West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin appears to have summarized his foreign policy approach in one line: "If you screw with America, we'll kill you."
He was speaking at a luncheon Tuesday, according to the
Charleston Daily Mail.
His concluding comment would appear to apply to any adversary, from the Islamic State (ISIS) to Iran, though he preceded the statement with more measured remarks about the threats facing the world.
"Would you rather negotiate for peace or declare war?" Manchin said, mentioning Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker's bill to force President Barack Obama to send any agreement with Iran to Congress for approval.
"We've been pretty quick on declaring war. We declared on Iraq — that didn't work real well. They didn't have the weapons of mass destruction we thought they would have. We took out Moammar Gaddafi — that didn't work too well. We've taken out Saddam Hussein — that sure didn't work well. They want us to take out (Bashar) al-Assad in Syria. I said, what are you going to leave?
"These are horrific dictators. I agree, I wish the world was rid of them. But that part of the world seems to function off this part of tyranny, if you will, of barbaric actions," he said.
"With all of that, what do we do?" he asked. "I think we can find a middle ground."
Manchin said that the United States should be slower to consider war, given the current state of Iraq and Libya, and that money or the military is not the solution to fighting ISIS.
"The bottom line is unless that part of the world — the peace-loving Muslim world — wants to fight and defend themselves, we can't do it for them," he said.
"We go in there and we can't get out. We want to build them a church, we want to build them a school, we want to build them roads. Hell, you turn your back, they blow it up."