Eli Lake, Columnist

The War on Terror Survives Rand Paul’s Attempt to End It

Yet the senator from Kentucky is right to point out that Congress is abdicating its responsibility.

July 2, 2020 at 7:00 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

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It seems quaint to note in the summer of 2020 that America’s global war on terror will soon enter the last year of its second decade. Yet it’s not something that the junior senator from Kentucky, who has long opposed it, is prone to forget — and though Rand Paul’s attempts to end it are misguided, he is not wrong about Congress’s dereliction of duty.

On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress passed — with only one dissenting vote — the authorization for the use of military force against those who had attacked the U.S. three days before. Since its passage, the U.S. has conducted drone strikes and commando raids throughout most of the Islamic world, and in Afghanistan, the U.S. has waged the longest war in its history. All of this has had the consent of Congress because of the resolution passed just after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.