Rep. Tom Cole: The US Has No Place Getting Involved in Syria

The day after the White House publically admitted that it believed the Syrian government had in fact crossed the “red line” through its use of chemical weapons, Congressman Tom Cole joined Frank Gaffney on Secure Freedom Radio to discuss his fear that a war in Syria would be a disastrous repeat of what happened in Libya.

In Libya, American intervention took a bad state and made it far worse says Cole, Congressman from the fourth district of Oklahoma.

“We had a regime, unsavory to be sure, but Al Qaeda was not operating in this territory,” he says. “It had given up its nuclear materials, its WMDs. Gadhafi was actually trying to work his way back into international respectability. We overthrew that regime—and again, I have no love for Gadhafi—but if the rebels could have done it themselves that’s fine.”

“Since they couldn’t, we intervened and what do we have now?” Cole asks. “We have a lawless state, we have four Americans dead, we have loose weapons falling all over the region, and we hardly have a reliable ally or friend. It looks to me in Syria like a replay, except a much more dangerous one, a much more important country, and a much more vicious conflict.”

Choosing between Assad and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda backed rebels is no choice in Cole’s mind, and he believes the latter already have the means to fight for themselves without American support.

“We don’t have a clear idea of what an endgame in Syria is really going to be. I don’t think there’s any shortage of weapons in Syria. There are plenty of Arab states pumping plenty of guns, and that have the ability to put very sophisticated weapons in the hands of the rebels if they so choose. So I don’t see a compelling reason for the United States to be involved in this way at this time.”

Whichever side wins the civil war, Cole is not optimistic about Syria’s future. “There’s no reason to believe there’s going to be a democratic outcome on the other side of this where there’s a sudden renaissance of human rights in Syria, no matter who wins. So I think you have to be pretty brutal and look at this in terms of American interest. Getting pulled into something like this step by step, I find it hard to believe that’s in our interest.”