Eli Lake, Columnist

How a Senate Debate Is Hurting U.S. Policy in the Mideast

Concerns about the U.S. role in Syria shouldn’t prevent the confirmation of a diplomat qualified to manage policy there.

December 17, 2018 at 10:30 AM UTC

By Eli Lake

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Rubble in Aleppo.
Photographer: George Ourfalian/AFP/Getty Images

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As Congress wraps up this week, it’s worth paying attention to David Schenker. His is a name few Americans know, but he is the victim of an important fight about the president’s war powers.

Nominated last spring to be assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, Schenker enjoys broad bipartisan support in the Senate. But Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, is holding Schenker’s nomination in a bid to get President Donald Trump to turn over the legal memo that authorized U.S. air strikes on a Syrian airbase in April 2017.