It’s Time to Rein in Trump’s ‘Wars on Terror’

It’s Time to Rein in Trump’s ‘Wars on Terror’

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Argument:

It’s Time to Rein in Trump’s ‘Wars on Terror’

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Argument

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

It’s Time to Rein in Trump’s ‘Wars on Terror’

Congress must act to address new and old executive abuses.

By **Brian Finucane**, senior advisor in the U.S. program at the International Crisis Group.

!This slightly grainy photo shows a view of the open sky, where an unmanned predator aerial vehicle with a hellfire missile attached flies against a background of dark sky and a few wispy clouds.

*This slightly grainy photo shows a view of the open sky, where an unmanned predator aerial vehicle with a hellfire missile attached flies against a background of dark sky and a few wispy clouds.*

This U.S. Air Force file photo obtained on 05 Nov. 5, 2002, shows an unmanned predator aerial vehicle with a hellfire missile attached, seen on Feb. 21, 2001. U.S. Air Force / AFP via Getty images

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August 31, 2026, 9:25 AM

Trump’s Second Term

Ongoing reports and analysis

Early September marks the anniversary of two “wars”—one an actual armed conflict with a real, albeit stretched and abused legal framework, the other a completely counterfeit enterprise from the get-go. Sept. 11 is of course the 25th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attacks upon the United States. And Sept. 2 is the first anniversary of the Trump administration’s lethal maritime strikes against vessels alleged to be smuggling drugs.

The Trump administration has cynically tried to cloak its boat strikes in the mantle of the post-9/11 “war on terror”—labeling the victims of these attacks as “narco-terrorists,” supposedly affiliated with “designated terrorist organizations,” which the administration characterizes as the “‘al Qaeda’ of our hemisphere.”

Early September marks the anniversary of two “wars”—one an actual armed conflict with a real, albeit stretched and abused legal framework, the other a completely counterfeit enterprise from the get-go. Sept. 11 is of course the 25th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attacks upon the United States. And Sept. 2 is the first anniversary of the Trump administration’s lethal maritime strikes against vessels alleged to be smuggling drugs.

The Trump administration has cynically tried to cloak its boat strikes in the mantle of the post-9/11 “war on terror”—labeling the victims of these attacks as “narco-terrorists,” supposedly affiliated with “designated terrorist organizations,” which the administration characterizes as the “‘al Qaeda’ of our hemisphere.”

But the “war” framing for the boat bombings is a sham. Although President Donald Trump has continued to wage the post-9/11 forever war, his faux war of the maritime strikes represents a frightening new development that is distinct from what came before. For Congress, though, the solution remains the same: firm action to curtail executive military adventurism.

---

The conflicts that

made up —launched in response to the 9/11 attacks—had at the outset a cognizable legal foundation in both international and domestic law. Al Qaeda—an organized armed group—launched an armed attack upon the United States that killed almost 3,000 people. Acting on the basis of self-defense under international law, the United States waged an actual armed conflict with al Qaeda.

Moreover, as a matter of domestic law, Congress authorized the conflict through the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). The 2001 AUMF empowered the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.” Because the perpetrators’ identities were not fully known in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, that war authorization delegated authority to the president to determine their identities.

But crucially, it granted the president only the authority to pursue military action to “prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States” by those responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Although the United States’ post-9/11 conflicts had a legal basis at their inception, multiple U.S. presidents stretched and abused the 2001 AUMF to pursue new adversaries. Executive branch lawyers, using novel concepts such as “associated forces,” unilaterally expanded the scope of the 2001 war authorization to groups that did not exist on 9/11 and were never shown to pose a significant threat to the United States.

By waging hostilities against jihadis who are untethered to the original *casus belli* of 9/11, Trump has continued this misuse of the 2001 AUMF. Indeed, 25 years after 9/11, the AUMF’s principal use on the battlefield is not fighting the now-shattered al Qaeda or even its offshoot, the Islamic State, but conducting regular airstrikes against al-Shabab, an Islamic militant group in Somalia unconnected to the 2001 attacks and of seemingly minimal threat to the United States.

In the past year, the Trump administration has also conducted airstrikes in Nigeria—purportedly against Islamist militants. The administration is now reportedly deliberating over whether to conduct counterterrorism strikes in Mali against jihadi groups there. In both these latter situations, the Trump administration has not articulated the legal basis for military action, but it appears that the White House is relying on the 2001 AUMF as a catchall authority to bomb jihadis.

What any of these militar