The Biden administration has carried out its first military action, bombing facilities in eastern Syria. A war monitor reported that 22 people or more were killed. The Pentagon says the strike targeted Iran-backed militias and came in response to a rocket attack on US-led forces in Iraq earlier this month.
A number of congressional Democrats have expressed concern over the strike and have called for a legal briefing.
“The American people deserve to hear the Administration’s rationale for these strikes and its legal justification for acting without coming to Congress,” Virginia Senator Tim Kaine told Politico. “Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary circumstances,” he added. “Congress must be fully briefed on this matter expeditiously.”
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told the website: “Congress should hold this administration to the same standard it did prior administrations, and require clear legal justifications for military action, especially inside theaters like Syria, where Congress has not explicitly authorized any American military action.”
California Rep. Ro Khanna put out a statement connecting Biden’s actions to the foreign policy of his predecessors.
“This makes President Biden the seventh consecutive US president to order strikes in the Middle East.” said Khanna. “There is absolutely no justification for a president to authorize a military strike that is not in self-defense against an imminent threat without congressional authorization. We need to extricate from the Middle East, not escalate. The President should not be taking these actions without seeking explicit authorization…I spoke against endless war with Trump, and I will speak out against it when we have a Democratic President.”
“I am very concerned that last night’s air strike by U.S. forces in Syria puts our country on the path of continuing the Forever War instead of ending it,” said Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in a statement. “This is the same path we’ve been on for almost two decades. For far too long administrations of both parties have interpreted the authorities in an extremely expansive way to continue military intervention across the Middle East region and elsewhere. This must end.”
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar shared a 2017 tweet from White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who was then a commentator at CNN, that ended up being quite ironic.
“Also what is the legal authority for strikes?” Psaki had asked when Trump attacked Syria. “Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.”
“Great question,” tweeted Omar.
It is high time the United States of America stopped interfering, overthrowing, bombing, provoking, and making more enemies, every time we do so. We killed Iran’s top Military General in Iraq, a horrible assassination, which the rest of the world frowned upon, and we have been complicit in Israel’s assassinations of Iran’s top Scientists, and WE whine when we are struck indirectly. How would we have reacted if Iran sent their assassins into Israel and killed their Scientists? Enough of the hypocrisy, and lame justifications for our war games, and focused on the violence and terrorism going on inside our nation.
Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal are two great progressive leaders. It is always a pleasure to listen to them.
VIDEO:
Israeli Soldier’s Explosive Tell-All: “Palestinians are Right to Resist” – YouTube
“Israeli Soldier’s Explosive Tell-All: ‘Palestinians are Right to Resist'”
“In a rare, candid conversation, Abby Martin interviews a former Israeli Army combat soldier who served as an occupier in Palestine’s Hebron City. Eran Efrati spent years as a sergeant and combat soldier in the Israeli military, but has since become an outspoken critic of the occupation of Palestine and Israeli apartheid.
“Efrati gives explosive testimony on the reality of his service and explains how war crimes are institutionalized, as well as how systematic the oppression against Palestinians really is in a war of conquest that will no-doubt be accelerated under the Trump Administration.”
“Dem lawmakers question Syria air strike”
Can anyone be more abjectly ridiculous than the writer of this title?
Yes. Even more ludicrous than the title (and the author’s slant), of course, is the fact that the ones who, in the sanctimoniculous word, “question” the mass-murderer government that they worked like crazy to bring about, after a protracted coup by the spy and mass-murderer outfits alongside stupid liberal boobies, overthrowing… another war-party government, which was never warmongering enough to their taste.
Not one of the people who voted “Dem”, let alone their “lawmakers” has the right to complain or “question” or protest! You knew you were bringing more of the same criminal filth, you were told so and you are conscious accessories, before the fact, to all “Dem” crimes. Enjoy.
Thank goodness there are people in Congress who are NOT people who never saw a law they didn’t like. It’s just a start, but it’s a start.
The US goal of full spectrum global dominance shows itself in this instance as illegal, immoral, unconstitutional violent bombing of Syria. It continues the US’s support for regime change, which is predictably preceded by demonization of the leader of the country as a brutal dictator. Thus some who otherwise would oppose aggression are silenced. Congress, the executive and the corporate media regularly roll out demonization even while supporting their owned-in-full brutal oil-rich dictators throughout the Middle East. Smashing Syrian secular society, relished by Syrians, was intended by the empire to be replaced by a sectarian state that was divided up into many competing factions, resulting in a weakened state under the heel of Washington. After those states in the Middle East that resisted control by the US – Iraq, Libya and Syria – were conquered, Iran was next. It hasn’t entirely worked out. So Plan B is to make the Syrian people suffer with constant violence, the balkanization of the country, carving out Kurdish and Turkish territories and especially the oil producing territories, and asphyxiating sanctions. Our resistance to ongoing and future societal assassinations requires us to loudly condemn the criminal pathologies of the Washington-Wall St. axis now represented by Biden and most of the current Congress.