Rand Paul slams John McCain’s hawkish foreign policy
Rand Paul slams John McCain’s hawkish foreign policy
Posted on December 3, 2014
December 4, 2014 by Sam Rolley
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a “wacko bird,” took Senate hawk John McCain (R-Ariz.) to task this week, saying his elderly colleague would like to see the U.S. involved in “15 wars more.”
“I want less, McCain wants more [military intervention],” Paul said at a Wall Street Journal event. “He wants 15 countries more, 15 wars more. But the thing is, is that there is a more and a less argument.
“When you poll that in Iowa, 45 percent agreed with McCain and 41 percent agreed with me.”
The numbers come from a recent Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll question pitting Paul’s policy positions against McCain’s.
Paul offered that his Senate re-election platform, as well as any future presidential plans, includes advocacy for war only as a last result.
“If I’m ever commander in chief, I will not want to take the country to war,” the senator said. “It will be the last resort and only when the country is united.”
The lawmaker said he “begrudgingly” supports current U.S. efforts to quell unrest in the Middle East, but reminded the audience that he argued against arming so-called moderate rebels in Syria last year. Many of the weapons have since been commandeered by radicals.
On Wednesday, Paul introduced legislation that would levy a congressional declaration of war against Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria if passed.
“Six hundred tons of weapons went into Syria in 2013 alone… Many of them found their way into the hands of ISIS,” Paul said. “I don’t think there are any moderates there. There’s two million Christians who are on the other side of the war. It’s a messy civil war and we shouldn’t be involved in it.
“The only reason I’m for getting back involved over there is not because I think there’s any end to the war between Sunnis and Shiites or there’s any end to the Syrian civil war or there would be anything that great by replacing Assad with ISIS,” Paul said. “But the reason I get involved is because we have an embassy and a consulate to defend.”
The lawmaker added that a true defeat of ISIS will only come with populist revolt against the group’s barbaric form of Islam in the Middle East.
Paul said that many Americans agree with his positions despite GOP establishment smears over his foreign policy positions.
“This is not a small movement, nor is it easy to say people like myself, who believe in less intervention, can be characterized as people who don’t believe in a strong national defense,” he said. “That is a caricature and I will have to fight that, but we’ll see what happens.”
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