Containing Iran is a joke. Iran is not the USSR. They are not rational actors. The USSR did not have suicide bombers. And they did not have an eschatology where a rain of fire would bring their messiah. Rafsanjani, their previous "moderate" president, said taht Iran was willing to survive a nuclear exchange with Israel. In other words MAD does not apply to them. And a nuclear Iran means that Saudi Arabia and Egypt would get nukes. At that point it becomes inevitable for terrorist groups to get nukes. If Iran gets the bomb, I'm moving out of New York.
Rand also perpetuated the lie that we armed Bin Laden. While we allowed the MAK to fund raise in America (and oh did that bite us with the First World Trade Center attack and related terrorist plots) , we never armed them.
Paul talks about containing radical Islam, but would he support any steps to do so other than not helping the Muslim Brotherhood abroad? Would he support vetting and restricting Muslim immigration? Would he support a crack down on Islamists in America and treating the Muslim Brotherhood like an enemy in the US. They don't get to operate in America and run mosques. Treat CAIR like the German-American Bund. Pressure Europe to do the same. Ron Paul would never support this. I doubt his son has the stomach either.
All of your points are superb. logical and very well stated. The one that I quoted has particular resonance since CAIR is an enemy force within our land.
But which of our politicians has the courage to stand up to Islam? One that spoke without fear was Tom Tancredo who stated that bombing Mecca and other so-called "holy" sites was an option. That sent him to the fringes according to some and he later backtracked a bit on his initial statement. In my estimation, he made a great deal of sense when he justified such force against this evil by adding:
"When we bombed Hiroshima, when we bombed Dresden, we punished a lot of people who were not necessarily guilty. Not every German was a member of the Nazi Party. You do things in war that are ugly."
Well put.
That's rational.
A version of containment might work with Islam. There are conflicts within it that could be exploited. Nixon went to China.