Senate wrong to keep troops in Syria without authorization and under threat
On Thursday, the United States Senate overwhelmingly voted down a resolution from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, to withdraw 900 American soldiers from Syria unless Congress votes to authorize keeping them there. As noted by the Cato Institute’s Justin Logan, “Because of Congress’s abdication, U.S. troops in Syria have no military mission beyond serving as targets for regional militias.”
American troops are there because President Barack Obama put them there, despite vowing not to put American “boots on the ground” in Syria. President Donald Trump at least said he wanted to withdraw the troops, but was undermined by his own officials and never succeeded in withdrawing them.
Fast forward to today and American troops are still there, taking fire for no good reason at all.
“Keeping 900 U.S. troops in Syria does nothing to advance American security. Rather, our intervention puts those servicemembers at grave risk by providing an enticing target for Iranian-backed militias,” said Sen. Paul in a statement. “Our continued presence risks the United States getting dragged into yet another regional war in the Middle East without debate or a vote by the people’s representatives in Congress. Congress must cease abdicating its constitutional war powers to the executive branch.”
Everything he said is correct. Unfortunately, the Senate has chosen to allow President Joe Biden to unilaterally decide to keep American troops in harm’s way without congressional authorization.
The vote was lopsided, with just a dozen senators joining Sen. Paul, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. The good thing is that the split in favor of Sen. Paul’s resolution was bipartisan; the bad thing is that the opposition was also bipartisan.
California Sens. Laphonza Butler and Alex Padilla, unfortunately, decided it didn’t matter that Congress didn’t give the executive branch permission to put and keep American troops in Syria. We encourage them to read the United States Constitution and understand how the federal government is supposed to work.
President Biden did the right thing withdrawing from Afghanistan. It’s time he do the same with Syria.