Dear Commons Community,
At this weekend’s Republican Party conference in New Hampshire, Rand Paul criticized GOP candidates for their criticism of Hillary Clinton. Aiming specifically at Republican military hawks, Paul said:
“The other Republicans will criticize the president and Hillary Clinton for their foreign policy, but they would just have done the same thing — just 10 times over,” Paul said on the closing day of a New Hampshire GOP conference that brought about 20 presidential prospects to the first-in-the-nation primary state.
“There’s a group of folks in our party who would have troops in six countries right now, maybe more,” Paul said.
Foreign policy looms large in the presidential race as the U.S. struggles to resolve diplomatic and military conflicts across the globe.
The GOP presidential class regularly rails against President Barack Obama’s leadership on the world stage, yet some would-be contenders have yet to articulate their own positions, while others offered sharply different visions.
The GOP’s hawks were well represented at the event, led by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and several lesser-known White House prospects.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham addressed the question of putting U.S. troops directly in the battle against the Islamic State group militants by saying there is only one way to defeat the militants: “You go over there and you fight them so they don’t come here.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz suggested an aggressive approach as well. “The way to defeat ISIS is a simple and clear military objective,” he said. “We will destroy them.”
New York Rep. Peter King said: “If America becomes isolationist, if America sits back from its responsibilities, that gap is going to be filled by enemies.”
Graham, Cruz, and King are out of touch and Paul is absolutely right in his position. The majority of the American people do not want U.S. entanglements abroad unless a case is made that there is a direct threat to our security. It is painfully obvious from Iraq and Afghanistan that we do not win anything other than ill-will by deploying troops to fight and die in the Middle East.
Tony
