National Security

No One in Congress Knows What We’re Doing in Niger

Written by SK Ashby

The latest Trump shitfest revolved around his callous and baseless accusation that President Obama never contacted Gold Star families. That claim was prompted by revelations about Trump's bungling of a phone call to a widow whose husband was killed in the African country of Niger.

But what are we doing in Niger?

I can't say what we're doing there and, apparently, neither can some members of Congress whose job it is to know these things.

[Senator Lindsey Graham] is on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, tasked with overseeing the Pentagon. And he made the admission when [NBC's Chuck Todd] pressed him on whether Congress needs to vote on an Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) for that mission.

“The military determines who the threats are, they come up with the engagement policy and if we don’t like what the military does, we can defund the operation,” Graham said. “But I didn’t know there was a thousand troops in Niger.” [...]

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the chamber’s most powerful Democrat, admitted later on the same show that he was just as ignorant as Graham about the number of U.S. troops in Niger. When Todd asked him if he knew previously about the thousand troops there, he said he didn’t.

It's been two years since President Obama asked Congress to pass a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that might prevent our open-ended war from spreading across the globe, but our Republican-controlled Congress balked at the suggestion. They had more important things to do like try to repeal Obamacare for the umpteenth time.

Passing a new AUMF today would almost certainly require a super-majority to prevent Trump from vetoing it and I don't see any reason to think that's going to happen.

This seems like the kind of thing a senator like Rand Paul should be bleating about every day, but Rand, son of Ron, has been golfing with Trump. So has Lindsey Graham, for that matter.

At least Chuck Schumer hasn't been golfing with Trump.