The Trump Administration’s decision to target Syrian chemical weapons facilities on Friday has been applauded by Republican lawmakers as a key step in upholding prohibitions on chemical weapons and has been criticized by Democratic lawmakers as “reckless” and potentially illegal.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said the air strikes were carried out in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s decision to “defy the norms of civilized people’ through chemical weapons attacks on civilians on April 7.
“I want to emphasize that these strikes are directed at the Syrian regime,” Mattis said. “In conducting these strikes, we have gone to great lengths to avoid civilian and foreign casualties. But it is time for all civilized nations to urgently unite in ending the Syrian civil war by supporting the United Nations backed Geneva peace process.”
U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, applauded the president’s decision to carry out airstrikes and for “signaling his resolve to do so again if these heinous attacks continue.”
“I hope these strikes impose meaningful costs on Assad,” McCain said. “The message to Assad must be that the cost of using chemical weapons is worse than any perceived benefit, that the United States and our allies have the will and capability to continue imposing those costs, and that Iran and Russia will ultimately be unsuccessful in protecting Assad from our punitive response.
U.S. Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ) also applauded the “bold and decisive action” against Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people.
“What we are seeing from our president and our allies is a targeted, proportional, and necessary global response to this violation of international law,” McSally said. “These strikes will send Assad — and his puppet master, Putin and enabler Iran — a clear message: the world will not stand by idly while they commit these atrocities. We stand firm with our coalition partners, Britain and France, and with the brave men and women who are leading these attacks.”
However, U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the airstrikes were “neither constitutional, nor wise.” Attacks carried out against another country without congressional authorization are unconstitutional and “push the United States closer to what could be an interminable, all-out conflict within Syria,” Markey added.
“Although Bashar al-Assad’s murder of innocent Syrian civilians by poison gas is barbaric, President Trump’s response — carried out this way — will do nothing to deter future chemical weapons use, nor help end the Syrian civil war,” Markey said. “There is no congressional authorization for the use of military force against Syrian government targets. And as we saw during President Trump’s cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airbase last year in retaliation for their earlier use of chemical weapons, the attack was neither operationally, nor strategically, successful.”
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) also questioned the constitutionality of the airstrikes, noting that “initiating war against a sovereign state like Syria that hadn’t declared war on the United States” is only something that Congress can do. He questioned what would stop the Trump administration from initiating similar attacks against North Korea or Iran.
“This is really important, this is not just about the constitution. It’s about the value underlying the constitution,” Kaine said. “The framers basically said if we’re going to order our troops to risk their lives and put them in a situation where they could kill or be wounded themselves then there has to be a debate and a vote by Congress to say this is in the national interest.”
Kaine also called the airstrikes as “reckless” because the Administration has failed to lay out a strategy. Military action shouldn’t be taken as a “one-off, it should be taken as a part of a strategy,” Kaine said.