Defense Secretary Jim Mattis defended the U.S.-led strikes against Syria when asked Tuesday about comments earlier in the day from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said the allied attack failed to resolve anything.
In an address to the European Parliament Tuesday, Macron said, “These strikes don’t necessarily resolve anything, but I think they were important,” because, he said, they upheld “the honor of the international community.”
Asked about Macron’s remarks during a brief media availability with the Albanian defense minister at the Pentagon, Mattis said the U.S., Britain, and France “did what we believed was right under international law,” adding “I hope that this time the Assad regime got the message.”
“The French and the United Kingdom and the United States — all NATO allies — worked together to maintain the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons, and that’s how we came together, that’s why we came together,” Mattis said. “We did not have to search for common ground. We had common ground.”
