Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) denounced the Trump missile strike in Syria, as something that made life worse for the Syrian people and didn’t change anything.
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Sen. Murphy said during an interview on MSNBC:
Let’s discuss the inhumanity of a strike inside Syria that is going to frankly add to the chaos and add to the carnage. It will have a response from Assad, the Russians, and the Iranians. The civil war will get more deadly. Think of the inhumanity of launching this strike amidst a policy from the United States that locks these Syrian children inside that country. Until we are serious about helping to take refugees and move them to places of safety, then these US strikes just make life more miserable for the people inside.
And as you mentioned there is no coherence to the broader approach from the administration to Syria. This weekend it was terribly unclear whether we have a policy of removing Assad, or whether we’re going to let the Syrian people decide. Is ISIS our number one priority or is the regime? So the strike, which frankly, is just going to make the battle space more chaotic, which won’t actually tip the balance in one way or another makes very little sense, other than scratching an itch for a president who saw some images on TV, which were horrific, and wanted to feel better about that.
Murphy argued that the US needs to stop sending the resistance to Assad just enough resources to continue the civil war. He made the point that the US needs to stop with the half-measures like Trump’s missile strike and pick a strategy. If Trump wants a full military intervention, Sen. Murphy said that the president would have to come before Congress and ask for it, but the American people have no appetite for another big military operation after Iraq, so the answer in Syria will need to be diplomatic and political.
Sen. Murphy took a brave stand by telling citizens, the media, and the Trump administration that the United States has been making the war in Syria worse for the last three years.
The missile strike in Syria was an isolated and empty gesture. It is clear that the Trump administration has no long-term plan for Syria. It was a feel-good publicity stunt for Trump that made him feel like he was responding to a horrific situation, but the reality is that Trump’s showy half-measure only served to make things worse.
The easiest thing for a member of Congress to do in this situation is to ride the wave of patriotism, but Sen. Murphy went against the flag waving to explain why what Trump did was a bad idea. Republicans may have sold themselves out to support Trump, but there are congressional Democrats who are thinking about public policy and in the Trump whirlwind of chaos remain committed to doing what is right.
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