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‘The President is authorised to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organisations, or persons he determines planned, authorised, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harboured such organisations or persons, in order to prevent any future act of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organisations or persons.’
Written in haste and passed by the US Congress in the days after 11 September 2001, the ambiguously worded Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) greatly expanded the war powers of the executive branch, granting US presidents the choice to bomb, raid, detain and monitor nation states and organisations around the world as they see fit. Centred around an interview with Representative Barbara Lee, the sole member of congress to vote against the AUMF, War Authority examines how the authorisation’s vague language – invoked at least 18 times by the former president George W Bush, and at least 19 times by President Barack Obama – has shaped modern US foreign policy and affected people around the world.
Director: Matthew Palmer
video
Human rights and justice
Surreal, dazzling visuals form an Iranian expat’s tribute to defiance back home
10 minutes
video
Values and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes
video
War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
‘To my old master’ – a freed slave answers the request to return to his old plantation
7 minutes
video
Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
video
War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
video
The ancient world
Petty squabbles and bloody battles – the life of an ancient Roman soldier
18 minutes
video
War and peace
‘She is living on in many hearts’ – Otto Frank on the legacy of his daughter’s diary
12 minutes
video
Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes