'It is easier to get into a war than it is to get out of a war,' Bernie Sanders warns

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday urged caution and a reassertion of congressional authority in response to President Trump's Thursday airstrike on Syrian regime targets.

"I do not believe ... the president simply has the authority to launch missiles," Sanders told NBC's Chuck Todd in an interview on Meet the Press. "I think he has got to come to the United States Congress. I think he has got to explain to us what his long-term goals are."

"Chuck, let me just say this: Maybe the most important vote that I have ever cast in my life as a member of Congress was against the war in Iraq," Sanders continued. "When we get sucked into a war, we do not know the unintended consequences. It is easier to get into a war than it is to get out of a war, as we have learned now over the last 15 years in the Middle East."

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Sanders also issued a statement in which he warned "these strikes could lead to the United States once again being dragged back into the quagmire of long-term military engagement in the Middle East." Watch his Meet the Press comments below. Bonnie Kristian

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.