Rand Paul was Against America Being Iran’s Air Force, Before He was for It

Two empty suits

Two empty suits

There are some ways in which Rand Paul reminds me of Obama. It’s not just that his view of foreign policy has anti-American roots, but that he paves it over with self-contradictory slickness using expediency to hide his views.

And like Obama, every one of his pronouncements on foreign policy is treated with artificially inflated significance. But if the pronouncement is compared to the complete contradictory thing he was saying before that, its significant collapses.

Case in point, Rand Paul now has a great new plan for ISIS. Be Iran’s air force.

President Obama may not have a strategy to combat ISIS, but Rand Paul does. And it involves the U.S. taking a backseat to Iran and Syria.

“Right now, the two allies that have the same goal would be Iran and Syria, to wipe out ISIS. They also have the means, and the ability, and they also have the incentive to do so because [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad’s clinging for power and clinging for life there,“the junior Kentucky Senator told Sean Hannity on Wednesday.

If Iran and Assad had the means to do it, then why haven’t they done it yet? Because we haven’t shown up to be their air force.

Paul, who is an early frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination (though he hasn’t officially announced his candidacy) said that he believes there is a role for the U.S. in fighting ISIS along with Iran, Syria, and Turkey, and if he were president, he would seek congressional approval to “take care” of them “militarily.”

But, he said, “I still would like to see the ground troops and the battles being fought by those who live there, and I think we can give both the technical as well as air support that can be the decisive factor in this.”

Rand Paul wants us to support a dictator. This is exactly the kind of thing that he and his father would lecture us about and then claim that the next terrorist attack was blowback for. Except the rules don’t apply to them.

But here’s the ridiculous thing. You might think that describing Rand Paul’s plan as turning the US into Iran’s air force was harsh and unfair… but those were his words.

In June, Rand Paul was arguing against air strikes on ISIS with an op-ed titled, “America Shouldn’t Choose Sides in Iraq’s Civil War”

“What would airstrikes accomplish? We know that Iran is aiding the Iraqi government against ISIS. Do we want to, in effect, become Iran’s air force?…”

Apparently now Rand Paul does want us to be Iran’s air force. That’s literally his new plan.

But wait a month or two and Rand Paul will have another editorial out arguing that the “interventionists” like Rick Perry want to turn America into Iran’s air force.

And absolutely no one will remember that he was urging just that in September.

  • Pete

    Islamic forces took over the middle East, north Africa and Central Asia because, they were unified and Byzantium and Persia were exhausted after having fought the equivalent of a world war.

    That is the lede or nutgraph.

    Islam was not inherently superior or good, so much as it was lucky.

    Further Sassanid Persian empire had a civil war immediately following the war with Byzantium. Persia fell Byzantium did not although it was greatly reduced.

    There is not much reason to hit ISIS.

    1.) The minorities have already been purged. The Democrat Party leaders, The LEFT, did not give a flying ____. Never have. You have to be part of the new coalition, the new model man, and support them or you troubles are background noise to them.

    2.) Formal war has not been declared. If a spec ops (or pilot) guy gets killed in Iraq. will his family get all their benefits? If he is wounded will he get treated by the VA? I believe so. What if he is wounded or killed in Syria? I am not so sure. Obama made a big show of not having authorization for any military action in Syria. So by law if a service member gets hurt in Syria will he be covered by GWOT or will he be given minimal treatment and benefits?

    Then there is the domestic political aspect. If we have mission creep because we did not define our objectives, ANSWER, CODE STINK and the whole panoply of isolationists and anti-American Leftists will come out and make this country much harder to govern. This will affect normal every day commuting, to conducting daily business, to holding political conventions and everything else. Between the marches, Occupy and political terrorism things will get bad.

    3.) Why should we assist Iran and Saudi Arabia? They have been funding terror groups covertly for years. Let them savage themselves and decrease their strength. Sure there will be population flows of refugees and these are dangerous. They have been going back to the Sea Peoples and the Greek Dark ages. Is it really any different than what we see now? It might be faster, but than that might be like the difference between a second and a minute. it does not matter much in your life. The politicians refuse to uphold the border around the whole G-ddamn west.

    We should let Saudi Arabia and Iran with their proxies all fight. Maybe after it is all over Islam and the Middle East oligarchs will all be discredited.

    ***

    Russia must be confronted but should we be interested in a knock down drag them out fight, which exhaust NATO and Russia and repeat the Byzantium, Persia Muslims scenario?

    Better to be consistently firm with Russian than for them to be given an inch and take a mile like The Corporal did.

    • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

      As I’ve said in the past, Islam is the hyena that thrives in the death of civilizations. When empires fall, it can take over.

      Re: ISIS. Not all the Christians are dead. More to the point, ISIS is a major national security threat. It’s not going to stop in Iraq and it already has too many weapons, too many recruits and controls former WMD sites.

      Those are all bad news.

      Al Qaeda killed 3,000 people in America with much less.

      • http://libertyandculture.blogspot.com/ Jason P

        Iran, which has the same goals as ISIS, may soon have nukes. I fear we are worrying about the lessor of two evils and inadvertently helping Iran reach its goal. ISIS can hit a few shopping malls. Iranian nukes can destroy NYC and our whole economic system.

        “We” got side-tracked and tired with nations-building in Iraq that we don’t seem to have the strength to deal with Iran. I fear diversions. Pete has a point about exhaustion although it is a spiritual exhaustion, not material.

        • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

          They’re both evils and we ought to deal with both of them.

          • Pete

            True, they are both evils. Timing is important.

            Should we go in and take of our enemy’s enemy right away or wait until they are both weakened?

            A U.S. victory could leave Iran strengthened and the U.S. politically and economically weakened.

          • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

            There’s a loosely known timetable and known threat from Iran and the clock is very clearly ticking.

            The threat from ISIS is unknown and so is the timetable. It means that we need to deal with Iran, but we can’t ignore ISIS because we don’t know the exact nature of its threat.

            I don’t see air strikes leaving the US economically weakened, more than now.

          • Pete

            Air strike will not break us, but if the number of boots on the ground go beyond spec ops and we take casualties of 3 or 4 a day, it would not help the budget. The Democrats will want war taxes but never a cut back in welfare as they bring more and more poor people into America.

            I agree with your assessment so the threats. I do not think that Democrats take them seriously. There are sleeper cells here in the U.S. I bet we know some and are reasoning that watching is best so we catch others. Which may or may not happen.

            No one is talking about the Islamic threat form Paraguay anymore and they never talked about the one from Venezuela. There are too many skillets on the fire.

          • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

            Way too many, but we can at least deal with the obvious stuff.

            Air strikes are expensive enough on their own, but they’re more expensive the dumb way that we do them. That said we’re dealing with an admin squandering the budget, and I mean the military budget, on Green Energy and identity politics. Hitting people, some of whom are likely to carry out attacks on US oil, is a better use for it.

          • Pete

            Way too many, but we can at least deal with the obvious stuff.

            That I agree with otherwise it might & probably will snowball beyond control.

    • Lightbringer

      And China waits in the wings, and watches. Once the West and Islam have been sufficiently weakened, they can take over.

  • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

    I don’t think ISIS is going to Iran. At least not soon. It’s much more likely to hit Jordan and Lebanon, it already has to some degree.

    Neither country has a military worth mentioning and they have a combined population of millions of Christians.

    • Pete

      True, They’ll try Jordan before Iran or northern Lebanon.

      But if they took Baghdad, which I doubt they can, they would keep going until they ran out of gas.

      I am surprised ISIS cannot take the stretch between Ramadi and Habbiniyah.the local tribes must be more scared of ISIS than idi0ts like Maliki and Sadr.

  • http://www.stubbornthings.org NAHALKIDES

    Further proof that Libertarianism cannot govern and is unworthy of support. Rand Paul is Libertarian, not Conservative, and therefore unqualified to be the Republican nominee.

    • James Stephens

      Rand Is not libertarian

      • http://www.stubbornthings.org NAHALKIDES

        His positions are more Libertarian than Conservative, hence my conclusion.

  • Erudite Mavin

    Rand Paul is Expedient and never had a Core to begin with.

    I almost get whiplash keeping up with Rand Paul’s and Obama’s changing views
    within the same day and to then revert back by the end of the day.

    Rand Paul comes easily to the Iran is not a threat and has a right to have Nuclear weapons as his dad, Ron Paul has pushed for years.

    On Saturday Sept. 22, 2012 the U.S. Senate voted 90 to 1 to pass a non-binding resolution that would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The lone senator voting against the resolution was Rand Paul.

    Iran is the head of the snake. They fund many of the Radical Islamic groups and armies.

  • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

    Either way they couldn’t get the job done.

  • truebearing

    Paul is a hypocrite and a weasel — just a slicker version of his father.

  • Biff Henderson

    Back in the day we had the coalition of the willing. Nowadays neither the dems or the republicans want to own the US getting involved in another Middle East fiasco because both parties are jockeying for position to use the outcome to destroy the other. Hence we have what appears to be the coalition of the willy-nilly.