Arizona Republican John McCain on Monday became the first senator to call for U.S.-led air strikes to stop the slaughter of unarmed civilians being carried out by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
?Providing military assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is necessary, but at this late hour, that alone will not be sufficient to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. The only realistic way to do so is with foreign airpower,? McCain, a Vietnam war veteran and the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a speech on the Senate floor.
Continue Reading?Therefore, at the request of [opposition forces], the United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad?s forces.?
An estimated 7,500 Syrians have been killed by Assad?s military during the past year, including hundreds in the city of Homs which has been targeted by tank and artillery attacks.
McCain, the GOP presidential nominee in 2008, said the goal of the U.S. air strikes should be to ?establish and defend safe havens? in Syria where opposition forces can organize and plot political and military attacks against Assad. The international community could also deliver humanitarian and military assistance to these safe zones, including food, water, weapons and training.
?Increasingly, the question for U.S. policy is not whether foreign forces will intervene militarily in Syria. We can be confident that Syria?s neighbors will do so eventually, if they have not already. Some kind of intervention will happen, with us or without us,? McCain said. ?So the real question for U.S. policy is whether we will participate in this next phase of the conflict in Syria, and thereby increase our ability to shape an outcome that is beneficial to the Syrian people, and to us.
?I believe we must.?
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), a close McCain ally, also backs what McCain described as a ?new policy? toward Syria, an aide to Lieberman said.
So far, the Obama administration has opposed military intervention in Syria, believing that tougher economic sanctions and greater diplomatic pressure will drive Assad from power.
But McCain said the U.S. has little to show after a year of diplomatic efforts, which have failed to halt what the senator called Assad?s ?killing spree.? McCain drew comparisons between Syria and Libya, where NATO forces conducted air strikes against the armed forces of dictator Muammar Qadhafi.
?The kinds of mass atrocities that NATO intervened in Libya to prevent in Benghazi are now a reality in Homs,? McCain said. ?Indeed, Syria today is the scene of some of the worst state-sponsored violence since Milosevic?s war crimes in the Balkans, or Russia?s annihilation of the Chechen city of Grozny.?
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