“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough took aim at President Barack Obama’s request for a new authorization for use of military force Thursday morning, saying the U.S. can’t continue to go to war “half-assed.”
The former Florida congressman added that if he were still in the Congress, he’d vote against the current resolution because “the president doesn’t have a strategy.”
“The mistake that Americans have made time and time and time again is they have gone into war half-assed,” Scarborough said. “We’ll do a little bit here, we’ll do a little bit there, we’ll see what happens. They end up using American men and women as targets for enemies, for suicide bombers, for snipers to blow their brains out.”
“If you are going to war, go to war to win war. And if you’re not going to go to war to win war, then keep our men and women home. This right now continues to seem, to me at least, to make more of a halfway approach.”
Scarborough was then asked by former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. if he would vote for the war resolution as currently constructed.
“I would vote no right now,” Scarborough said. “The president doesn’t have a strategy. You talk to generals who will tell you the president doesn’t have a strategy. You talk to Democratic foreign policy giants, they will tell you the president doesn’t have a strategy. … You talk to foreign ambassadors both friends and foe, they will tell you the president doesn’t have a strategy.”
“I’m not willing to send more Americans to die until the president knows exactly what he wants out of this,” the “Morning Joe” host said. “And this incrementalism, this leading from behind is not good enough.”