UPDATE: Received this e-mail from Senator Tom Udall (D. NM) and VoteVets:
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
In the 1980s, the United States armed Afghan rebels. We sent them weapons, intelligence, and training. The rebels were successful. But decades later, those same weapons wound up in the hands of our enemies, used against our armed forces in a desert war that has lasted for over ten years.
Are we really going to do that again? Congress is getting ready to send heavy weapons to rebels in Syria, despite our lack of information about who these rebels are.
The United States cannot afford to jump into the middle of another civil war in the Middle East. I'm teaming up with VoteVets to oppose this intervention, and we need your support. Add your name to mine and thousands of others. Tell Congress: Don't arm Syrian rebels:
http://www.tomudall.com/...
Syrian President Assad is a bad guy, there's no questions about that. The question is whether the United States is ready to hand over heavy weapons to people we barely know.
There is no clear leadership or direction for these Syrian rebels. We don't know what their motivations are, who they're allied with, or what they plan to do if Assad is overthrown.
I'm not prepared to start down this road. We would be injecting the region with powerful weapons that could easily wind up in the hand of people who will point them at U.S. troops.
Join VoteVets and me -- let Congress know that we don't want them to arm the Syrian rebels:
http://www.tomudall.com/...
We need to exercise caution before we jump feet-first into civil war in Syria.
Thank you for adding your voice.
Tom
Click here to sign udall & VoteVet's petition:
http://www.tomudall.com/...
There are two big issues that Senator Tom Udall (D. NM) has really been stepping up on that I'm very happy about. The first is his opposition to arming the Syrian rebels:
http://myhighplains.com/...
Like many others, I am deeply disturbed by the current situation in Syria. The appalling atrocities. The tragic loss of human life. The reported use of chemical weapons. This deserves the clear condemnation of the international community. But, I am also concerned by the growing fervor for intervention in this war. By the rush to judgment for the United States to yet again become entangled in a civil war.
The President has decided to send arms to the rebels to fight the government of Bashar al-Assad. The full scope of this intervention is not yet clear. But this path is dangerous and unnecessary.
The Assad regime is cruel and corrupt. We can all agree on that point. But many of the groups fighting against him do not share our values and could be worse. They may pose long-term risk to us. And to our allies. Assad's enemies may very well be America's enemies. The fact is, we do not know.
A number of experts, including our military brass, have sounded alarms. Warning that the options to intervene in Syria range from bad to worse. And could prove damaging to America's strategic interests. I was one of just three senators on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to vote against arming these little known and unorganized rebels.
By flooding Syria with weapons, we risk arming those who ultimately may seek to do us harm. We have been down this road before. And recent history tells a cautionary tale. In the 1980s, the United States supported a rebel insurgency to repel the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Back then, as now, many members of Congress pushed for arming these rebels. The United States supplied weapons, intelligence and training. With the goal to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Our short-term victory had tragic consequences for the future. Radical members of the insurgency formed the Taliban regime. Giving safe haven to terrorist training camps. Providing material support to Osama bin Laden and his fledgling Al Qaeda movement. Through state-sponsored terrorism in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda thrived. And perpetrated attacks on the USS Cole and the World Trade Center on 9/11. The aftermath has been more than a decade of war. - My High Plains, 6/18/13
Recently, Senator Udall and Jon Soltz, chairman and co-founder of the group VoteVets, released an article for the Huffington Post that addressed questions President Obama should be considering before moving forward with his plans:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Given this reality, President Obama must ask himself three questions: Is he absolutely convinced that arms can be reasonably accounted for and kept out of the hands of terrorist and extremist groups? Can he assure us that those arms will not become a threat to our regional allies and friends, including the government of Iraq? And if the answer to the two previous questions is no, then can he truly articulate why transferring our weapons to unorganized rebels, whose members may be affiliated with terrorist and extremist groups, is a sensible option for the American people?
Once the President considers the above, the answer on what to do becomes abundantly clear: Slow down.
While some in Congress clamor for weapons and war, we must take a step back, consider America's interests in the region, and determine how best to achieve them. We firmly believe that stopping radicalism and protecting our allies is of utmost importance. No doubt those who advocate flooding the region with arms and going to war have those same interests at heart.
However, we come to the ultimate question. And one that has not been adequately answered. Will this hasty march to war achieve these goals? Or will it ultimately harm the interests of the United States and exacerbate the terrorist threat? We believe recent history and the current intelligence on the ground supports the conclusion that the risks are just too great. After over a decade of war overseas, now is not the time to arm an unorganized, unfamiliar, and unpredictable group of rebels.
The winds of war are blowing yet again, and we should be ever vigilant before we venture into the storm. - Huffington Post, 8/17/13
Senator Chris Murphy (D. CT), Udall's colleague on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, also voted against arming the Syrian rebels and has also been active in speaking out on this:
http://www.ctpost.com/...
Murphy recounted a trip in April with three other senators to refugee camps along the Turkey-Syria border.
"This was reportedly the best of the refugee camps set up to shelter Syrian families fleeing the blood and carnage of the country's civil war," he said. "It was not a place that I would have wanted to stay for another hour.''
Murphy said, "It is easy to see why President Obama has chosen to act. A humanitarian crisis. A strategic interest. A uniquely American blend of goodness and power that tells us that we can, we must, make things better. But here is the rub: It is not enough for there to be a will. There also has to be a way ... Today in Syria, I do not believe there is that way, and I do not believe this Congress should give the president the ability to escalate America's role in the Syrian conflict without a clear set of goals and clear sense that we can achieve these goals.''
He said Assad has the momentum in the Syrian civil war and that the rebels are fragmented.
"American-supplied automatic weapons are not going to tip the balance,'' he said, and they could fall into the hands of an Islamic extremist group that is part of the insurgency.
"We've been down this very road before," Murphy continued. "In the 1980s, we gave powerful weapons to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan -- `freedom fighters' we supported in their war against the Soviets. Of course, as we all know, after kicking out the Soviets, those fighters later formed the foundation for the Taliban, providing the staging ground in Afghanistan for al Qaeda to plan its 9/11 attacks against us. We still don't know where many of the Stinger missiles we gave them are.''
Recent history tells us that "America is pretty miserable at pulling the strings of Middle Eastern politics,'' Murphy said. "In Afghanistan, after 10 years of heavy military presence, many experts think that when we leave, things won't look much different than the day before we got there. If we can't effect change with tens of thousands of troops, how are we going to do it in Syria with just guns and cash?'' - CT Post, 6/18/13
I thank both Senators Udall and Murphy for continuing to speak out on this issue and helping people become more aware of the situation in Syria. I also thank them for being the voices of common sense on this issue. Especially since the majority of Americans don't want to arm the rebels:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
A new Pew Research poll released Monday finds little public support behind a recent Obama administration decision to provide limited military support to Syrian rebels.
In all, 70 percent of U.S. adults oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-regime groups in Syria. Twenty percent are in favor of it. These figures represent little change from last December, when 24 percent favored action, and March 2012, when 29 percent were in favor.
The latest Pew poll also found that 68 percent of Americans believe the country is too overcommitted in other issues to get involved in another conflict. Sixty percent expressed skepticism about the Syrian rebels, saying that they may be no better than the current regime. But, respondents agreed by a 53-36 percent margin that it is important for the U.S. to support people who oppose authoritarian regimes--a key part of the argument for why the U.S. should become involved in Syria.
Americans are divided on whether the U.S. has a moral obligation--49 percent agree, 46 percent disagree--to try and stop the bloody violence in Syria. - TPM, 6/17/13
The other major issue I want to applaud Udall on is Citizens United:
http://legalnewsline.com/...
On Tuesday, two U.S. senators proposed separate constitutional amendments in an effort to restrict campaign spending by corporations.
An amendment proposed by Montana’s Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, says corporations don’t have constitutional rights.
During a press conference held Tuesday morning, Tester pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that allowed unrestricted campaign spending by corporations.
The nation’s high court held in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited because of the First Amendment.
The court’s ruling in favor of Citizens United stemmed from a dispute over whether the non-profit corporation could air a film critical of current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
According to the Billings Gazette, Tester said the flux of campaign spending by corporations in the wake of the ruling is “overwhelming” the electoral process.
Tester was joined by New Mexico’s Sen. Tom Udall, also a Democrat.
Udall introduced a companion amendment that says campaign money should not be deemed “speech.”
Under his amendment, Congress and states would have the authority to regulate the raising and spending of campaign money by corporations.
Constitutional amendments must be approved by two-thirds of both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
After that, they must be approved by the legislatures in at least 38 states. - Legal Newsline, 6/18/13
People For the American Way, Public Citizen and Common Cause all back Senators Udall and Tester's amendments. Udall & Tester have received praise from their fellow advocates of reversing the Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United:
http://www.pfaw.org/...
“We applaud the leadership of Senator Tom Udall and others in Congress who understand that we must now amend the US Constitution to undo the Supreme Court’s disastrous decisions in Citizens United, in Buckley v. Valeo, and in related cases… For the sake of our democratic future, we must end corporate rule over our political process and enact meaningful election reform in America,” said Mimi Stewart, New Mexico State Representative and lead sponsor of the NM amendment resolution.
“We must now amend the U.S. Constitution to undo disastrous Supreme Court’s decisions that have allowed money to swamp our elections and diminish the voices of everyday people… we must enact meaningful federal election reform that places voters, not wealthy campaign donors and special interests, first in our government,” said Andrew Bossie, Executive Director of Main Citizens for Clean Elections.
“Americans’ voices are being drowned out by huge corporations and wealthy special interests. We are heartened that these senators understand the need for a constitutional amendment to take our democracy out of the hands of corporations and wealthy special interests put it back into the hands of everyday people, where it belongs,” said Marge Baker, Executive Vice President for Policy and Program of People For the American Way.
"We applaud Senators Jon Tester and Tom Udall for their outstanding leadership in introducing today their constitutional amendment bills to reclaim our democracy. We must reverse Citizens United and ensure that people, not corporations, govern in America and that the nation lives up to its fundamental promise of political equality for all. Senator Tester’s sponsorship of the People’s Rights Amendment and Senator Udall’s re-introduction of his amendment bill on campaign spending represent significant political developments for our movement. They reflect the growing support across the country for overturning Citizens United and restoring democracy to the people,” said John Bonifaz, Executive Director of Free Speech For People.
“The American people are refusing to accept the corporate takeover of our politics and country. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have called for a constitutional amendment to restore our democracy, as have nearly 500 cities and towns across the country. Now come U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to supercharge the momentum for constitutional reform,” said Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen.
“Our country has lived with the disastrous consequences of Citizens United for over three years now. Americans have had enough. Millions of Americans have registered their anger by filing voter instruction resolutions to overturn Citizens United at the ballot box, in town halls and in state capitols across the country. We applaud Senators Tester and Udall for taking seriously the voter instruction ballot measure that passed in Montana by 75% and a resolution that passed both chambers of the New Mexico state legislature. We look forward to working with Senators Tester and Udall and other members of the House and Senate as we work in every state to support a constitutional amendment to combat the flood of money unleashed by the Citizens United decision,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, Common Cause Senior Vice President for Strategy & Programs.
“To date, 15 states and nearly 500 municipalities have called upon Congress to overturn Citizens United and related cases by amending the Constitution. The introduction of these two joint resolutions today takes that call seriously and moves us two steps closer to ensuring that in our democracy the size of your wallet does not determine the volume of your voice,” said Blair Bowie, Democracy Advocate of U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
If you would like more information on Syria, please contact either Senator Udall or Murphy for more information:
Udall: (202) 224-6621
Murphy: (202) 224-4041
And if you want more information about their constitutional amendments regarding Citizens United, please contact either Senator Udall or Senator Tester's office for more details:
Tester: (202) 224-2644
And if you would like to donate to Udall's 2014 re-election campaign, you can do so here:
https://secure.actblue.com/...