Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) again suggested at Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that Congress’s rejection of a resolution to intervene militarily in Syria would be extremely problematic for the U.S. abroad.
“I would like to ask again, if we reject this resolution, doesn’t it send a seriously bad message to our friends and allies alike?” McCain asked Secretary of State John Kerry. “Encourages our enemies and would dispirit our friends, particularly those fighting in Syria, but also around the world?”
Kerry affirmed it would.
“I cannot emphasize enough how much they are looking to us now, making judgments about us for the long-term, and how critical the choice we make here will be,” Kerry said, “not just to this question of Syria, but to the support we may or may not anticipate in the Middle East peace process, to the future of Egypt, to the transformation of the middle east, to the stability of the region and other interests that we have. There’s no way to separate one thing from all of the rest. Relationships are relationships. And they are integrated and that’s why this is so important.”
McCain’s comments come a day after he said it would be “catastrophic” for Congress to reject a Syria resolution.
