When he’s not obsessively attacking the Koch brothers, or announcing dramatic, one-man boycotts of the Washington Redskins, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) occasionally goes to the Senate floor to regurgitate President Obama’s opinion about a given conflict in the Middle East.
On Wednesday, for example, Reid blasted "out-of-step" Republicans for criticizing Obama’s passive response to the escalating crisis in Iraq. Reid was critical of those who supported the military invasion of Iraq in 2003, which he called "the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of the country."
You know, people like Harry Reid, who voted to authorize that invasion. By Reid’s own logic, Americans should no longer take his opinion seriously, nor that of Hillary Clinton, who also supported the war, nor indeed that of the 72 percent of the American public who backed the war in March 2003.
Reid’s latest opinion is that American forces should not involve themselves in Iraq’s "civil war."
Senator Reid: "This is an Iraqi civil war and it is time for the Iraqis to resolve it themselves."
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) June 18, 2014
But Reid felt differently in September 2013, when President Obama wanted to commit American forces to intervene in the Syrian civil war, which has resulted in the deaths of at least 160,000 people and produced 2.7 million refugees.
In fact, Reid offered a dramatic defense of military intervention on the Senate floor that included both a Holocaust comparison and a reference to Dante’s "Inferno." Roll Call reported at the time:
"As America faces yet another crisis of conscience, another opportunity to intervene on behalf of humanity, my mind returns to that turning point in the world’s history, when the United States of America faced down an evil regime that murdered millions of innocent citizens. Millions and millions of civilians and prisoners of war were murdered by gas in Nazi death camps," Reid said. "Belsen, Trebinka, Auschwitz. ‘Never again,’ swore the world, ‘never again’ would we permit the use of these poisonous weapons of war."
Reid used a familiar quote, often attributed to Dante’s "Inferno," noting it has prominent placement at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
"Today, many Americans say that these atrocities are none of our business, that they’re not our concern. I disagree. Any time the powerful turn such weapons of terror and destruction against the powerless, it is our business, and the weapons in question are categorically different," Reid said.
A pretty unequivocal statement. "Without question," Reid said, "this brutality demands a response." However, congressional support for a military response never materialized, and Reid called off the vote after Russian president Vladimir Putin stepped in to negotiate a face-saving disarmament agreement on Obama’s behalf. (The Syrian regime has since given up a majority of its chemical weapons stockpile, but according to an international watchdog group, continues to use deadly agents such as chlorine gas in a "systemic manner" against its own people.)
This was all very awkward for Reid, as the Las Vegas Sun noted:
Reid was forced to backpedal fast. He took the planned Syria vote off the Senate’s calendar Monday night, and by Tuesday, Reid had edited his firm conviction to allow for giving peace a chance.
"If there is a realistic chance to secure Syria’s chemical weapons and prevent further atrocities by the Assad regime, we should not turn our backs on that chance," Reid said Tuesday, with apparent reservation. "But for such a solution to be plausible the Assad regime must quickly prove that their offer is real…the Senate should give these international discussions time to play out, but not unlimited time."
Note the lack of Holocaust and/or Dante references. And now that the Syrian civil war has spilled over into Iraq, Reid stands ready to support the president’s decision, whatever that may be. (He’s still deciding.)