AUMF anyone?

Ask a hundred random Americans what an AUMF is and you'd be hard pressed to get a single correct answer. But ask the 535 members of Congress about an AUMF and they'll recoil in horror as if it combines AIDS, Zika and Ebola viruses all rolled into one. AUMF stands for Authorization for Use of Military Force, a congressional requirement from the War Powers Act of 1973 to reign in unilateral presidential war making so murderously abused by President Nixon in his secret war in Cambodia during the Vietnam era.

We haven't had an AUMF since the 2002 AUMF to prosecute the Iraq war. Yet today the President is expending thousands of bombs and billions of dollars trying to destroy imagined bad guys in the Middle East. Our war making today is so absurd we're both bombing Sunni Muslim followers of ISIS/al Qaeda at the same time we're supporting the very same folks trying to overthrow the hated Shi'ite government of Syrian President Assad. For the US war party, everyone is a potential target. On top of that absurdity is all this carnage is being carried out under old, obsolete AUMF's dealing with the 911 attackers and Saddam Hussein's non-existent WMD.

Neither the president nor Congress wants a new AUMF. Obama doesn't want Congress interfering with his License To Kill. Congress doesn't want their bloody fingerprints on any documents supporting such madness should things go badly. And the American people? We long ago ceded any interest or involvement in criminal warfare. We're willing to watch our defense stock portfolios rise in direct relation to Middle East bodies that fall from our ceaseless bombing.

A new AUMF to prosecute perpetual war? Not for the world's only superpower.