McCain calls White House policy on Syria 'disgraceful chapter' in U.S. history

The response by President Donald Trump's administration to the ongoing civil war in Syria, marked most recently by an apparent chemical weapons attack in a rebel-controlled region, “is another disgraceful chapter in American history,” Sen. John McCain said Tuesday morning.

At least 58 people, including children, were killed Tuesday by what appeared to be a chemical attack delivered via airstrike in the northern Syria city of Khan Sheikhoun, according to a Washington Post report. Images and videos from the attack’s aftermath showed victims choking and foaming at the mouth. One video, according to The New York Times, showed a victim with constricted pupils, a symptom consistent with the use of a nerve agent or other chemical weapons.


In a statement released Tuesday, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons wrote that it “is seriously concerned about the alleged chemical weapons attack reported by the media this morning” and that it “strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances.”

McCain (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a victim of torture as a prisoner during the Vietnam War, said the change in presidential administrations earlier this year has brought no change to what he sees as the deeply troubling U.S. stance toward Syria. “We’re seen this movie before,” McCain said, recalling the “red line” drawn by former President Barack Obama and broken by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad regarding the use of chemical weapons.

While the Obama administration’s position remained firm that any path to peace in Syria would require the removal of Assad from power, Trump’s team has expressed a willingness to allow him to remain. United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley told reporters last week that “our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out.”

And during a visit to Turkey last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said: "I think the status and the longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.” McCain called that comment “one of the more incredible statements I've ever heard given the involvement of Hezbollah, of the Iranians, of the Russians.”

“Bashar Assad and his friends, that is, his friends, the Russians, take note of what Americans say,” McCain told CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday. “I'm sure they are encouraged to know the United States is withdrawing and seeking some kind of a new arrangement with the Russians. And it is another disgraceful chapter in American history and it was predictable.”

McCain, one of the GOP’s more hawkish members, called on Trump to more forcefully back the Syrian rebels, offering support “both morally and materially” in the form of vocal, public rhetoric as well as arms. To shy away from supporting the Syrian rebels, as McCain suggested the Trump administration has done, would be to deviate from a decades-long policy that “the United States of America is known to help people who want freedom and democracy.”

“We stand for freedom, and we help people who are being persecuted and murdered. It does not mean we send the Marines,” he said. “It does mean there's many ways of assisting, including the court of public opinion. One of the things that won the cold war was Radio Free Europe. So we just seem to be without a message that has resonated for the last century.”

McCain said he has yet to see a cohesive foreign policy and national security doctrine emerge from the Trump White House but added that he has “great confidence” in the president’s national security team, singling out Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and national security adviser H.R. McMaster by name. McCain expressed hoped that they would “develop a strategy” and “stand up and give the president the advice and counsel that I believe he needs.”

“Didn't we learn a lesson when Barack Obama refused to do anything?” McCain said. “I mean, these are war crimes on the scale, almost unmatched since Nazi Germany or Pol Pot.”