Lawmakers agree there should be a strategy on Syria — but that remains an open question

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Typically on the opposite sides of most Washington debates, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Elizabeth Warren, DMass., agree on this: President Donald Trump needs to deliver a “comprehensive strategy” to deal with the Syrian morass.

Both high-profile senators — and potential presidential candidates — used those words in statements delivered in the wake of the joint missile strikes delivered Friday by U.S., British and French forces. The sentiment was echoed by lawmakers across the political spectrum who seized on the retaliatory attack — delivered to deter Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons — to rekindle twin debates about America’s interests abroad and the president’s power to take military action absent congressional approval.

But members of Congress, and both parties, are divided on what that strategy should be and how much latitude Mr. Trump and his successors should be given to intervene in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

“If [Mr. Trump] wants to expand American military involvement in Syria’s civil war, he must seek approval from Congress — & provide a comprehensive strategy with clear goals & a plan to achieve them,” Ms. Warren tweeted Friday.

Mr. Rubio, who wants to give presidents a wide berth to act, didn’t mention congressional approval in his statement.

He called for “a real and comprehensive strategy for ending Assad’s threat to his people, to the region and to U.S. security, and for countering Russian and Iranian support for the Syrian dictatorship’s ongoing barbarity.”

Friday’s strikes came as the Senate prepared a new push to consider a revised Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF, to supersede those passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and ahead of the 2003 Iraq invasion that have been used to justify American military interventions ever since.

But more than five years of debate about the U.S. role in Syria and whether military action there is even legal have failed to generate a consensus strategy or a new AUMF despite a firm push from key players in Congress to reassert the body’s constitutional role in warmaking.

Lawmakers from both parties who have advocated a restrained approach to using military force excoriated the Trump administration for not first seeking congressional consent.

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a leading Democratic voice for a new AUMF, called it “illegal” and “reckless” without a broader strategy: “Today it’s a strike on Syria — what’s going to stop him from bombing Iran or North Korea next?”

Mr. Kaine and others also pointed to a tweet from 2013.

“The President must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria-big mistake if he does not!” Mr. Trump tweeted then, days after a chemical attack on a rebel stronghold that prompted President Barack Obama and Western allies to consider retaliatory attacks.

That comment was made at a moment when the president appeared poised to act. But Mr. Obama — wary of another messy Middle Eastern intervention — instead left the decision to Congress, which ultimately did not act after weeks of debate.