Is Rand Paul Right About The Hawks And ISIS?

Senator Rand Paul, one of the fifteen thousand dozen candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination, caused some waves with a statement regarding the foundation of the terrorist organization ISIS. This statement accused the Republican Party’s warhawks for the founding of the terrorist organization that is continuing to pose a significant threat globally.

Senator Paul’s remarks were clear about the distribution of arms to radical militant organizations, as noted here:

“ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately. They created these people. ISIS is all over Libya because these same hawks in my party loved — they loved Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya. They just wanted more of it.”

The outrage mounted from there.

In an interview with Clinton Foundation donor George Stephanopoulos for ABC News, Rick Santorum deflected the criticism about siding with Hillary Clinton’s war. Santorum would continue to remind us that he loves war and he’s still a paranoid Islamophobe.

Governor Bobby Jindal would launch similar criticism. He noted, like Santorum, that the foreign policy Senator Paul supports would not keep America safe and that he does not understand the enemy.

Libertarians actually have a quite clear understanding of the enemy and it is the fault of the hawks that things are the way they are. Besides the fact that we hand out weapons and money in the Middle East like it’s candy in a holiday parade, the destabilization of Iraq helped create the chaos that would breed ISIS.

Saddam Hussein should have never been removed. If we’re on some sort of divine trip to rid the world of evil, there are much higher ranking regimes than Hussein. If we’re taking on a strategic approach through the Middle East to defeat our enemies, Hussein should have never been touched. But the fact is, we did invade and overthrow the former Iraqi leader who was eventually put to death.

Republican hawks still have difficulty admitting this was a terrible decision and that it was politically motivated. As noted in a recent Undercover Porcupine piece titled “Lindsey Graham is Right“, denial seems to be an infectious disease.

For all the Islamophobic hatred, it’s amazing to think that on more than one occasion, Republican hawks have been supportive of arming these religious extremists in the Middle East for whatever political purpose. Another prominent example is Ronald Reagan continuing Jimmy Carter’s plan to arm, fund, and train the mujahideen in the 80’s, which would eventually evolve into Al Qaeda. Of this mujahideen was the Taliban, who Reagan referred to as “freedom fighters.”

Well, that turned out well.

Al Qaeda eventually came in and took down the Twin Towers, which led us to chase them into the Middle East. While we were in the area to stop terrorism, what did we do? More stupid things that led to another terrorist organization being created.

American foreign policy is madness. “Blow stuff up”, “pew pew pew”, and “bang, you’re dead” are not actual foreign policy positions. It’s reckless and irresponsible. We need a change in approach going forward if the country is to be safe and secure, while ensuring our enemies are properly disposed of, without creating more enemies in the process.

We don’t accomplish this with the Santorums and the Jindals of the world leading the country.

Chris Dixon

About Chris Dixon

Chris Dixon is a libertarian-leaning writer and managing editor for The Liberty Conservative. In addition to his political writing, he also covers baseball for Cleat Geeks and enjoys writing on a number of other topics ranging on Medium.