect its kill chain. The latter also called the Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (OODA) loop is a three-part process consisting of understanding the situation, deciding on the course of action at the command-and-control operating centres, and ordering the appropriate shooter (missiles, guns, laser guided bombs, laser weapons, cyber weapons, jamming, counter space weapons) to destroy the targets.

The US militarys three priorities

US military officers say that the A2AD challenge is huge and requires three actions to meet it. First, the US should increase its missiles production rapidly. The Trump administration had withdrawn from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 2019 since it prevented the US from building conventional land-based missiles over 500km range. Since China was not part of this treaty, it could unabashedly test and operationalise ballistic missiles in large numbers unmatched by any nation.

The second action relates to the challenge of PLAs long ranges and accurate missiles, especially when they would soon be enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) imbedded in them. These intelligent missiles, called lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) would be able to operate independently. Able to accomplish given tasks by themselves, LAWs would not require software networking communication with the human controller. Incidentally, this network which connects the missile to the control station is its most vulnerable part. It can be destroyed by the adversary in Chinas case, by the US thereby blinding the missile.

The answer to this problem, the US military says, is to abandon its limited and permanent Asian bases with a high density of troops in places like Japan, South Korea, and Guam. Established after the Second World War, these would be easy targets for PLA missiles. Instead, the US should seek diffused bases, at many places, where troops could be placed on a rotational basis. It is argued that dispersed and expeditionary US troops across the INDOPACOM would be a less vulnerable target and provide better conventional deterrence. Looking for such bases amongst partners in the region would be a high priority for US defence secretary Austin when he meets Indias NSA.

Would the Modi government, which has gone out of its way to seek US security, refuse an American request for rotational troops on Indian soil?

The third action the US military intends to take is to permanently position the US army-led multi domain task force (MDTF) closer to the Chinese A2AD firewall to potentially penetrate it before a major attack is mounted by the US forces arriving from rotational bases. The MDTF would comprise long-range US missiles and cyber capabilities (under the US army cyber command) meant to destroy PLA missiles.

India and the US warfighting concept

Interestingly, at the aforementioned webinar, General Naravane spoke about the need to address the PLAs grey zone capabilities short of war by the framework of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and the Department of Military Affairs under him. The grey zone referred to the PLAs capabilities in the virtual domains of cyber, space, and electronic (electromagnetic spectrum) warfare. According to the army chief, Indias defence cyber agency under the CDS and the armys demonstrated swarm drone capability on Army Day on January 15 would be able to hit the A2AD bubble.

Since this is wishful thinking, will India ask the visiting US defence secretary to help raise an India-specific MDTF with capabilities procured from the US across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China? After all, the PLA has raised a smaller version of the A2AD firewall it has for Taiwan the distance between Taiwan and mainland China is 110 miles. If India goes down this path, the presence of US military experts close to the LAC could make China review its India strategy, leading perhaps to an escalation neither wants.

Defence secretary Lloyd would likely discuss Indias involvement in the USs MDO warfighting concept with Ajit Doval, with perhaps the CDS in attendance. The MDO involves the virtual networking of long-range fire, electronic, space and cyber warfare capabilities with the physical war domains of land, air, sea, and information operations. It would involve MDO command-and-control or operating centres where information from all listed entities/weapon systems from all domains would come at a central place for decision-making to close the kill chain faster than the enemy.

The MDO operating centres, depending upon the level of headquarters, would be huge halls with umpteen computers manned by service personnel from all arms and services sitting together to make sense of the information pouring in at the speed of light in nanoseconds. There is difference between data and information which should be understood. Raw data on situational awareness procured by thousands of miniaturised sensors (electro-optical, radars, infrared, lidar, numerous acoustic sensors) placed in physical war domains would be processed instantly by edge computing. Making sense of the raw data, edge computing would turn it into actionable information which would then be passed to the MDO operation centres. The latter, which will include senior officers from all services, will then take quick decisions on action to be taken on the information coming to them.

At present, the USs individual services have their own version of MDO with two shortcomings: First, the services (army, air force, navy, marines and space force) need to interact with one another usually by voice calls and data transfer, which is an archaic way of communication. And second, software networks which link various systems or nodes are inflexible with industrial age architecture which can be destroyed by the PLAs system destruction warfare, leaving commanders blind. General Milley has proposed a joint warfighting concept Joint MDO whereby all services would be networked, bringing information into single MDO operating centres for all three services. Thus, instead of fighting wars as army, air force, navy, marines, and space forces, the US military would fight wars as a nation with allies and partners in INDOPACOM. The underlining idea of joint warfighting concept would be to make data/information from all war domains available to every participant including allies and partners into their MDO operating centres.

What India needs to ask itself

However, all this leads to critical questions. Would India be a part of the bigger US MDO for INDOPACOM? Or would it seek US help in setting up its own MDO operating centres? If yes, what purpose would they serve considering the Indian military understands warfare only in physical domains with the army as the lead service. Endorsing the MDO concept would require, in the least, the Indian Army to shift away from the outdated concept of massed territorial profile of defence and offense. More importantly, are the Indian military and the NSA/CDS working on different warfighting concepts, totally removed from one another? What about the much-publicised military reforms announced by the CDS?

The problem does not end here. Worried about the PLAs intelligent, autonomous, and thinking software networks with AI inserted into them, the US military, in 2017, had asked its Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to improve technology and warfighting concepts to match the PLAs AI enabled intelligenised warfare. The latter is a total break from the mechanised, network centric, and MDO concepts of the past and the present. In this new warfare, which is referred to as mosaic or algorithmic warfare by DARPA, technology would not support humans, but replace them. It would become algorithmic war one algorithm fighting with the algorithm of the opposing side. This software driven war would have intelligent networks, intelligent internet, intelligent military internet of things, and intelligent weapons. This would be a reality soon.

Once that comes about, the evolving US Joint MDO concept would need to make major changes in doctrines, concept of operations, and force structuring. The big change would be the removal of most MDO operating centres since most machines would communicate directly with machines within the US military and perhaps with the machines of allies and partners. To the numerous sceptics in India, frozen in military thinking, Intelligentised war, according to China would be a reality by 2027, much quicker against India, perhaps by 2024.

Indias limitations are real

The Indian military is far removed from intelligentised warfighting. This was evident from General Naravanes assertion, made twice in the VIF webinar, that while the character of war changes constantly, the nature of war does not change. Nature of war refers to defining the war, which is violence and bloodshed, and character of war is how it would be fought, and refers to technology and war fighting concepts. With technology replacing human soldiers in combat, there would be little bloodshed and violence. This would, for the first time in global war history, change the nature of war. This should give an idea of where warfare is headed, and once India hitches on to the US military bandwagon there would be no coming back.

India lacks capability, capacity, indigenous military-industrial complex, and above all military intellect to understand the deep hole we might get into by accepting any of US secretary Lloyds proposals for cooperation in combat. Surely, India would not want to get into an avoidable war with China when the possibilities of crafting a smart strategy for peace in the region exist.

Pravin Sawhney is editor, FORCE news magazine. He is writing a book on artificial intelligence enabled future warfare

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Why India Must Avoid Hitching Itself to US Military's Plans for China and the Indo-Pacific - The Wire

When Attorney General Merrick Garland was asked at his confirmation hearings earlier this month what his priorities would be if confirmed, he responded immediately that it would be a vigorous pursuit of domestic terrorism. He did not say he would lead vigorous prosecutions, just vigorous pursuits.

This is dangerous business for the Department of Justice because it transforms its role from prosecuting crimes after they happen to predicting who would commit crimes that never happen.

How could the feds predict crimes? They would attempt to do so by a serious uptick in domestic surveillance of broad categories of people based on political and ideological views. The government loves to cast out fishing nets -- so to speak -- and then intimidate or prosecute whomever they bring in.

The National Security Agency -- Americas 60,000-person strong domestic spying apparatus -- already captures all data transmitted on fiber optic cable into, out of, and within the U.S.; thats every email, text and phone call. But they dont admit to this.

SENATE CONFIRMS MERRICK GARLAND AS BIDEN ATTORNEY GENERAL IN BIPARTISAN VOTE

When the FBI desperately sought to gain entry to the cellphones of two deceased mass murderers in San Bernardino, California, a few years ago, the NSA would not help them because doing so would acknowledge the NSAs mass warrantless spying.

Stymied by their own colleagues refusal to admit their unconstitutional behavior, but emboldened that the NSA could get away with this, federal agents either would break the law themselves by engaging in warrantless surveillance or obtain warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court by claiming foreign terrorism as a pretext for domestic law enforcement surveillance.

Under the unconstitutional standards employed by the FISA court, if the feds present probable cause of an Americans communication with a foreign person, the FISA court would issue a search warrant for surveillance of all communications of the American.

This is unconstitutional because the standard for obtaining search warrants from a judge is articulated in the Fourth Amendment, which neither the Congress nor the courts can change.

CAPITOL RIOT INVESTIGATION: DOJ EXPECTS AT LEAST 100 MORE TO BE CHARGED

That standard is probable cause of crime -- is it more likely than not that the place to be searched contains evidence of crimes -- not probable cause of communication with a foreigner.

The former is a high standard intended to compel the courts, before issuing search warrants, to take account of the natural right to privacy, prevent government fishing expeditions and force the government to focus its law enforcement efforts on real, not imagined, crimes.

The FISA standard -- which morphed by a series of secret judicial opinions from probable cause of being a foreign agent to probable cause of communicating with a foreign agent to probable cause of communicating with a foreign person -- is far easier for federal agents to demonstrate than is probable cause of crime. It means that a call to my cousins in Florence is a sufficient basis for the feds to get a search warrant to surveil legally all of my communications -- telephone, texting and emails.

FBI and other federal agents know this. They know how easy it is to get a warrant from the FISA court. The most recent statistics revealed that it granted 99.96% of all surveillance applications.

When FBI agents go to the FISA court with probable cause of communication with a foreign person, but they are really looking for their targets domestic criminal communications, they have engaged in an act of corruption, deceived the court and cut holes in the Constitution they have sworn to uphold.

Once they have all of a persons communications, their plan is to find something that would constitute probable cause of crime or enable them to use fear of exposure to induce the person to work for them undercover.

If your neighbor tells you on the phone how happy he is in his anti-government group, and then someone in the group trespasses on government property and is arrested, expect a knock on your door from the feds who will demand to know what you knew and when you knew it.

If the trespass is a felony, they will claim that they can prosecute you for your silence. This, too, is unconstitutional. Silence is protected by the First Amendment.

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This is the danger of the Garland devotion to predicting who would commit crime; and it will get worse.

Expect the next legislative step to be proposals that impose the legal obligation to report suspicious activities -- and the failure to do would be a crime.

This would turn the U.S. into East Germany where thousands were prosecuted for failure to report their neighbors, friends and family; and thousands more suffered from prosecutions based on false reports.

The Fourth Amendment was written to prevent this. Under the Constitution, the government may not seek punishment for silence, surveil for beliefs or charge for crimes not committed. But if a wired undercover agent can get someone the government fears to inculpate himself with his words and then persuade that person to take a small step in furtherance of those words -- even if no actual crime is committed -- this is enough to charge conspiracy; the prosecutors favorite crime because it is the easiest to prove.

In the years following 9/11, hundreds of folks in America were set up by the feds and prosecuted and convicted for crimes that they never committed, but which they merely agreed to commit when persuaded by an undercover agent.

The government loves to give the impression that it has caught bad guys before they struck, thereby keeping us safe. Dont believe it.

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The governments first task is to keep us free. But when it violates the Constitution, it keeps us neither safe nor free.

Who will keep us safe from the government?

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JUDGE ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

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Judge Andrew P. Napolitano: Merrick Garland, the Justice Department and the coming war on privacy - Fox News

Former presidential aide, Doyin Okupe, has advised the National Security Adviser, Maj-Gen. Babagana Monguno (retd.), to make use of satellite imaging to cover areas affected by banditry, kidnapping and insurgency.

He gave the advice in an article titled Ending Banditry, Kidnapping and Insurgency In Nigeria. Part II.

This was issued after the NSA, at a press briefing, yesterday said the Federal Government will not hesitate to use force to curb the menace of insurgents.

READ ALSO: Troops rescue 172 students abducted in Kaduna, many still missing

Okupe, in his article, commended the NSA for his commitment to the fight against insurgency in the country.

He called for the provision of rapid response capabilities and adequate funding as measures for the fight against insecurity.

The former presidential aide said, I want to publicly commend the NSA, Rtd General Monguno for his brilliant and highly hope-inspiring press briefing of yesterday 11th March 2021.

For once and for the first time, someone, though unelected, took charge and gave the Nigerian citizens some measure of hope.

Ordinarily, as a critic of the administration, I should say all he did was 2 make promises and that we have had too many unfulfilled promises both from this administration and those before it. But at the prevailing level of pervasive insecurity in the country, Promises may just suffice.

He said the security challenges will be dealt with in few weeks. We have lived with these challenges for 10 years, so even if the government can do it in few months instead of the few weeks promised, it will still be accepted and appreciated.

READ ALSO: Supreme Court upholds ex-Plateau gov Dariyes 10-year jail term

Personally, watching the NSA closely yesterday and looking beyond what he was saying, I saw some measure of commitment and veiled anger within him and this makes me believe him. But I may be wrong. However, I will like to suggest the following additional measures to the NSA.

Spend some money on 24 hrs satellite imaging and coverage of areas most affected by these challenges.

Increase ground intelligence and paid local intelligence monitors all over these areas.

Fund Police formations and tactical units in these areas. Increase force deplorability and create standby joint crack security teams in each local government area in the affected states.

In addition to State Police Commissioners working with military authorities, appoint military commanders in each state to jointly coordinate security within each state, with the state police Commissioners.

It takes no less than 1hr for any serious school kidnapping to be executed. It also takes travelling fairly long distances and noticeable mass movements before bandits arrive at their safe havens in the forests.

READ ALSO: Abductions: US ready to support Nigeria, says official

Therefore, after serious fortification of rapid response capabilities and adequate funding have been provided, any state where kidnapping is successfully executed, the Commissioner of Police and the military Commanders shall be held responsible.

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Banditry: Cover affected areas with satellite imaging, Okupe tells NSA - Punch Newspapers

Next Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a labor rights case that could make it harder for the government to regulate businesses in a wide range of areas beyond workers rights.

The case,Cedar Point Nursey v. Hassid, centers on a 45-year-oldCalifornia regulationthat gives union organizers limited access to agricultural workplaces to talk to farmworkers during non-work hours. The 1975lawthat authorized this regulation was the product of adecade-long campaignin California for collective bargaining rights for agricultural workers, who are excluded from federal labor protections due to a Jim Crow era political compromise.

Thanks in part to this regulation, agricultural workers who are disproportionately people of color and immigrants have successfully bargained for substantial improvements in workplace safety, job protections, and benefits since 1975. But now, Cedar Point Nursery and another agriculture business argue that state-sanctioned labor organizing violates the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, amounting to an unconstitutional government seizure of private property without compensation. And if the Court rules in their favor, it will not only damage the labor rights of California agricultural workers but also represent a broader doctrinal shift to limit the governments capacity to protect the public welfare.

In its interpretation of the Takings Clause, the Supreme Court distinguishes between per se takings and regulatory takings.Per se takingsoccur when the government permanently occupies private land or deprives the property owner of all economically beneficial use of the land, entitling the landowner to compensation.On the other hand, regulatory takings such as the legislatively sanctioned placement ofcable boxeson private property occur when the government limits property rights without totally depriving the landowner of the lands value; compensation is generally not awarded.

In the current case, the companiesarguethat the Court should reclassify per se takings to include regulations that allow for temporary entrances onto private property such as for meat and workplace safety inspections and rule the California labor law unconstitutional. Fordecades, the conservative legal movement has sought to invalidate government regulations on similar grounds, with limited success.

With a new 63 conservative majority, the Supreme Court made the unusual decision to hear the case, even though the businesses suffer no clear negative economic impact from the regulation.

The companies argument hearkens back to an era of constitutional interpretation when the Supreme Court routinely struck down economic regulations, such as minimum wage and child labor laws. It is referred to as the Lochnerera after a 1905casein which the Court invalidated a New York State law that imposed limits on bakers working hours, ruling that it violated liberty of contract, which the Court stashed in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Courtabandonedthis doctrine in the late 1930s, but the increasingly conservative majority on todays Court has begun relying on different parts of the Constitution to achieve similar ends. If the Court reinterprets the Takings Clause inCedar Point Nursery, it will represent a star in an emergingconstellationof deregulatory doctrines that could hamstring even the most basic and longstanding government functions.

An additional star in this constellation involves the ConstitutionsCommerce Clause, which allows Congress to to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes. During theLochnerera, the Supreme Court had alimited viewof Congresss power to regulate interstate commerce. Starting in the late 1930s, however, the Court changed its tune, going so far as to hold that Congress could regulate the activity of afarmergrowing wheat for his own use because such activity, in the aggregate, would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

Recently, the Supreme Court has curtailed this power, ruling that Congresss interstate commerce authorities do not apply to the problems ofguns in schools,violence against women, andindividuals lacking health insurance coverage notwithstanding the facts that there is a $2.7 billionschool safety industry, thecostsof intimate partner abuse exceed $5.8 billion a year, and healthcare accounts fornearly 18 percentof American gross domestic product.

Similarly, a majority of current justices havesignaledinterestinrevivingthe nondelegation doctrine, which prohibits legislatures from delegating their powers to other bodies. The Supreme Court has not struck down an act of Congress on these grounds since 1935, when itinvalidatedparts of the New Deal, ruling that Congress had unconstitutionally delegated legislative power to the executive branch. If the Court moves in this direction again, it couldunderminethe ability of government agencies to protect consumers, workers, public health, and the environment.

Finally, the judiciary has begun, as Justice Kagannoted, weaponizing the First Amendment against democracy in recent years, striking downrestrictionson corporate election expenditures and finding that public sector works have aconstitutional rightto refuse to pay union dues, even though unions remain obligated to represent them. These developments are harbingers of a larger assault on regulatory efforts to check corporate power, with courts invalidating regulatory requirements such aspostersinforming workers of their rights andmandated disclosuresabout food as unconstitutional compelled speech.

The early 20th century also provides insight into some of the legal and political strategies that might emerge or gain traction if we find ourselves in a newLochnerera. When the Supreme Court posed an obstacle to democratically accountable government during this period, one strategy was to amend the Constitution:overrulinga Supreme Court decision, the 16th Amendment granted Congress authority to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population. Less successful was a push toamendthe Constitution to overturn the Supreme Courtsrulingsstriking downchild labor laws.

The Supreme Court as an institution also became a target, most notably in President Franklin Roosevelts 1937 plan to expand the size of the Court. While his plan received strongoppositionand ultimately died, the Court abruptly changed course doctrinally after the proposal was announced. Many scholarssuggestthat the court-packing proposal was a factor in the Courts philosophical shift.

A third, and perhaps most enduring, strategy was the development by scholars and activists of newmethods of legal interpretation ones that advocated judicial deference to the political branches of government on social and economic policy, ultimately forming the foundation for a post-Lochnerjurisprudence.

As the Supreme Court considersCedar Point Nurseryand creates similar obstacles to democratic governance today, history suggests that the Court will face popular headwinds. Ultimately, the democratically responsive branches of government have to remain able to meet societal needs. Indeed, that is what the American peopleexpectanddemand.

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The Supreme Court Case that Could Hamstring the Government's Ability to Regulate Businesses - brennancenter.org

Two weeks ago, while the House of Representatives was finalizing its 700-page legislation authorizing the Treasury to borrow and spend $1.9 trillion in the next six months, and the Senate was attempting to confirm more of President Joseph R. Bidens cabinet nominees, Biden secretly ordered the Pentagon to bomb militias in Syria.

The United States is not at war with Syria. It is not at war with the militias that were bombed, and it didnt seek or have the permission of the Syrian government to enter its air space and engage in deadly military activities. Biden later claimed that the bombing was conducted as a lesson to Iran, another country with which the U.S. is not war.

His campaign promises to the contrary notwithstanding, Biden has followed in the footsteps of his immediate predecessors. They bombed civilians in an aspirin factory in Kosovo (Clinton), bombed civilians in Iraq (G.W. Bush), bombed military targets and government buildings in Libya and bombed a cafe in the Yemen desert targeting an American who was having tea (Obama), bombed the same location as Biden in Syria, and bombed a convoy of trucks in Iraq targeting an Iranian general who was on his way to lunch with an Iraqi counterpart (Trump).

All of these bombings and targeted killings violated the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter which is a treaty largely written by the U.S., and to which the U.S. is a signatory and international law.

What is going on with American presidents and war?

The Constitution specifically separates the power to make war from the power to wage war. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 spent more time debating this than any other topic beside the makeup of Congress. In the end, they were adamant and unanimous that only Congress can declare war and only the president can wage war.

Congress cannot tell the president how to deploy the military, and the president cannot use the military against foreign targets without a congressional declaration of war.

James Madison the scrivener at the Convention famously offered that if a president could declare war and wage war, or even use the military to target any foreign entity he wished, then he would be a king, not a president. He argued that war exacerbates the presidents strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses. And when he drafted the Bill of Rights, Madison had the presidency in mind when he wrote in the Fifth Amendment that the government may not take life, liberty or property without due process of law.

Taken together, the exclusive constitutional delegation of war-making to Congress and the Due Process Clause absolutely restrain the legal ability of the president to use violence in another country without a declaration of war from Congress; and in the case of violence against an American, without a conviction by a jury and all the constitutional protections attendant upon that. And, against civilians never.

When President George W. Bush decided to invade Afghanistan in retaliation for what he argued was providing haven and resources for those who planned, paid for and carried out the attacks on 9/11, he first went to Congress. Congress did not declare war on Afghanistan. Instead, it enacted a resolution called the Authorization to Use Military Force of 2001. That authorized Bush and his successors to use the military to target the perpetrators of 9/11 wherever and whenever they found them.

Unlike traditional declarations of war, the AUMF of 2001 did not have an endpoint, and that is its fatal flaw. Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden disingenuously cited it as their legal authority to bomb Middle Eastern targets that had no conceivable relationship to the perpetrators of 9/11.

When Bush sought to invade Iraq to locate and destroy what he claimed were weapons of mass destruction, Congress enacted another AUMF in 2002. It, too, has no endpoint.

Last week, a bipartisan group of senators offered legislation to repeal both AUMFs and Biden has indicated that he will sign the repeal. That is a good start toward taming the executive appetite for military violence, but it is not enough.

Under international law and the natural law, the U.S. may only use force defensively. That means it may attack the military of a foreign country or group that has attacked the U.S. or an ally, and it may attack the military of a foreign country or group that is imminently about to attack the U.S. or an ally. Those are the only instances in which the president may deploy U.S. forces for violent purposes without a congressional declaration of war.

Congress must do more than just repeal the two AUMFs if it believes that the Constitution means what it says. Congress needs to repeal the War Powers Resolution of 1973 which purports to permit presidents, upon notification to Congress, to wage 90-day offensive wars, in violation of the Constitution and international law.

Congress needs to prohibit absolutely the unauthorized presidential expenditure of money and deployment of armed personnel on any nondefensive violent actions. I say personnel rather than military because modern presidents have often used the CIA to fight wars and argued that because those wars did not involve the military, no congressional approval or notification was needed.

Congress should criminalize such presidential violence and the expenditures of resources to support it, as it is a crime to kill without lawful authority. And Congress should call nondefensive killings by the government or anyone by their legal name: Murder.

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Napolitano: The power to make war - Daily Herald