Did Rand Paul just become a supporter of George W. Bush’s freedom agenda? “The world does not have an Islam problem,” Paul explained a few days ago. “The world has a dignity problem, with millions of men and women across the Middle East being treated as chattel by their own governments.” Such words clearly echo President Bush’s declaration that, “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe – because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.” Few statements have provoked more ire from committed realists, which is what Rand Paul says he is.

The lesson to draw from Senator Paul’s remarks is not that he has become a nation-builder or a neoconservative. Rather, Paul is in conceptual limbo, searching for a framework that can make sense of constant surprises in the Middle East. (President Obama can empathize.) In February of last year, Paul unveiled a strategy that called for the “containment” of radical Islam. The modest objective of containment remained viable until ISIS stormed the region this summer. Once a practitioner of de facto containment, President Obama soon disavowed it. “You can’t contain an organization that is running roughshod through that much territory, causing that much havoc, displacing that many people, killing that many innocents, enslaving that many women,” he said, “The goal has to be to dismantle them.”