Last year, this president fired what, 59 Tomahawks, into Syria, and what happened. Here we are again.

I'm Mehdi Hussain. Welcome to Deconstructed, where we try and get behind the headlines

beyond the span and outside the bubble of the conventional media wisdom. This week, Syria,

a war seemingly without end. Seven long years of bloodshed, terror, foreign interventions,

and perhaps most horrifically of all, the repeated use of chemical weapons to kill women and children.

The latest such incident in Duma has prompted President Donald Trump to threaten his second

aerial attack against the Assad regime since coming to office in January 2017, but on what

authority? And with what plan? I'll speak to Congresswoman Barbara Lee, one of the most

principled and consistent voices against US military interventions on Capitol Hill,

and the only member of Congress to vote against the invasion of Afghanistan back in 2001.

The president needs to come to Congress. If he's going to use force in Syria, he needs to come to

Congress for an authorization. We need to debate the costs and consequences and make some decisions

as to whether or not we will authorize the use of force. Forget Russia Gate, is this the real

constitutional crisis? And how close are we to kicking off World War III in the Middle East?

Yeah, well, absolutely nothing. I'm no pacifist. My view is that war is always evil,

but sometimes a necessary evil. But only, only when it's an absolute last resort, when there are no

other options, when there's no alternative, and when it's legal, when it's proportionate,

and when it has a reasonable chance of success. Those are the criteria that I'd apply

when judging a bombing campaign or a new war. Those are the criteria that countless scholars,

philosophers, theologians, jurists through the ages have used to determine whether a war is just

or not, and yet almost none of those criteria have been met in Syria, where Donald Trump

is on the verge of launching a new bombing campaign against the Bashar al-Assad regime, alongside France,

...