Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) will soon introduce legislation to authorize President Barack Obama to launch military airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria within Syria, his office announced Tuesday.
Obama has already authorized limited strikes against ISIS within Iraq and will reportedly consider whether to strike the group, which has reportedly killed two American journalists in the last month, in Syria as well. Nelson’s bill would give Obama the upper chamber’s approval for the latter action.
“This will ensure there’s no question that the president has the legal authority he needs to use airstrikes in Syria,” Nelson said in a statement. “Let there be no doubt, we must go after ISIS right away because the U.S. is the only one that can put together a coalition to stop this group that’s intent on barbaric cruelty.”
Nelson’s office said he plans to introduce the legislation as soon as possible once Congress returns from recess next week.
Steven Joel Sotloff, the second U.S. journalist reportedly killed by the group, grew up in Florida, Nelson’s home state, according to NBC News.
ISIL’s actions don’t deserve a response. Especially not a military response that plays right into their narrative of persecution, and would mostly kill innocents anyways.
How much of this is driven by the beheading of American Journalists, horrible as those are, or driven by the fear that trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives were essentially wasted in the Iraq War? I guess a bit of both…
Why do these politicians never stop to ask “And then what?” when they make these bloodthirsty proposals. Any student of military history should know that you don’t go into an armed conflict without knowing what the end game will look like. Bombing people just to see what will happen is not a strategy.
If anyone in the Cheney administration had bothered to ask “And then what?” and had a realistic answer before deciding to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.
Good. I hope the Senate debates this bill.
I would vote to give this President unlike Bush the authority to do whatever he needed to rid us of this menace.
Whatever strategy the President comes up with may require bombing inside of Syria. Just because he has the authority doesn’t mean he has to use it.