America Shouldn't Choose Sides in Iraq's Civil War

Online WSJ ^ | June 19, 2014 7:12 p.m. ET | Rand Paul

[SoConPubbie]

Obama has made mistakes but so did Bush by invading. There's no good case for U.S. military intervention now.

Though many claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan on foreign policy, too few look at how he really conducted it. The Iraq war is one of the best examples of where we went wrong because we ignored that.

In 1984, Reagan's Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger developed the following criteria for war, primarily to avoid another Vietnam. His speech, "The Uses of Military Power," boils down to this: The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the U.S. or its allies are involved and only "with the clear intention of winning." U.S. combat troops should be committed only with "clearly defined political and military objectives" and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives and with a "reasonable assurance" of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress and only "as a last resort."

Much of the rationale for going to war in 2003 did not measure up to the Weinberger Doctrine, and I opposed the Iraq war. I thought we needed to be more prudent about the weightiest decision a country can make. Like Reagan, I thought we should never be eager to go to war. And now, 11 years later, we are still dealing with the consequences.

Today the Middle East is less stable than in 2003. The Iraq war strengthened Iran's influence in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Sunni extremists backed by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar have filled the vacuum. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has taken over the cities of Mosul, Tikrit and is on the march to Baghdad.

While President Obama said Thursday he will not send "combat troops," he said he is sending 300

[SoConPubbie]

	"If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures." - Alexander Hamilton "We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all." -- President Ronald Reagan "A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine 1792 "It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

[Tzfat]

Shut up R___ Paul.

[RoosterRedux]

Those Pauls are wacky couple of nuts.

[skeeter]

Rand Paul: blah blah blah.

His act sure grew old fast.

BTW no ground troops, but we most certainly should choose sides.

[riverrunner]

He is right we should not choose sides.

We should destroy every one that opposes us.

[TwelveOfTwenty]

BTW no ground troops, but we most certainly should choose sides.

Agree, especially if one of those sides is a threat to us and considers itself at war with us.

[trisham]

I am so tired of this idiot.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“He is right we should not choose sides. We should destroy every one that opposes us.”

A-MEN!

[ilgipper]

This isn’t a damn civil war...any more than if a bunch of radical canadians came down here and started murdering and torturing our citizens. Rand sure turned out to be a worthless turd.

[sagar]

The sane guy in me thinks that these Muslims must be left alone to kill each other off.

The impatient guy in me wants these bearded savages be exterminated as quickly as possible.

[what's up]

The only reason the middle east is more unstable is that Obama pulled the troops out.

Because of Bush we had a presence right next to Iran and close to Afghanistan and Obama blew it.

Rand Paul is nuts.

[Dallas59]

[Son House]

Yep, respect all, unless their Tea-baggers.

[Popman]

What civil war in Iraq...?

ISIL are not made up of solely Iraqi peoples....

This is a lslamic religious war...not a civil war....

[Dr. Thorne]

"It's none of out b-b-b-business, son."

"Okey-dokey, dur-dur-dur-Dad. Let's wait until they kill a few million Americans"

[Objective Scrutator]

The only people who are worth leaving alive in the region are the Kurds, who have many Christians and Jews among their numbers. We should only hold back on destroying ISIS, Syria, and Iraq if we damage natural resources that we could use. Otherwise, let the firebombs fly!

[reefdiver]

Don’t understand how he gets to be a front runner. He’s not getting the conservative endorsement, you really go no where without it.
He’s more of a joke around here than mittens

[no-to-illegals]

Lorraine Bobbitt’s knife has been very busy in D.C.

[odawg]

“Obama has made mistakes, but so did Bush by invading”

The fact that Iraq was pacified and Americans died accomplishing the pacification nullifies the mistake of invading Iraq, if it was a mistake. Their sacrifice was counted as nothing by Obama when he removed all troops. I don’t know how to resolve the situation, but I do know that Obama completely mishandled it from the beginning.

[rdcbn]

Those Pauls are wacky couple of nuts.

---

Wacky is not the word for it- either incompetent or lying is more the case.

We are not seeing a civil war in Iraq, we are seeing an invasion of Iraq by a transnational Jihaidi army of psychopathic, homicidal misfits who have become Al- Qaeda irregulars recruited from all over the world.

Very few of the ISIS embers are from Iraq and those that are are the Saddam dead enders who were part of the terror insurgency and who we ran out of Iraq.