International Community in
Afghanistan continues...

Although broad, Congress’s September 2001 Resolution is carefully circumscribed in several respects, perhaps as a result of earlier experience with open-ended authorizations of military action.

The president is authorized to use force only “in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the US,” and only against “such nations, organizations or persons” that had some involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Prevention, not punishment, must be the purpose.

The line between the two is often permeable, if only because punishment may deter future conduct, and incapacitation can be punishing. But an emphasis on prevention directs one to different tactics and targets than does redress.

The scope of prevention is itself limited by Congress’s authorization of force only against those who had already engaged in an attack against the US. And it is only the protection of the US, not other nations, that the Resolution authorizes.

Determining at whom justice would be aimed, Yassin El-Ayouty et al. argue that this required identifying who was responsible for the events of 9/11. The question had been posed by the Joint Resolution, in the context of preventing future attacks, but was left unanswered.

“The evidence we have gathered,” the president reported, “all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as Al-Qaeda. They [presumably Al-Qaeda members] are some of the murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and responsible for bombing the USS. Cole.” Their leader is “a person named Osama Bin Laden.”

To be continued...