‘I wish I had been wrong,’ says Barbara Lee, lone congresswoman who voted to oppose Afghan war in...

"In the days after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, just one member of Congress voted against giving President Bush authority to go to war in Afghanistan.

Barbara Lee, a Democratic representative from California, warned at the time that approving the so-called Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) could mean the US would be embarking “on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target.”"

"Now, 20 years later, the 2001 AUMF remains in effect, having been used to justify incursions in at least 21 different countries, and Ms Lee’s passionate speech from the time defending her controversial vote has gone viral, as Afghanistan returns to the headlines.

On 14 September, 2001, the congresswoman, who represents a district in the San Francisco Bay Area, gave a speech on the House floor, knowing full well that none of her colleagues was joining her in opposing the AUMF, which she argued would give the president carte blanche.

“Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let’s step back for a moment. Let’s just pause, just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control,” she said."