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Murphy’s statement was released Tuesday after U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced the United States will deploy additional special forces to Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS.
Murphy is the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism.
“Though tempting to try to make up the inadequacies of local forces with superior U.S. personnel, the slow build-up of U.S. combat soldiers inside Syria and Iraq risks repeating the mistake of the Iraq War – believing that extremism can be defeated by U.S. troops absent local political and military capacity.” he said. “As I warned in October, deploying troops to Syria in the middle of a civil war inevitably risks drawing U.S. forces into direct combat with a proliferating number of armed groups and foreign militaries, a quagmire that could involve us for years to come.”
While acknowledging U.S. ground troops can “kill a lot of bad guys,” Murphy said one of the lessons of Iraq is that a U.S. presence “has the effect of drawing two enemy fighters into battle for every one we kill.”
Although ISIS remains “the number one threat in the region,” Murphy said America “should help stand up an inclusive Iraqi fighting force capable of taking the fight to ISIS, continue airstrikes and special operations missions against key ISIS targets, significantly ramp up our humanitarian assistance and work with our allies and others in the region toward a political solution.”
Murphy called for Congress to have a vote on authorizing military action.
“Today's announcement of new ground troops in the Middle East is further evidence that we are at war in the Middle East again, and Congress should have the guts to authorize and set parameters around this new fight," he added.
Earlier this year, Murphy introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would prevent the United States from sending American ground troops to engage in the fight against ISIS in Iraq or Syria.
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