Ben Wittes dings The New York Times editorial page for characterizing Rep. Buck McKeon's proposal for a new authorization to use military force against al Qaeda and associated forces as making " the war on terror a permanent and limitless aspect of life on earth."
Notice how this passage injects a temporal and geographic element to the alleged expansion of the war–the idea that McKeon's language would make the war permanent and worldwide. It does nothing of the kind. Indeed, it is no more or less temporally or geographically bound than was the original AUMF, which contained neither a geographic nor a temporal limitation. Neither the last administration nor this one saw the conflict under the AUMF as limited to a particular place or subject to some timer that would some day go buzz and end the authority to wage war. Again, McKeon's bill would change little on that score.
I think Wittes is right that the original AUMF contained no such temporal or geographic constraints. What the AUMF did possess was an implied end-state, by authorizing military force against "those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." This didn't exactly define what "victory" would look like, but it did imply that a cessation of hostilities could occur once the targets were neutralized or brought to justice.
The new AUMF has nothing like that, and in that sense, seems "limitless" in a way that the previous one wasn't. At the very least, I think there has to be some kind of conversation about what "victory" looks like here, given the fact that religiously inspired, politically motivated violence has been a fact of life on Earth since Hebrew Zealots were stabbing Roman officials to death in Jerusalem streets.
