Washington, DC - House Armed Services Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) released the following statement about the military strikes on Syria:

“It is unclear that these strikes have advanced U.S. interests, particularly because we have no clear strategy for dealing with Bashar Al-Assad. There is no easy answer to this problem, but if we have no clear objective and no reasonable path toward achieving that objective, then we should not be escalating the use of force. If the point is to stop Assad from using chemical weapons, we need to account for the fact that we bombed him a year ago and reports say he continued to use chemical weapons—not just this time, but multiple other times—so bombing him again is unlikely to achieve that goal. Further, President Trump has not articulated a clear strategy to prevent the atrocities Assad is committing against his own people with conventional weapons, as well as chemical weapons.

“We have over-relied on the military over the last decade, and there are other tools in our toolbox to try to confront these problems. Moreover the President needs Congressional approval to engage in military action other than to protect the United States. We need to show more restraint in using military force if we don’t have an outcome that we think is achievable and advances our interests.”

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