“What is this president thinking?” “Why is he trying to push American into a war in Syria?” “What exactly does a “red line” mean and who are we supposed to be helping?”

These are the kinds of questions I receive from all of you each day. They are the kind of questions you should be asking and, frankly, they are the questions the president has not answered. Instead, he has come to Congress asking for a blank check to entangle our precious military resources in one of the more tenuous, convoluted, and treacherous threat environments in the world without bothering to provide anything even remotely close to a plan.

I am firmly against any military intervention of any kind in Syria. Not only has the president failed to present a strategy with measurable objectives for success, his desire for authorization to use U.S. military force to intervene in the Syrian civil war represents misguided and dangerous foreign policy.

This morning, The Orange County Register published an op-ed I wrote explaining my position on U.S. intervention in Syria. I’m including it below for your review in hopes that it will help to begin to answer some of your… Read More

Foreign Policy: My parents, who have now passed away, were both born around the start of World War I. They were of the “greatest generation” that came to adulthood during the depression and World War II. They grew up in a world where it was us and other democracies against the fascists and imperialists across the oceans. We had the white hats. They wore the black hats. The white hats won. It was all pretty clear.

I was born in 1955, square in the middle of the “baby boom” generation. We came of age during the Cold War and the Vietnam War. It was still pretty clear. There were 3 worlds: us with the white hats, the communists with the black hats, and the “third world” that we and the communists fought over. The Vietnam War was America’s first experience with a conflict that arguably did not result in the defeat of the opposition, which spoiled our air of invincibility. But, our objective for the Cold War, as Ronald Reagan famously described, was, “We win. They lose”. And, that is what happened. Also pretty clear.

After the Cold War came the “peace dividend” and a hope, if not an… Read More