A number of Sen. John McCain’s constituents are not happy with the Arizona Republican’s support of President Barack Obama’s plan to take military action against Syria. Voters made that much perfectly clear when they confronted him at a town hall in Phoenix on Thursday.
“We didn’t send you to make war for us. We sent you to stop the war,” one man said to applause, CNN reports.
Another man told McCain Congress is ignoring its duty to represent voters.
“This is what I think of Congress,” he said, holding a bag of marshmallows in his hand. “They are a bunch of marshmallows. That’s what they are. That’s what they’ve become. Why are you not listening to the people and staying out of Syria? It’s not our fight.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday afternoon passed a new use-of-force resolution that, if passed by the Senate, will give Obama authority to carry out military strikes. It also includes a loophole that may leave room for placing troops on the ground.
The resolution only prohibits “the use of United States Armed Forces on the ground in Syria for the purpose of combat operations.” The language seems to leave open the possibility of deploying troops for non-combat operations, such as securing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons.
“Polls this week have shown more Americans oppose military strikes in Syria than support them,”CNN reports.
A woman at the Arizona town hall, claiming to have an 18-year-old cousin in Syria, said the U.S. had not pursued all routes of diplomacy.
“For me, to listen to you say there is no good option in Syria – I refuse to believe that…The good option right now is to take Saudi Arabia and Iran and force them to stop supporting the two sides in Syria. And you could do it. You can do it by diplomacy, not bombs, Sen. McCain. We cannot afford to shed more Syrian blood,” she said.
McCain validated the voters’ concerns, saying that there are “strong feelings” from both sides of the issue.
“[A]ll of us, our hearts go out to those people who have been massacred and killed in this terrible bloodletting that’s been going on,” he added.
This story may be updated with additional video footage.