Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Saturday that President Trump’s decision to strike a Syrian air base in retaliation for chemical attacks in that country goes “a long way to restoring our badly damaged credibility in the world.”
“It’s hard to overstate just how low the standing of the United States had fallen because of President Barack Obama’s failure to enforce his own ‘red line’ against Mr. [Bashar] Assad’s use of chemical weapons in 2013,” Cotton wrote in a New York Times op-ed.
“I was one of the few Republican members of Congress who supported strikes against Syria then,” he wrote. “Because of that, I’ve heard from dozens of world leaders expressing their doubts about the security commitments of the United States.”
Cotton said it got so bad under Obama that even close U.S. allies in Europe and Asia questioned whether the U.S. would make good on its commitments to defend common interests.
Cotton charged that Obama backed down from attacking Syria because he was looking to strike a nuclear deal with Iran, which he called Syria’s “patron.”
In contrast, Trump’s swift strike shows the U.S. is again prepared to use force, which he said would boost U.S. diplomatic efforts.
“The threat of the use of force — and its actual use when necessary — is an essential foundation for effective diplomacy,” he wrote. “Mr. Obama’s lack of credibility is one reason the United States watched in isolation as Russia and Iran took the lead at recent Syrian peace conferences.”
