The Republican Party continued to hitch its wagon to an out-of-control commander-in-chief on Tuesday by blocking a measure that would call out Donald Trump for attempting to commit war crimes in Iran.
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As The Hill reported, “Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) blocked passage of a resolution on Tuesday that classified attacks on cultural sites as “war crimes.'”
The resolution was proposed by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Market days after Trump threatened to strike 52 cultural sites if the conflict escalates further, which it did on Tuesday after Iran hit two bases in Iraq that house U.S. troops.
More from the report:
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) tried to get unanimous consent to pass the resolution, arguing that the Senate should go on record amid Trump’s threats to target Iranian cultural sites.
“The president would compound the mistake which he has made and turn it into something that could be catastrophic for that region, for our country, for the world,” Markey said from the Senate floor.
He added that Trump’s threat to target cultural sites is a “betrayal of American values. It is wrong. It is a needless escalation which ignores international law.”
The page-long resolution states that “attacks on cultural sites are war crimes.”
Republicans don’t even have the spine to publicly oppose war crimes
As I wrote on Monday, even Donald Trump’s own Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, was willing to admit that carrying out the president’s wish to bomb cultural sites in Iran would be consider a war crime.
“We will follow the laws of armed conflict,†he said.
Sadly, elected GOP officials don’t feel the same way and appear to be quibbling over the details of a pretty simple resolution to call Trump’s Iran proposal what it is: a violation of international law.
The Republican Party has gotten to a place in which there is nothing Donald Trump does or tries to do that they are willing to publicly oppose.
Not even war crimes.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
