You wanted a foreign policy debate in the GOP? You got it. The Red-on-Red accusations flew this morning, with Rand Paul asserting that GOP hawks “created” the Islamic State, and with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal pushing back by calling Paul “unsuited to be commander in chief.”
Earlier today on Morning Joe, Paul was asked about the charge from Republican hawks that his hands-off approach to foreign policy had caused the rise of the Islamic State. Paul was rather forceful with his reply:
.@RandPaul: ISIS exists because of the hawks in our party http://t.co/5XPRNrn6T9— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) May 27, 2015
“ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS. These hawks also wanted to bomb [Syrian dictator Bashar al-] Assad, which would have made ISIS’ job even easier. They created these people. ISIS is all over Libya because these same hawks in my party — they loved Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya, they just wanted more of it. But Libya is a failed state, it’s a disaster. Iraq is really a failed state — or it’s a vassal state now of Iran. So, everything they’ve talked about in foreign policy they’ve been wrong about for 20 years, and yet they have somehow the gall to keep saying and pointing fingers otherwise.”
As you can imagine, this isn’t going over so well with hawkish Republicans. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who as a minor player in the GOP race for the presidential nomination can afford to be (and perhaps must be) forceful with his criticisms, accused Paul of “taking the weakest, most liberal Democrat position” on the Islamic State, more suited to “Washington cocktail parties” than the White House:
“This is a perfect example of why Sen. Paul is unsuited to be commander in chief,” Jindal’s statement says. “We have men and women in the military who are in the field trying to fight ISIS right now, and Sen. Paul is taking the weakest, most liberal Democrat position. It’s one thing for Sen. Paul to take an outlandish position as a senator at Washington cocktail parties, but being commander-in-chief is an entirely different job.”
