Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg criticized President Donald Trump for his decision to authorize the strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Buttigieg said one of the lessons learned from the ongoing wars in the Middle East is that “taking out a bad guy is not necessarily a good idea.”
“There is no question that Soleimani had American blood on his hands and that he was a bad actor in the region. But if there is anything that we have learned in the last 20 years about the Middle East, it’s that taking out a bad guy is not necessarily a good idea.”
Watch his comments below:
"There is no question that Soleimani had American blood on his hands & that he was a bad actor in the region. But if there is anything that we have learned in the last 20 years about the Middle East, it's that taking out a bad guy is not necessarily a good idea."–@PeteButtigieg pic.twitter.com/0lBhQ1LXTx
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) January 6, 2020
He continued to question how much the administration had thought about the potential fallout from the strike.
“What we’ve seen here is no evidence that there’s been proper consultation with Congress. And more importantly and more dangerously, no evidence that they’ve really thought about the consequences.”
“Already certain things are happening, including the fact that it’s less likely that Iran’s nuclear ambitions can be controlled,” he added.
“We have a suspension in our counter-ISIS operations, and evidence that we are moving towards a scenario where we’ll be expelled from Iraq. So if they were thinking about this in terms of the 3-D chess that it is, and not checkers, we’ve not seen evidence of why they felt that this was the only or best decision.”
In response to the strike, which occurred without authorization from Congress, the House is expected to pass a resolution designed to “limit the President’s military actions regarding Iran,” as IJR has previously reported.
While Congress has decried the decision to carry out the strike without getting authorization from Congress, former Homeland Security Secretary under the Obama administration Jeh Johnson said Trump was within his Constitutional authority.
