“We’ve got to develop a strategy. There is still not an overall strategy that he can come to Congress and his advisers and say, ‘okay, this is how we are going to handle Syria. Here’s how we are going to handle post-Mosul Iraq,'” McCain said. “We’ve got to have a strategy and I’ll give them some more time but so far that strategy is not apparent.”
In the last two weeks, the Trump administration has offered mixed messages on the United States’ long-term goals in Syria and whether the White House felt Assad must go. McCain argued that the administration should go further.
“Of those 400,000 men, women and children who were slaughtered [in the Syrian war], they weren’t slaughtered by ISIS. They were slaughtered by Bashar Assad,” he said.
“The war crimes are horrendous here and to just say, ‘We’re only after ISIS,’ in my view, rather than regime change, is something that we have to re-think,” McCain added.
Reed, meanwhile, believes that the pursuit of ISIS in Syria is legally covered by the current AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force), and he supported the strike on the Syrian airfield. But, he felt, “anything further” should be considered by Congress.
“Going after Assad in terms of the deliberate concentrated effort to conduct military operations would require the authorization of Congress,” Reed said.
