Indivisible Nation BK
2 min readApr 15, 2018

Senator Schumer: Unauthorized Equals Not Appropriate

To Senator Schumer:

Last night President Trump launched an unauthorized air strike on Syria, not out of concern for the Syrian people, not as part of a long-term, thoughtful strategy, but to distract the American public from his own criminality and corruption.

Your response was inadequate. You called the strike “appropriate” and warned against further entanglement.

You did not mention the thousands of Syrian refugees Trump has barred from the United States. You said nothing about Trump’s obvious ploy to distract from Special Counsel Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation. You ignored the possibility that Trump should have sought congressional authorization for the strike (authorization he himself insisted on when President Obama launched a similar effort in 2013).

In short, you missed an opportunity to fight back. We won’t.

We do not accept a president who launches unauthorized, impulsive military assaults to distract the public from his culpability in a federal investigation. If President Trump cares as deeply as he claims to about the plight of Syrian civilians, then he should immediately welcome the thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing Assad’s brutality, not entangle the United States in an unauthorized war with no endgame. Make no mistake, Assad’s brutal attacks on civilians do warrant a strong multilateral response. But that Trump clearly views the military as his own personal publicity tool to impede federal investigations is deeply alarming and only affirms the need for congressional authorization before any further action. Whether or not these strikes were “appropriate” is not the point.

Senator Schumer, you must condemn this strike for what it is — a blatant and unauthorized attempt to distract the American people from the constitutional crisis engulfing the White House — and demand congressional authorization for further actions.

Sincerely,

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For further reading: https://www.wsj.com/articles/syrian-refugees-entering-the-u-s-is-down-to-trickle-1523485878