PRESS RELEASE
Kaine Contradicts Obama Policy: It’s Wrong to Send U.S. Troops to Syria, Without Syrian Government Invitation
April 29, 2016 (EIRNS)—Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who has been demanding that Congress take up a new legal authorization for the wars in Iraq and Syria for nearly two years, said yesterday that it is wrong for the U.S. to send troops into Syria, without permission of the Syrian government.
During the April 28 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Kaine noted that there is solid legal ground for the U.S. military deployment in Iraq, because the Iraqi government invited the US in. Kaine went on, saying that he was, "sorry today," but the U.S. is doing what Russia did in Ukraine—a wrong analogy.
Kaine said,
"...what I struggle with is how can we criticize the Russian incursion into Ukrainian sovereignty, when we are carrying out, and now escalating, military operations in Syria, without the permission, and really even against the will of the sovereignty of that nation?"
When Secretary of Defense Ash Carter tried to convince Kaine that the difference is that the U.S. is fighting "real terrorists" in Syria while Russia is trying "to destabilize a stable situation" in Ukraine, Kaine didn’t quite buy it.
"We are engaged in an incursion into the sovereign nation of Syria without their permission against their will. We are trying to criticize Russia for engaging in an incursion into another nation against their will, and we are asserting the difference is that we are doing something good and they are doing something bad,"
he said,
"but that is not a limiting principle because everybody is going to say what they are doing is good."
Kaine stressed that he’s certainly not supportive of the Russian intervention in Ukraine, nor is he necessarily opposed to the Obama war in Syria, but that he greatly fears that doing it without a solid legal basis sets a dangerous international precedent.
