A former foreign policy adviser to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney took on his own party Wednesday over the resolution to authorize military action in Syria, pointing out that Republicans never cried foul when President Barack Obama first said the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons would be a “red line.”
Dan Senor told the panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he’s as “frustrated as any congressional Republican” with Obama’s approach to Syria.
“But guess what? At the end of the day, right now, you are expressing a frustrated sentiment. A sentiment is not a policy,” Senor said. “We have a policy debate right now about what to do about a rogue nation that is bogged down in civil war that is experimenting with chemical weapons. Forget about if the president drew the red line or not. Imagine the president didn’t draw the red line.”
Senor contended that Obama’s declaration of a “red line” on chemical weapons, which some Republicans have now used to criticize the administration, drew no opposition from the GOP at the time.
“And by the way, when the president did draw it, it’s not like congressional Republicans were opposed to it,” Senor continued. “No congressional Republican was saying, ‘Don’t draw that red line.’ They were never criticizing President Obama for doing too much. They were criticizing him for doing too little. So now he wants to do something.”
