Ted Galen Carpenter
The air and missile strikes that the United States and its
British and French allies launched against Syrian government
targets are reprehensible for so many reasons. First, Washington’s
action is a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution. Except in
cases of responding to an attack on the United States, that
document gives Congress, not the president, the authority to decide
whether to involve the republic in combat. Punishing a foreign
regime for an alleged outrage against its own citizens does not
qualify, and arguments to the contrary are either disingenuous or
historically illiterate.
Second, there is not even certainty that Bashar al-Assad’s
government was the guilty party for the …read more
Source: Cato Institute