Thomas Breen Photo
Murphy at Monday night’s town hall at Daniels School.
Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy lifted two fingers to count out the tests he’ll be using when Congress is asked to vote on each of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.
“Number one, you can’t be a radical,” he said. “Number two, you should have some level of experience in the field in which you’re going to be leading.”
Then Murphy gave a New Haven audience a head’s up: “I know that I’m going to vote for some of his nominees who I disagree with, because I think the president has the right to put people around him who are going to carry out government according to his wishes. But there is a line, and already many of these nominees have crossed that line.”
The strict definition of that line, and which nominees may have crossed it and which are merely toeing it, were a few of the subjects at the center of an hour-and-45-minute town hall dedicated to U.S. foreign policy that Murphy hosted Monday night at the John C. Daniels School of International Communication l on Congress Avenue.
A long line of audience members waiting to ask the senator questions about foreign policy.
Around 200 people from New Haven, West Haven, and a wide swath of southeastern Connecticut filled the school’s auditorium to ask, praise, and grill the state’s junior senator about issues ranging from the next administration’s relationship to Russia to the international consequences of domestic division to the ever-escalating humanitarian crisis in Syria.
Murphy, a Wethersfield native, was first elected to Congress in 2006 as a vocal critic of the Iraq War and who has subsequently made a name for himself as a rising star of the progressive left wing of the Democratic Party. Monday night he took question after question after question from the audience. With each answer, he reinforced his conviction that sound U.S. foreign policy rests first and foremost on the credibility of American democracy, both in the functioning of its political institutions as well as in the discourse that defines its political culture.
When asked to comment on the two men President-Elect Donald Trump may nominate to lead the State Department, Murphy began to tease out just whom he may disqualify as a radical, what kind of behavior may threaten American credibility abroad, and what kinds of promises may help win his grudging vote.
“I don’t believe that John Bolton, who expressed enthusiastic support for bombing Iran during the negotiations over their nuclear program, could ever get confirmed by the U.S. Senate,” Murphy said, referring to the hawkish former UN ambassador who is under consideration to become the next deputy secretary of state.
“Rand Paul is committed to opposing his nomination, and I think other Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would consider rejecting Bolton as well. I hope that President-Elect Trump reads this situation the same way that I do, and that he nominates someone else.”
The Tillerson Red Line
Daniels Principal Marlene Baldizon introducing Murphy.
Turning next to the prospective secretary of state, Murphy reflected on the dubious rationale of appointing the CEO of Exxon Mobil to be the country’s next chief diplomat.
“Rex Tillerson may not be a radical,” he said, “but the idea of putting someone in charge of the State Department who has had the chance several times throughout his career to choose country over company and who did not, is deeply troubling to me.”
Murphy said senators from both sides of the aisle will press Tillerson to vow to protect against what he sees as one of the biggest harbingers of geopolitical conflict today: Vladimir Putin’s aggressive push to carve out an expanding, unfettered sphere of Russian influence in Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union.
“My friends Lindsay Graham and John McCain have previewed that the only way that they’re going to support Tillerson is if he makes some commitments on the question of preserving Russian sanctions,” he said, responding to Connecticut Ukrainian activist Myron Melnyk’s question about whether the Exxon Mobil chief’s commercial interests in drilling for Black Sea oil reserves could lead to a premature thaw in U.S.-Russian relations.
“So maybe Tillerson’s going to have to make those commitments to get the job. Either way, there’s definitely going to be a bipartisan effort in Congress to explore how to preserve these sanctions if the next administration does not firmly commit to them.”
The Hippocratic Oath
While many of the 30-plus questions that the senator answered over the course of the evening touched on what to expect from President-Elect Trump’s approach to foreign policy, just as many turned to the current human rights catastrophe in Syria, where last week’s evacuation and bombardment of Aleppo by the Syrian government (as backed by Russia) has re-focused the world’s eyes on a five-year civil war that has seen over 450,000 killed and nearly 10 million displaced.
Murphy called for a greater commitment from the U.S. in providing humanitarian relief to Syria’s besieged and displaced. But he doubled down on a message that first swept him into political office a decade ago: that deeper American military involvement in the Middle East has been, and will continue to be, a grave mistake.
“I understand that restraint is unnatural, that it feels awful in the face of evil,” he said. “But the Hippocratic Oath has to apply to U.S. foreign policy: First, do no harm. We have no idea how to politically manage the Middle East. We are miserable at it. And we have been inept at using military force to deliver political salvation to the people there. To compound the mistake of Iraq by making a similar mistake in Syria would be an abdication of the responsibility of those of us who claim to learn from history.”
iRefugees
Murphy listens to one of 30-plus questions he answered over the course of the evening.
The history that Murphy did wish to repeat instead looks a bit closer to home, not at military action but at an American culture that aspires to welcome the most vulnerable in their escape from state violence.
After an Amity high school student asked the senator how she and her teenage classmates could best support those fleeing Syria, the senator reached in his pocket for his iPhone.
“Do you know who Steve Jobs’s father was?” he asked the crowd, holding his phone aloft and referencing the founder of Apple. “He was a Syrian refugee. We wouldn’t be carrying these things around if it wasn’t for the history of Syrian refugees in this country.
“So please, tell the story of the refugees that are here, of the refugees that have come here in the past, and make people understand that these people are not terrorists. They’re just regular people.”