The same President Biden that ordered a sloppy and hasty withdrawal of American troops from Afghanstan has supported using American Special Operatoration combat troops in Syria.….
Some House Republicans’ have been pushing for America to focus inward in US troop deployments ….
A effort to kneecap the Democratic President’s US Syria operation , to keep an in country ability to go after Middle East terrorist’s there, instead of letting them grow and launch attack ‘s in America has failed…
By a WIDE by partisan US House vote…..
When it comes to the conduct of American affairs abroad, the political dynamic is most unsettled. Once skeptical of foreign entanglements, Democrats and their elected representatives are now increasingly inclined toward a more extroverted American presence on the world stage. The opposite is said to be true of Republicans: Not only has the GOP abandoned doctrinal commitments to preemption and proactivity in foreign affairs, but the party’s loudest champions also promise to hunt down and excommunicate any remaining dissenters from their new orthodoxy.
Donald Trump is surrounded by advisers besotted with the idea that they are the vanguard of a new, less-interventionist Right, and he exudes the same sort of confidence as they do. “We are never going back to a party that wants to give unlimited money to fight foreign wars that are endless wars, that are stupid wars,” Trump boomed in a March 6 speech to the audience at CPAC. “We will expel the warmongers!”
But such talk of purges is gradually replacing the idea of a wholesale ideological renovation out of necessity. As the GOP House majority — a caucus supposedly recast in Trump’s image — indicated on Wednesday, the grand anti-interventionist realignment has been a spectacular dud.
“Congress has never authorized the use of military force in Syria. The United States is currently not in a war with or against Syria, so why are we conducting dangerous military operations there?” Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) asked in a late-February floor speech in support of the concurrent resolution he’d introduced, which would have compelled Joe Biden to withdraw the roughly 900 U.S. troops stationed in Syria. “President Biden must remove all U.S. Armed Forces from Syria. ‘America First’ means actually putting the people of our country first — not the interests of the military–industrial complex.”
…
“America First” Republicans frequently cast their critics as hopeless ideologues who would sacrifice the nation’s practical interests in the pursuit of highly theoretical goals. But the Republicans who spoke out against Gaetz’s resolution objected primarily to the impracticality of his preferences. “Even though ISIS no longer controls significant territory, there are still tens of thousands of hardened terrorist fighters in Iraq and Syria who are hellbent on establishing their terror state,” warned the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, Representative Mike McCaul (R., Fla.). “Either we fight and defeat them in Syria, or we’ll fight them in the streets of our nation,” said Representative Ryan Zinke (R., Mont.). To this, freshman representative Anna Paulina Luna (R., Fla.) objected, insisting that ISIS “has been destroyed” and “a few hundred troops will not stop the next terrorist.com, and that’s never going to end.”
But ISIS has not, in fact, “been destroyed.” “Terrorist.com” is a domain that is presently available, if you’re foolish enough to purchase it. And it’s hard to think up a more defeatist proposition than the idea that transnational Islamist terrorism cannot be disrupted proactively, the failure of international Islamist organizations to execute another spectacular attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 notwithstanding….
Democratic Socialist Dave says
Perhaps I should add that this article did not come from some liberal or lefty source, but was written by Noah Rothman for the conservative (but internationalist) National Review.
More Democrats (56) voted for the bill than Republicans (47). In one of those weird ideological twists, many or most of that minority of Democratic representatives who supported far-right-crazy Matt Gaetz’s resolution of disapproval came from the House Progressive Caucus, including the Squad (AOC, Ilhan Omar of Minn., Ayanna Pressley of Mass., and Rosa Tlaib of Mich.)
House roll-call:
Democrats: 56-150 (7 not voting)
Republicans 47-171 (4 N/V)
Total 113-321 (11 N/V)
Full roll-call at https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2023136
**
Massachusetts’ military-veteran Democrats split with Jake Auchincloss voting yea and Seth Moulton no. Also voting no were Katherine Clark of Mass. (the new House Dem. Whip) and Rhode Island’s two Democrats, David Cicilline (retiring from Congress this May) and Seth Magaziner (first elected last November to succeed retiring Cong. James Langevin).
Ten of New York state’s eleven Republicans voted nay, while (guess who?) George Santos joined AOC, Ilhan Omar and Matt Gaetz in voting yea. Empire State Democrats split more evenly: 11 yea and 8 nay.
But California Democrats voted more heavily against, 29-12, as did California Republicans (like the NYGOP), 10-2.
Only six of Matt Gaetz’s fellow Florida Republicans voted for his resolution, while 12 Fla Republicans voted nay. All 8 of the Sunshine State’s Democrats also voted nay.
jamesb says
Weird?
Things are NOT as advertised…..