Hawaii’s congressional leaders expressed strong reservations about the U.S. airstrikes that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
Sen. Mazie K. Hirono said “General Soleimani was a reprehensible figure responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American service members and thousands of innocent people around the world.”
But she fears his death “further escalates hostilities and increases the potential for widespread violence in a part of the world already fraught with peril.
“In normal times, we could have confidence that the president — fully cognizant of the potential ramifications of this strike — was mobilizing a whole-of-government response and coordinating with our allies to seek a diplomatic outcome. But these are not normal times,” she said in a press release.
“Congress must reassert its constitutional responsibility and demand the
president seek
authorization prior to any military conflict with Iran.”
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said, “This was very clearly an act of war by this president, without any kind of authorization or declaration of war from Congress, clearly violating the Constitution.”
In an interview with Fox News, Gabbard said the airstrikes and death of Soleimani will escalate a tense situation and “will elicit a very serious response from Iran, and pushes us further and further into this quagmire, and it really begs the question, ‘for what?’ What are we trying to accomplish?”
Gabbard said she has long maintained that going to war with Iran “will make the war in Iraq and even Afghanistan look like a picnic. It will be far more costly and devastating in American lives and in taxpayer dollars. I don’t believe the American people want to go to war with Iran.”
She said the airstrikes could lead to an outcome that “actually further undermines our national security and needlessly sends more of our troops into harm’s way.”
Sen. Brian Schatz posted several comments on his twitter account. Thursday, he wrote:
w “The neocons are back on television with their magical thinking, their moral hectoring and their amnesia about Iraq. They could very well get us into another, even more catastrophic war;”
w “I don’t mean to be alarming and I haven’t been briefed, but Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove are on TV, and that alone makes me think no one has thought this through’”
w “Young people are going to have to vote in record numbers in order to put this madness to an end.”
Friday, he added:
“They have lied about almost everything. There is no reason to suddenly give them the benefit of the doubt because they took a precipitous military action. Instead, our deepest skepticism, our toughest oversight, our most probing questions, must come now.”
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Bill Buley, editor-in-chief, can be reached at 245-0457 or bbuley@thegardenisland.com.
