My wife has often remarked that while Elizabeth Warren is getting some mostly deserved attention for her progressive views, our own Chris Murphy is every bit her equal, something he’s recently proven by “no” vote on a proposed resolution to authorized President Obama to arm the Syrian rebels. From Chris’s email about the subject:
Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 15-3 in favor of giving President Obama the power to arm the Syrian rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad in their nation’s civil war. I was one of the three votes in opposition, joined by Senators Tom Udall and Rand Paul.
It was not an easy vote for me. I visited with Syrian refugees during my trip to the Middle East earlier this month. I met families who lost fathers, and daughters burned by government bombs.
I believe that Syria represents a grave human rights crisis, and I wholeheartedly support increasing humanitarian aid to the war-torn nation. But as of today, I draw a different conclusion when it comes to U.S. military intervention.
The fact is, we have failed over and over again in our attempts to pull the strings of Middle Eastern politics. At some point, we need to learn the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan. Right now, I do not believe it is our national interest to send weapons into a conflict that could simply lead to more, rather than less, people being killed.
I don’t know if Obama asked for this power, but it’s passing strange that the same Republicans that insist he is a dictator striving to take away our precious right to kill each other are perfectly willing to give him carte blanche to get us into yet another war.
There is, as Chris observes, a pattern to these things. We interfere, and when all is said and done, the situation we leave behind is worse than the one we found when we moved in. It’s almost a given that nothing that replaces the current Syrian dictator will be an improvement, from our perspective, over what’s there now. It’s not like the rebels are going to implement a liberal democracy or anything. We’ll simply get another theocratic Middle Eastern regime. More power to them if they can get rid of their dictator, but our interests are best served by taking a hands off approach.
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