US President Barack Obama drew a barrage of criticism from both Republican leaders and his own Democratic party mates following his decision to deploy fewer than 50 Special Operations forces to Syria to lead the fight against hundreds if not thousands of battle-hardened Islamic State (ISIS) militants, various reports said.
Russia also criticised the "unilateral" US action, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warning that Obama's decision could lead to a "proxy war" between the US and Russia in Syria, Al Jazeera reported on Saturday.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump led the GOP onslaught against Obama, saying he thinks "we have a president who just doesn't know what he's doing," calling the strategy a half-measure that just wouldn't work, CNN also reported on Saturday.
Republican Rep. Peter King of New York said the move was "too little, too late," adding that Obama's decision is an admission that his policy has failed, according to News Max. King is a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.
"It appears almost to be a Band-Aid or just a stop-gap until he's out of office," King said. "You're talking about Syrian troops, ISIS forces, Iranians, Russians all in that part of the world, in that country. How 50 American troops are going to make that big a difference without putting them at risk, the president hasn't answered that."
Other Republicans also assailed Obama's decision.
"Unfortunately, this limited action is yet another insufficient step in the Obama administration's policy of gradual escalation," said Arizona Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Such grudging incrementalism is woefully inadequate to the scale of the challenge we face."
Another Republican committee member, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, said "history has shown that a gradual increase in military force to achieve a non-existent strategy is a recipe for failure."
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called the decision "an incremental change that will not change the conditions on the ground."
"In the eyes of the enemy this is weakness. In the eyes of our allies this is unreliability. ISIL is not going to be intimidated by this move," Graham said.
Congressional Democrats also blasted their own president's decision, saying the move was being made without a clear US strategy in Syria.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said sending American special forces into Syria represents a major shift in policy that puts the United States on a "potentially dangerous downward slope into a civil war with no end in sight," the Associated Press reported.
Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii called the deployment a "strategic mistake."
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said it is "time for the Administration to propose a unified strategy that addresses the intertwined challenges posed by ISIL and President Assad."
Even independent Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders "expressed concern" over Obama's decision which, he said, could draw the US "into the quagmire of the Syrian civil war which could lead to perpetual warfare in that region."
