U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy speaks during the Democratic Election Night gathering at the Society Room in downtown Hartford, Conn. Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014.
Connecticut has gone from having a hawk in the Senate to a dove.
Democrat Chris Murphy is leaving no doubts that he is the antithesis of hawkish forebear Joe Lieberman, launching a foreign policy website Thursday that seeks to establish himself as the go-to voice for progressives on issues such as domestic surveillance, the use of drones and international aid.
“Today, progressives have become at best, reactive, and at worst, absent, from serious, meaningful foreign policy debates,” Murphy wrote in an editorial on the website, ChanceForPeace.org, a title borrowed from a speech by former President Dwight Eisenhower. “The world is a mess, and while there is no simple pill America can administer to fix things, what we know is that there is significant room for progressives to articulate a foreign policy vision that is truly our own.”
Murphy, who is the ranking member of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, said progressives have been reduced to rubber-necking in the foreign policy debate between President Barack Obama and Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rand Paul, R-Ky.
“We simply believe that we should lean into the world with something other than the pointed edge of a sword,” Murphy said.
Ranked among the most liberal senators since his arrival in the upper chamber in 2013, Murphy departs from the president on the use of drones and domestic surveillance.
The progressive vision spelled out by Murphy calls for “An end to unchecked mass surveillance programs, at home and abroad, as part of a new recognition that we are safer as a nation when we aren’t so easily labeled as hypocrites for preaching and practicing vastly differently on human and civil rights.”
Murphy spends a significant part of the editorial questioning foreign aid levels by the U.S. government and calls for, “a substantial transfer of financial resources from the military budget to buttress diplomacy and foreign aid so that our global anti-poverty budget, not our military budget, equals that of the other world powers combined.”