Likely US Airstrikes in Syria Just Another Stop on Endless Mission Creep

Will Congress Have a Say?

From announcing the authorization of airstrikes on ISIS earlier this month in the area around Mosul, the US war in Iraq has already seen an amount of mission creep so substantial that the term “creep” doesn’t seem anywhere near appropriate.

The initial goal was to stop ISIS from attacking Irbil. That expanded to Baghdad, then to wiping out ISIS in Iraq. Now, the war is set to be expanded into Syria, even though the US has almost no intelligence on where any targets are in Syria.

Expanding into Syria is just the next stop on an Iraq War that seems to be escalating without any end in sight, and with reports of ground troop deployments coming in Anbar Province, the war could quickly become a land war spanning multiple countries with no well-defined goals at all.

The expansion is a foregone conclusion, but the question of a Congressional vote is unclear. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R – KY) claimed he was confident Congress would approve the war. Yet only a handful in Congress have made public their views on the war, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D – CA) has been quite critical of the endless escalations.

What the vote’s results will be is only a question if there’s a vote at all, and there may well not be, with the administration arguing they don’t need Congressional approval, and much of Congress seemingly reluctant to make their position a matter of record ahead of the mid-term elections.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.