The Republican House managed to pass their first order of business today, which was a resolution in full support of Israel after the horrible Muslim terrorist attack earlier this month.

Almost the entire House voted for the resolution except for 16 members, one of which was a Republican.

As it broke down, there were 10 ‘nays’ and 6 who voted ‘present’:

I expected to see Democrats not supporting this resolution because most of those on the list are clearly antisemitic. But I didn’t expect to see Thomas Massie.

So I looked it up and elow is why he refused to back the resolution:

I condemn the barbaric attack on Israel and I affirm Israel’s right to defend itself.

However, I will not be voting for House Resolution 771 today because:

1) It calls for sanctions on a sovereign country. Sanctions are a prelude to war and hurt the citizens of the country more than the government of the country that’s being sanctioned. And ultimately, sanctions create laws that will be used to prosecute American citizens (who engage in trade), not citizens of the sanctioned country. In short, sanctions do not achieve their stated purposes but do breed resentment of our country abroad.

2) It asserts the necessity of foreign aid commitments which I have voted against. Our country is going bankrupt and we can’t afford to borrow money to send overseas, yet this resolution states that we should.

3) It contains an open-ended promise of military support that is so broad that it could be interpreted to commit US soldiers to the conflict. US troops should not be engaged in this conflict.

4) It tends to broaden the conflict to other countries when it would be better to keep the war contained geographically.

Here’s a link to the text of the resolution, which contains some statements I do support and some statements I cannot support.