Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton says President Donald Trump did the right thing in retaliating against Syria and Barack Obama should have done so in 2013.
"I think it was the right decision, and I was critical of President Obama for not taking that action a few years ago," Moulton, a military veteran, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday. "But the question is, where do we go in Syria? And it's very clear that if we don't have a plan, it's not fair to the American people, and most of all, it's not fair to our troops to ask them to risk their lives without any end game."
U.S. ships late last week fired more than 50 cruise missiles at the Sharyat Airbase in Syria, a barrage in response to a chemical attack in the Syrian village of Khan Sheikhou which left more than 85 people dead and hundreds more injured. Many Western countries blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the chemical attack, and Trump vowed to do something about it.
The purpose of the attack was to send a message to the Syrian regime that "any use of chemical weapons would not be tolerated," a U.S. defense official told CNN.
Obama in 2013 sought approval from Congress for a military strike in Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack, but didn't get it, a decision that likely haunted the remainder of his presidency.
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