For “a lot of people trapped inside the beltway … war is always the answer,” said presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. “They created these people — ISIS is all over Libya, because hawks in my party, they loved Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya. They just wanted more of it!”
In an interview on “Morning Joe” with Joe Scarborough, Paul said that even though most of the country agrees with him, he is seen as out of step with the Republican party because he is “asking difficult questions.”
Those questions include: “Do you think the invasion of Iraq made it more stable or us more safe? … Do you think the invasion of Libya made us more safe or made the country more stable?”
“There seems to be in this area more than any other area, a massive disconnect between Washington and the rest of America,” said Scarborough.
“When you get outside the beltway and go to America, the rest of America I think is more in line with what I’m saying because I think we have to defend ourselves,” said Paul. I’m all for doing something to stop ISIS. I was all for doing something to go after bin Laden.”
Paul said that as president he would put together “Arab coalitions and boots on the ground” to stop ISIS, and that the Turks need to have their army on board.
He said he would “get a peace treaty” between the Turks that would have the Kurds relinquish any claims on Turkey, while giving them a state and arms in Iraq.
In Syria, President “Assad does need to leave. When Assad leaves, it needs to be a government that we can support.”
In his new book Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics to Unite America, released Tuesday, Paul “argues that Hillary Clinton was wrong to push for war, didn’t have a viable plan for stabilizing Libya, and failed to heed warnings about the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi,” reports Vox.
But Paul also fundamentally disagrees with some in the Republican Party who voted to arm “1,500 groups” in the war-torn Syria.
Scarborough asked Paul to respond to criticism from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that “ISIS exists because of people like Rand Paul who said let’s not go into Syria.”
“I would say it’s exactly the opposite,” responded Paul. “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 want to bomb Assad, which would have made ISIS’ job even easier.”
“They created these people — ISIS is all over Libya, because same hawks in my party, they loved Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya, they just wanted more of it!”
The U.S. sent arms to groups in Syria’s rampaging civil war which ended up in the hands of jihadists, including “significant quantities” of U.S.-arms such as the M16 assault rifle, a 2014 study by the London-based Conflict Armament Research found.
The Islamic State militants had anti-tank rockets “identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia” in a U.S.-facilitated deal. The U.S. ran 75 airlifts and 3,000 tons of Yugoslav weapons to the rebels who would become the Islamic State in November 2012, according to the Daily Telegraph: “The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States.”
The U.S. also watched as rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and missiles flowed from Benghazi to Syrian ports where they would become part of the Islamic State’s arsenal of weapons, a Defense Intelligence Agency memo revealed.
“Libya is a failed state; it’s a disaster. Iraq really is a failed state or a vassal state now of Iran,” said Paul. “So everything [the hawks] have talked about in foreign policy they have been wrong about for 20 years, and yet they somehow have the gall to keep saying [it] and pointing fingers” elsewhere.
