Lindsey Graham and John McCain, two of the Senate’s most prominent defense hawks, are none too impressed with Secretary of State John Kerry’s tough talk on Russia.
After Kerry phoned the Russian foreign minister to tell him that the US would suspend talks with Russia over Syria unless they stopped the attacks there, Graham and McCain slapped Kerry with a biting statement mocking Kerry’s “real power move in American diplomacy.”
“No more lakeside tête-à-têtes at five-star hotels in Geneva. No more joint press conferences in Moscow,” the two Senate Republicans said. “We can only imagine that having heard the news, Vladimir Putin has called off his bear hunt and is rushing back to the Kremlin to call off Russian airstrikes on hospitals, schools and humanitarian aid convoys around Aleppo.”
Aleppo is teetering on the brink of falling to Syrian regime forces, but there is no consensus in the Obama administration on what, if any, action to take to help the beleaguered opposition with which the US is allied.
Graham and McCain, two of the most quotable members of Congress, are personally close and have called for greater confrontation toward Putin’s aggression in the Middle East. Kerry himself has been characterized by Republicans during his career as effete given his well-to-do upbringing — which the two senators mock in their statement.
“After all, butchering the Syrian people to save the Assad regime is an important Russian goal,” they said. “But not if it comes at the unthinkable price of dialogue with Secretary Kerry.”