Bernie Sanders: I'm concerned about GOP "war talk"
Bernie Sanders, long known for his anti-war positions, raised a red flag Sunday on the rhetoric coming from GOP circles about Mideast crises.
On Sunday, Sanders said he is "very concerned about a lot of the war talk that I am hearing from my Republican colleagues who apparently have forgotten the cost of war and the errors made in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Sanders, the independent senator who is challenging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, has run a campaign more focused on economic equality in the U.S. than his foreign policy vision. But in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, he talked about how the U.S. should address the ongoing refugee crisis being created by instability in Syria.
"I think really the issue now is not who is at fault, the issue is now what we do," Sanders said when asked by host Chuck Todd whether the policies of former President George W. Bush or President Obama were to blame. "What we do is bring the region together."
Sanders said countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey are going to "have to get their hands dirty and are going to have to get on the ground" to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He said the U.S., Britain, France and other allies should be "supportive," but he does not believe in putting American troops into combat there.
"I disagree that the United States should have combat troops in that area. I fear very much that we will be in perpetual warfare in that region. I do not want to see that occur," he said.
Sanders voted against the war in Iraq, a position he often mentions when asked to compare his candidacy with Clinton's. He has only voted in favor of U.S. military action twice: Once to intervene in the Kosovo during the humanitarian crisis created by the Bosnian War in the 1990s, and another time to authorize the war in Afghanistan.
"I believed that Osama bin Laden needed to be captured, needed to be brought to trial," he said.
But it was that reflection that led Sanders to criticize his colleagues for "war talk."
"What I believe," he said, "is that the most powerful military on Earth, the United States of America, that our government should do everything that we can to resolve international conflict in a way that does not require war. Sometimes using military force is necessary. But I think it should be the last resort, not the first resort."
He did say the U.S. should be a part of the response to the hundreds of thousands of Syrians that have fled the war and are seeking refuge.
"Europe, the United States, and by the way countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, must address this humanitarian crisis. People are leaving Iraq, they're leaving Syria with just the clothes on their backs. The world has got to respond. The United States should be part of that response," he said.