"I think the United States has been unrealistic and irrational in our dealings with Russia and Syria. We should not forget that when we needed help in supporting the elimination of strong guys like Gaddaffi or Saddam Hussein, it set up a very bad situation where the radical Islamic forces came to play. And I think that the United States was not right in our condemnation of Russian actions in Syria, we should have applauded instead of condemning it," Rohrabacher, a chairman of the US Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, said.
Washington and Moscow have different approaches to the future of the current Syrian president, with the United States wanting Bashar Assad to leave his office, while Russia maintains that the future of Syria can only be decided by its people.
Both countries have been involved in airstrikes against terrorists in Syria, but conducted their aerial campaigns separately. Unlike the strikes of the US-led international coalition, Russia's anti-terrorist operation in Syria was approved by Damascus.
Rohrabacher praised Russia's role in preventing Syrian President Bashar Assad from being replaced by jihadists.
"It is a very good thing that Assad is not being replaced by a radical Islamic jihadist regime, and that the Russian intervention in this conflict perhaps prevented Assad from being replaced by a jihadist regime," Rohrabacher, who chairs the US Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, said.
He cited Libya and Iraq as examples of the states where the overthrow of the regimes had led to chaos.
Moreover, Rohrabacher said that he hoped the next US president would take a less hostile approach to Russia, unlike the current one.
"Whoever the next president is, [the new US president] will have a new policy towards Russia and hopefully it will be one that is much more aimed at cooperation rather than trying to be confrontational and standoffish. We were aggressively vilifying Russia for the last few years when there are lots of things that we could have been doing for mutually beneficial activities," Rohrabacher, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, said.
According to the congressman, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is expected to "be much more inclined toward full cooperation with Russia on a broad scale. And the other republicans who are running are openly hostile towards working with Russia."
The United States is expected to elect its new president on November 8, 2016.
