WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism, introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would prevent the United States from sending American ground troops to engage in the fight against ISIS in Iraq or Syria. U.S. Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are original cosponsors of Murphy’s amendment.
“By passing this commonsense amendment, the Senate can affirm that we’ve learned our lesson from more than a decade of wars in the Middle East. The misguided war in Iraq not only resulted in nearly 5,000 American deaths, cost American taxpayers $1 trillion, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis—it directly created the conditions that led to the Islamic State’s rise, and provided our enemies with the propaganda they needed to recruit more terrorists than we could kill,” said Murphy. “We must do everything within our power to aid our allies in the fight against ISIS – including recognizing the fact that the presence of American ground troops cannot solve every problem. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment.”
Earlier today, Murphy, along with Schatz and U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), introduced a set of new, forward-looking foreign policy principles to guide America’s role as a global leader in the 21st Century. The principles, as laid out in an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs, provide a clear alternative to the limited perspectives that often dominate American foreign policy conversations in the United States Senate.
