- White House press secretary
Jen Psaki is facing criticism for an old tweet about Syria. - Psaki in 2017 questioned the legality of airstrikes launched by the Trump administration.
- On Thursday the Biden administration launched attacks on Iran-backed militia groups in Syria.
- On Friday the White House offered a justification, citing the US Constitution and principles of self-defense.
A tweet in which White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki questioned the legality of US airstrikes on Syria is coming under fresh scrutiny.
The renewed attention came after the Biden administration launched airstrikes on Syrian territory, targeting what the Department of Defense said were Iranian-backed militias operating there.
Psaki posted the tweet on April 14, 2017, after the Trump administration launched airstrikes against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad following a nerve agent attack on civilians by regime forces.
It said: "Also what is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country."
—Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) April 7, 2017
The strike, one of former President Donald Trump's first major foreign policy moves, involved firing a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian government airbase, in retaliation for an earlier chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians.
The move ended the US policy of not using direct military force against Syria, which had been enacted by President Barack Obama, in whose administration Psaki worked.
At the time, Trump's strike received some bipartisan praise, including by Trump's former presidential rival Hillary Clinton.
Critics say that according to the logic Psaki applied in 2017, the Biden administration's airstrikes Thursday should also be deemed illegal. In 2021 as in 2017, Syria is riven by a civil war and has Assad as its president. No signficiant changes have made it more or less of a sovereign country, the words Psaki used.
However, on Friday the Biden administration did offer a justification for the strike, arguing that it acted in self-defense after an earlier attack on US personnel.
The Biden administration launched its strike on Thursday. Unlike Trump's attack, per a Pentagon statement, this one targeted Iran-backed militias in Syria rather than Assad's forces.
The statement named two groups: Kait'ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kait'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS).
Thursday's strike came in response to an attack last week by Iran-backed militants on an Iraqi airbase used by the US military, which killed one US military contractor and wounded nine other people.
The Pentagon statement said its strike destroyed "multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups." It described the strike as "defensive."
—Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 26, 2021
Among those to highlight Psaki's old tweet was Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of two Muslim women to serve in Congress. In the aftermath of the strike she quoted the old post, adding: "Great question."
The polemicist and journalist Glenn Greenwald also weighed in, saying: "Someone should ask @PressSec her own question verbatim about Biden's Syria bombing at tomorrow's briefing (and while the context of her tweet was Trump's bombing of Syrian forces, the question still applies)."
—Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 26, 2021
In a tweet on Friday morning, GOP Sen. Rand Paul also asked "what authority" Biden has to "strike Syria," adding that "perhaps someone" should question Psaki about it.
Psaki did not immediately respond to an email from Insider for comment on the criticism. However, a spokesperson for the National Security Council set out a justification for the attack, citing the US Constitution and international law.
The spokesperson said: "The president acted pursuant to inherent self-defense powers enshrined in our Constitution and the UN Charter. We had a rigorous process to include legal review of the strikes conducted."
"As a matter of domestic law, the President took this action pursuant to his Article II authority to defend U.S. personnel," the statement added.
Article II of the US Constitution appoints the president as commander-in-chief of the military. Multiple administrations have argued that this gives the president broad authority to act to protect US troops.
"The targets were chosen to correspond to the recent attacks - the facilities are utilized by KSS and KH - and to deter the risk of additional attacks over the coming weeks," the spokesperson continued. "As a matter of international law, the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense, as reflected in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The strikes were necessary to address the threat and proportionate to the prior attacks."
The situation differs from the 2017 Trump strike, when critics argued that because the Assad regime was not directly targeting the US, the legal justification for Trump's airstrikes was murky, reported The Guardian.
Biden entered the White House at a time of growing calls in Congress to rein in presidential war powers after nearly 20 years of continuous conflict since the 9/11 terror attacks.
Laws passed after the attacks, which Biden voted for as a senator, have effectively given every president since very wide authority to use military force around the world.
As lawmakers push for more limitations on a president's authority over America's considerable military assetts, Biden has launched a review of lethal US counterterrorism efforts, The Daily Beast reported this week.