Rand Paul has called for military action in Iraq and Syria to pushback ISIS. Two weeks ago, he was warning of the dangers of “shoot first and ask questions later” “interventionism.”
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Has Rand “flip-flopped?” Not at all.
Paul has said that the U.S.’s decision to invade Iraq and to arm the Syrian rebels has led to many problems including the current dilemma with ISIS. Conservatives used to believe that government action almost always causes a reaction. Rand Paul has tried to remind them that this applies to foreign policy too.
But this does not mean the U.S. never goes to war. When the U.S. was attacked on 9/11, we went into Afghanistan to rout the Taliban. Rand Paul supported it. So did his father.
When the U.S. is attacked or threatened, we defend ourselves. That’s what most of us think of as a normal foreign policy.
What we have today is not a normal foreign policy. In Iraq and Syria, the U.S. intervened (to varying degrees) for reasons that had little to nothing to do with America’s national security and created new problems.
Paul addressed our mistakes in Syria specifically in his TIME op-ed Thursday: “Until we acknowledge that arming the Islamic rebels in Syria allowed ISIS a safe haven, no amount of military might will extricate us from a flawed foreign policy.”
Then he addressed the problems with our larger foreign policy: “Today, there are more terrorists groups than there were before 9/11, most notably ISIS. After all the sacrifice in Afghanistan and Iraq, why do we find ourselves in a more dangerous world?”
Paul has always said the actions we took in the name of fighting extremists have now led to the most extreme group imaginable in ISIS.
So what do we do about it? Paul says we must fight.
Rand Paul has always said radical Islam is something America can’t afford to ignore. He said a year-and-a-half ago, “Some libertarians argue that western occupation fans the flames of radical Islam – I agree. But I don’t agree that absent western occupation that radical Islam “goes quietly into that good night.”
Rand Paul has never said the U.S. doesn’t have enemies. He has also never said we shouldn’t fight those enemies when we must.
He has simply said the way we fight them creates more enemies. This is apparently confusing to Beltway politicians and pundits who can’t see anything in between endless intervention and “isolationism”
Rand Paul addressed this in his speech at The Heritage Foundation in February 2013:
If for example, we imagine a foreign policy that is everything to everyone, that is everywhere all the time that would be one polar extreme.
Likewise if we imagine a foreign policy that is nowhere any of the time and is completely disengaged from the challenges and dangers to our security that really do exist in the world – well, that would be the other polar extreme.
There are times, such as existed in Afghanistan with the Bin Laden terrorist camps, that do require intervention.
Maybe, we could be somewhere, some of the time and do so while respecting our constitution and the legal powers of Congress and the Presidency.
Paul explained this worldview again in the first paragraph of his TIME op-ed: “Some pundits are surprised that I support destroying the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) militarily. They shouldn’t be. I’ve said since I began public life that I am not an isolationist, nor am I an interventionist. I look at the world, and consider war, realistically and constitutionally.”
Paul’s call for military action against ISIS has led some hawks to feel vindicated, some liberals call him a flip-flopper and some libertarians brand him a sell-out.
Hawks worry a popular non-interventionist Republican could threaten their worldview, liberals worry he might look better to progressives than Hillary Clinton, and libertarians worry that he isn’t pure enough.
Each of them is right.
Rand Paul is a libertarian-leaning, non-interventionist Republican operating in a world where radical Islam is a genuine threat and both parties have done everything they possibly can to exacerbate that problem.
Hawks pick every battle. “Isolationists” would presumably pick no battles.
Rand Paul has picked this one. It is the first military intervention he has supported since Afghanistan in 2001. He might be right. He might be wrong. Time will tell.
But it’s not a flip-flop. It’s consistent with what he’s said his entire career.
Disclosure: I co-authored Senator Rand Paul’s 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington.