Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is in the spotlight this week after U.S. prosecutors accused his brother and nephew of conspiring to bribe a government official while he was at the UN. Ban Ki Sang and his son Joo Hyun Bahn allegedly orchestrated a $500,000 bribe to a Middle Eastern official for the purchase of the Landmark 72 skyscraper in Vietnam.

According to the allegations, the initial payment was meant to be followed by a secondary bribe of $2 million after the sale. The identity and nationality of the official the two attempted to bribe has not been disclosed, but the middleman in the deal has been identified as U.S. businessman Malcolm Harris, who apparently took the first bribe but spent it himself rather than passing it along to the official. Harris is currently at large but Bahn and his associate Sang Woo were arrested for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits bribing foreign officials.  Bahn, who was slated to serve as an adjunct professor at NYU, has been stripped of his position but has been let out on bail and will remain within the U.S. for a federal trial.

Ban Ki-moon has publicly stated that he is “perplexed and embarrassed” by the bribery accusations but even if he distances himself from his relatives, the charges against them may still destroy his chances of becoming South Korea’s president. In the wake of President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment the South Korean electorate will be hyper sensitive to any scandal or implication of corruption among the candidates running to fill the presidential seat.  It still remains to be seen if the president’s impeachment will be upheld by the constitutional court, but in the court of public opinion, Park Geun-hye has already been transformed into a monster.

Voters will be looking for an inspirational and trustworthy leader to provide them with a presidential campaign reminiscent of President Barack Obama’s messages of hope and change in 2008. Ban Ki-moon has an unparalleled record of public service and a wealth of experience, but the investigation into his family could very easily become the central story of his campaign.  In the same way that Republican candidates made Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server during her time as secretary of state central to their campaigns, Ban Ki-moon’s opponents may seize on this scandal in an attempt to impugn his character (despite the fact that he was not named in the indictment or charged in any way).

Ban Ki-moon seems like the obvious choice for the South Korean presidency, but he may face strong competition from Moon Jae-in, a social liberal who has called for large-scale corporate reform and an increased dialogue with North Korea, especially regarding their nuclear program. Lee Jae-myung, mayor of the city of Seongnam, who like Moon Jae-in is a member of the liberal Minjoo Party, has also been tapped to run. The bribery scandal may fade into the background as Ban Ki-moon picks up steam and rests on his already sky-high approval rankings, but if we learned anything from 2016, it was that elections are far less predictable that we like to think.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

Trump Aides and Clinton Aides Get Heated

Yesterday, aides from the Trump campaign debated aides from the Clinton campaign at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, and it was no picnic. Both sides interrupted each other and raised their voices–team Clinton mostly about alt-righter Steve Bannon’s influence. The Clinton campaign’s Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri said, “If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician, I am more proud to have lost.”

Summary of exchange between Trump’s Kelly Ann Conway and Clinton’s Jennifer Palmieri: pic.twitter.com/CXjWTfTfn5

— (@leahmcelrath) December 2, 2016

What we learned tonight from Trump’s speech and Trump campaign at Harvard is they have not an ounce of graciousness or humility amongst them

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) December 2, 2016

The conversation centered a lot on how Trump focused on immigration issues to appeal to white voters, and how the FBI bringing Clinton’s emails back into the spotlight could have affected the election. Both sides agreed that the media had acted irresponsibly, as many outlets didn’t take Trump seriously and focused a lot on Clinton’s emails. And when talking about whether Trump’s tweet falsely claiming that millions of undocumented immigrants voted illegally was appropriate, Kellyanne Conway said, “He’s the president-elect, so that’s presidential behavior.”

via GIPHY

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: December 2, 2016 appeared first on Law Street.

In the latest attempt to cripple North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) imposed new restrictions on its coal export industry. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the new sanctions, which were unanimously approved by the 15-member council on Wednesday, “the toughest and most comprehensive” yet.

The sanctions are a direct rebuke to Pyongyang’s largest and most recent nuclear test that occurred in early September. They will aim to trim $700 million from the insulated country’s coal revenues, which UN member-states hope will lead to diplomatic discussions. The sanctions limit North Korea to exporting up to 7.5 million metric tons of coal in 2017, or to bringing in $400 million in revenue, whichever figure is reached first.

“So long as the DPRK makes the choice it has made, which is to pursue the path of violations instead of the path of dialogue, we will continue to work to increase the pressure and defend ourselves and allies from this threat,” said U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, referring to the country’s official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

China, perhaps even more so than North Korea, will be responsible for ensuring the new sanctions are enforced. As the foremost customer of North Korean coal, and its chief financier and source of aid, China cannot lean on the vague language of previous sanctions to skirt around the new limits. The last round of sanctions, imposed in March, also aimed to curb the country’s coal exports, but with an exception: exports could surpass the imposed limits if they supported “livelihood purposes.”

China used that language as a license to continue importing North Korean coal in copious amounts. In fact, after the sanctions took effect in April, China imported a record amount of coal from its nuclear neighbor. The new sanctions clarified the “livelihood” exception as being reserved only for North Korean citizens.

North Korea responded to the sanctions through its state-controlled Korean Central News Agency. “Obama and his lackeys are sadly mistaken if they calculate that they can force the DPRK to abandon its line of nuclear weaponization and undermine its status as a nuclear power through base sanctions to pressurize it,” the statement said, adding that the sanctions came from the instructions of the U.S. The statement had an ominous conclusion, saying the U.S. will “be held wholly accountable in case the situation on the Korean peninsula and in the region is pushed to an uncontrollable phase.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Every day, people all over the world are executed for a wide variety of crimes. Though in the west it is mostly used to punish serious crimes like murder, in some places you can be executed for who you sleep with, how you dress, or if you have a different opinion from your government. Some countries execute people who were underage at the time of committing a crime and some do it to the mentally ill. Monday, October 10 marks the World Day Against Death Penalty.

Some countries still use the death penalty for homosexuality.

Let’s stand with our LGBTQI friends on the 10th October for World Day Against the Death Penalty #NoDeathPenalty #LGBTQI pic.twitter.com/ZOabAGG9Iz

— Rainbow Amnesty (@AI_LGBTQI_NSW) October 6, 2016

Amnesty International is committed to abolishing the death penalty worldwide and presents some of the main arguments for why. The fact is that by sentencing someone to death, you are denying the person’s right to life–which was established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Additionally, because mistakes do happen, there have been several cases when an innocent person has been executed. There is also no proof that the use of the death penalty reduces the crime rate in a country. It is a discriminatory practice; death sentences are more likely to to be given to someone from a religious or racial minority as well as the poor and those who cannot afford an expensive lawyer for a lengthy trial.

Lastly, the risk that it is used as a political tool to quiet dissent in countries with a deeply corrupt justice system is too big.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement on Monday:

Let us be clear: participation in peaceful protests and criticism of a government–whether in private, on the Internet, or in the media–are neither crimes nor terrorist acts. The threat or use of the death penalty in such cases is an egregious violation of human rights.

World Day Against the Death Penalty – AI calls on Indon authorities to end DP and review all DP cases https://t.co/MppoXbz5et pic.twitter.com/0Y5Otj7jc3

— Amnesty Int’l (@AIIndoTimor) October 10, 2016

The U.N. Secretary-General also pointed out that although many countries seem to believe the death penalty is an effective way to handle terrorism, by scaring off future assailants, it actually has the opposite effect. He said:

This is not true. Experience has shown that putting terrorists to death serves as propaganda for their movements by creating perceived martyrs and making their macabre recruiting campaigns more effective.

Many Twitter users expressed their opposition to the practice.

On the World Day Against Death Penalty,I hail all those who were executed by #Iran‘s regime in the battle for freedom #NoDeathPenalty

— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) October 10, 2016

Places like China and Iran frequently execute people who dare to stand up against the government or reveal unflattering depictions of what life is like there. According to the most recent numbers from Amnesty International, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia account for almost 90 percent of all recorded executions in 2015. But this percentage does not include China, where thousands of people are believed to be executed each year, though data on executions is considered a state secret and is highly classified. The data also shows that last year saw the highest number of executions worldwide in 25 years.

Killing in the name of justice? Mapping death penalty https://t.co/z7eN42lrJk #NoDeathPenalty #WorldDayAgainstDeathPenalty @WCADP @amnesty pic.twitter.com/G9kP9IIQCG

— Benjamin Hennig (@geoviews) October 10, 2016

Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General said in a statement:

The rise in executions last year is profoundly disturbing. Not for the last 25 years have so many people been put to death by states around the world. In 2015 governments continued relentlessly to deprive people of their lives on the false premise that the death penalty would make us safer.

California has a particularly high number of prisoners on death row–prisoners who have been sentenced to death but not yet executed. Only 13 people have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978, and nearly 750 remain on death row. In November, Californians will vote on two ballot initiatives that will change the state’s death penalty practice. Proposition 62 would repeal the death penalty entirely, and Proposition 66 would change the current system to speed up the appeals process to reduce the number of prisoners on death row. If both pass ,the initiative with the most “yes” votes will become law.

California, we’ve fallen far behind the times. It’s time to end the death penalty for good. RT if you agree. https://t.co/F3ZjwbrgfM pic.twitter.com/l5qpQ0CBXk

— Yes On 62 (@yeson62) October 9, 2016

According to Amnesty International, the United States has the fifth highest number of executions worldwide, following China, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Last year, it was also the only country in the Americas to actually perform an execution. We share a place on a list of countries that are infamous for violating human rights, while our neighboring countries and Europe got rid of this practice many years ago. It makes you wonder, does the death penalty really have a place in the United States in the 21st century?

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post World Day Against Death Penalty: Do Executions Belong In the 21st Century? appeared first on Law Street.

It started as an agricultural commune, keen on equality, in the northwest jungles of Colombia. Government forces broke up the commune, and an armed struggle between Marxist guerrillas and government forces began. Fifty-two years later, the bloody, contentious, and disruptive conflict between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government will effectively come to an end on Monday, when leaders from both sides sign a peace agreement.

On Monday evening, Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s 65-year-old president, and Rodrigo Londoño, the top commander of the FARC, will sign off on the deal that emerged after four years of negotiations. A pen fashioned out of a recycled shell casing will be used to sign the 297-page deal, “to illustrate the transition of bullets into education and future,” according to Santos.

Two thousand five hundred guests will be present at the signing ceremony in the seaside city of Cartagena. Witnesses to the signing include presidents from 15 Latin American nations, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Ban called the peace accord a “new destiny for the nation.”

For decades, Colombia’s destiny was impenetrably bleak. Before the FARC went from a communist peasant revolt to a gun-toting armed guerrilla force, Colombia was a place with rampant inequality fueled by a landowning elite and a power struggle for its prized cocaine fields. In 1964, that inequality sparked a resistance of poor farmers and land workers, who, inspired by the Cuban revolution in the 1950s, set up a farming commune that became known as the Marquetalia Republic. After run-ins with government forces, who felt threatened by the communist fervor bubbling within the Republic, the peaceful struggle turned violent, and the FARC was born.

Since the conflict began in 1964, 220,000 people have been killed, with eight million more displaced from their homes. Human rights groups accuse the FARC of extreme abuses: forcibly recruiting poor farmers and children, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom. Men and women of all ages, including children, comprise the FARC’s ranks, which at its peak in 2002 included 20,000 fighters. A decade-long, U.S.-backed government assault relinquished many of the top rebel commanders and pushed the group to the peripheries of the jungles where they base their operations. The FARC fighting force has dwindled to about 7,000.

Beginning with Monday’s signing ceremony, the country of 49 million people, with Latin America’s fourth largest economy, will likely choose a path toward peace. On October 2, Colombian citizens will vote in a referendum on whether to embrace or reject the accord. Early projections indicate it will easily pass.

The terms of the deal include:

• FARC fighters who submit their weapons and confess to their crimes will avoid jail-time. They will instead be sent to hard hit areas for development work.
• The rebels will be sent to 28 designated zones to turn in their weapons over a six-month period, overseen by U.N. observers.
• The FARC will transition from armed rebel force to a political party.

When the accord was formally reached in late August, both sides expressed hope for a brighter future for their country. “With this accord we will stop being viewed as a dangerous country, and more investment, more tourism, and more employment will come,” said President Santos at the formal announcement of the peace accord.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post After a 52 Year Struggle, Colombia May Finally Find Peace appeared first on Law Street.

Rising seas and warming temperatures. A nuclear-ambitious Iran. An erratic and dangerous North Korea. The unmooring and uneven tides of international trade. A global terrorism menace in the Islamic State; a global tragedy in the refugee crisis borne out of a warring Syria. These are some of the global challenges President Obama has faced during his tenure in the White House.

On Tuesday, in front of representatives from nearly every country on the planet, Obama delivered a speech defending his (at times controversial) diplomatic approach to foreign policy, and highlighting the global challenges that will transcend his years in office. Here are the highlights of Obama’s eighth and final speech at the U.N. General Assembly headquarters in New York:

Global Integration

In countries around the world, movements are bubbling that, along with other sentiments, center around the uncomfortable effects of globalization: Trump and Bernie Sanders, a one-time Democratic presidential hopeful, have earned scores of followers for ripping trade deals. Britain elected to leave the world’s largest trade market in the European Union with Brexit.

In his speech on Tuesday, Obama reflected on the genuinely disruptive and for the least advantaged, disturbing, trends of globalization, but also commented on why embracing its flow is vital for a prosperous future.

“The answer cannot be a simple rejection of global integration,” he said. “We should work together to make sure the benefits of global integration are broadly shared.” Obama, who delivered his remarks later than scheduled, said the world needs a “course-correction” in its trend toward greater integration. “Too often those trumpeting globalization have ignored inequality,” he said.

As he prepares to leave office in January, Obama continues to push his signature global trade deal–the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP–through Congress. It’s unlikely the 12-nation deal will pass Congress before year’s end.

Global Security

One day after a man was arrested for dropping bombs in New Jersey and Manhattan, Obama addressed the world’s prime exporter of terrorism: the Islamic State. Calling the group, commonly referred to as ISIS, a “mindless medieval menace,” Obama defended his diplomacy-heavy approach to confronting the group’s presence in Syria, a country whose five-year civil war has killed nearly 500,000 and displaced millions more.

“There is a military component” to fighting ISIS, he said, but “in a place like Syria, there is no ultimate military victory to be won.”

Obama’s speech came a day after an aid convoy headed toward Aleppo–Syria’s second largest and hardest hit city–was attacked by government-launched airstrikes. He largely restrained from addressing the crumbling cease-fire agreement in Syria, but did call on all nations to do more to accommodate the refugees that continue to spill out of that war-torn country.

“We have to follow through even when the politics are hard,” he said, adding the world must “do more to open our hearts to help refugees who are desperate for a home.” He implored his globe-spanning audience to “imagine what it would be like for our family, for our children, if the unspeakable happened to us.”

Global Warming

And of course Obama spent considerable time speaking on a key concern of his administration, and one of its proudest achievements: climate change, and the Paris climate accord.

Before Obama spoke, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who also will be finished with his term in January, took the lectern and voiced the threats all countries must contend with: “The Earth assails us with rising seas, record heat and extreme storms. And danger defines the days of many,” he said.

A touchstone accomplishment of the Obama administration, the Paris climate accord calls on nearly every country–developed and developing alike–to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in the decades to come. Combating climate change, Obama said on Tuesday, is “not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.” He also warned of potential conflicts if climate change continues down its current path.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What did Obama Talk about at his Final U.N. General Assembly Address? appeared first on Law Street.

Coinciding with World Refugee Day, the United Nations refugee agency released a sobering report on Monday: by the end of 2015, 65.3 million people were forcibly displaced from their homes, the highest number since World War II.

Squatting in temporary, tattered tent camps within their own countries or abroad, wandering, or seeking asylum, 2015 saw 12.4 million people added to the overall tally. Over half of the world’s displaced peoples are children. Over half come from three countries where terrorism, civil war, and tyrannical governance have uprooted cities and towns from any semblance of normalcy: Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

“We are facing the biggest refugee and displacement crisis of our time. Above all, this is not just a crisis of numbers; it is also a crisis of solidarity,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. It is easy to get lost in incomprehensible figures. To put it in perspective: 65.3 million is nearly a fifth of America’s total population. If the displaced population were a country, it would be the 21st largest on the planet. Every minute, 24 people are displaced. That is 34,000 each day. One of every 113 people on earth is either seeking asylum, a refugee, or internally displaced.

According to the U.N., 21.3 million of the 65.3 million displaced people have been shuffled to a land outside their home country. Turkey is the most generous of host countries, with 2.5 million resettled refugees. Pakistan is second (1.6 million) and Lebanon third (1.1. million). Though it pledges more financial support, food assistance, and humanitarian aid than any other country, the United States resettled fewer than 70,000 refugees in 2015 and roughly 3,252,000 since 1975. President Obama, in a statement released Monday, urged America and the rest of the world to “do more:”

Protecting and assisting refugees is a part of our history as a Nation, and we will continue to alleviate the suffering of refugees abroad, and to welcome them here at home, because doing so reflects our American values and our noblest traditions as a Nation, enriches our society, and strengthens our collective security.

In September, during the U.N. General Assembly Summit in New York, Obama will host a meeting of world leaders to address the crisis, the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees. Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is the U.N. arm that issued the report on Monday, called on all able governments to address the causes of the tragic and disastrous crisis. “I hope that the message carried by those forcibly displaced reaches the leaderships: We need action, political action, to stop conflicts,” he said. “The message that they have carried is: ‘If you don’t solve problems, problems will come to you.’

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post U.N. Report: 1 in 113 People on Earth Are Displaced appeared first on Law Street.

Imagine peace talks where the two parties vying for compromise are absent at the negotiating table. This is the reality in the long, fraught history of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. On Friday, France hosted diplomats from all over the world–including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon–to discuss a two state solution for Israel and Palestine, an elusive bargain that all sides say cannot materialize unless talks directly involve those two parties.

For decades, the U.S. has been the lead mediator for peace, and though France’s decision to host talks doesn’t mean it will take over that mantle, it is seen by the Palestinians as a step toward having a more neutral government at the forefront of the talks. The PLO–Palestinian’s governing body–views America’s close ties with Israel as a potentially problematic factor in hosting neutral peace discussions.

“We must act, urgently,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, “to preserve the two-state solution, revive it before it is too late.”

The French effort comes at a time of deepening mistrust between Israelis and Palestinians, as months of stabbings and violence have cast a pall over an already darkening mood. Israeli settlements in the West Bank–which, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem would likely make up a future Palestinian state–are an unmovable obstacle for peace.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Friday’s discussions, saying peace can only happen with direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the PLO, while not present in Paris, embraced the French initiative, if only because it represented a step in shifting the mediating role from the Americans to a more neutral partner in France.

The most recent brush with peace came in 2012, when a majority of the U.N. General Assembly recognized Palestine as a state. Israel did not, so a two-state reality remained out of reach. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tirelessly worked at achieving peace in 2014 but no deal was reached. On the latest stab at peace by the French, Kerry said: “We’re just starting, let’s get into the conversations.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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On Tuesday in a dramatic escalation of the many-sided conflict in Syria, the United States, along with a coalition of Middle Eastern states, showered ISIS strongholds with airstrikes and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Lawmakers, public officials, and pundits have traded arguments over whether the United States has any interest in intervening, whether ISIS poses any threat to United States, and whether the United States has any justification in getting involved in Syria’s three and half year long civil war. In support of the strikes that started on Tuesday, President Obama has invoked several international and domestic legal justifications. Like any justifications for war, however, they aren’t completely solid.

On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power answered the international justification question in a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, saying that the United States has the right to carry out self-defense on behalf of Iraq.

Generally, a country can only use force in the territory of another sovereign country if it is authorized to do so by the U.N. Syria is a sovereign country, and Power’s letter to Secretary General Ban only informs him of the attacks, it doesn’t ask for his permission. However, force can be used against a sovereign country without permission if it’s for the sake of self-defense. The United States is arguing that, although Syria is a sovereign state, it isn’t doing anything to stop or weaken ISIS within its own borders, justifying the United States’ defense-based intervention.

President Obama also has to cover his bases for legal justification domestically. To that end, he told Congress on September 9th that he doesn’t need Congressional permission and that he has the authority to take action. This justification can be found in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). That resolution gave the President authority to:

Use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.

The law is vague and has a wide enough breadth that it has been successfully used by the United States for continued military actions across the world.

The organizations targeted in the wording of the AUMF have generally been Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. While ISIS has its origins in Al-Qaeda and claimed to still be affiliated, Al-Qaeda officially cut ties with ISIS in February, prompting controversy over whether the president actually has the legal authority to target them without Congressional approval. But this week’s strikes didn’t target ISIS alone. The Pentagon announced that the attacks also targeted the Khorasan, a little-known terrorist group that does have connections with Al-Qaeda via Jabhat al-Nusra, another Al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria.

Additionally, an incredibly interesting facet of this conflict is that, despite the fact that Obama has previously said that he wanted to eventually repeal the AUMF, he is using it to justify strikes against ISIS. The Obama Administration’s choice of justifications has prompted questions over the president’s apparent change of heart about practicing restraint in counterterrorism. Historically, however, the expanded offensive isn’t so strange, as Obama has bombed half a dozen other countries in the Middle East and North Africa during his presidency.

Remember that just over a year ago, the United States was having the same debate about getting involved in Syria, except that Obama was then insisting that it was necessary to bomb Syrian President Assad, after his regime killed upwards of 1,400 people in a sarin gas attack. That plan was ditched at the last second when Russia made a deal with Syria to dispose of the country’s chemical weapons. But historically speaking, what Obama’s administration did on Tuesday really isn’t a departure from his foreign policy strategies.

Some Obama critics say that if Obama had gone through with those threats against Assad last year, the United States may not be in this mess with ISIS today. A common theory about how ISIS grew to be so powerful is that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad strategically watched idly by as it clashed other rebel groups, who were trying to oust him and create a democratic government, and took over large swaths of land. He even bombed the rebels as they gained ground against ISIS. He did this, some say, in order to have a legitimate claim to having a terrorist threat in Syria and lure in Western powers to help him, and not the rebels. As it turns out, Assad didn’t need to convince the West to join his side. They are, however, giving him a courteous “heads-up” about bombing his enemies.

While his administration has done its homework and technically managed to justify these new attacks on ISIS, Obama’s words and actions surrounding them don’t scream consistency, either. His backing out of the plan last year to strike Assad in Syria suggests that he may have only been talking about strikes to save face. It suggests that only when words like “Islamist” and “terrorist” are being thrown around is it necessary to take action. And using the AUMF to take those actions suggests that it’s acceptable for the president to change his position on that justification whenever it’s convenient.

Zaid Shoorbajee

Zaid Shoorbajee is a an undergraduate student at The George Washington University majoring in journalism and economics. He is from the Washington, D.C. area and likes reading and writing about international affairs, politics, business and technology (especially when they intersect). Contact Zaid at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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