I give credit to the Kentucky junior senator for having the courage of his noodle-headed foreign policy convictions and sticking to them. And a few of the defense amendments on which he attempted to sign do have some merit. But by co-sponsoring what amounts to Barack Obama's "non-aggression" strategy vis-a-vie the Islamic State, I am yet again left scratching my shaking head as to what constituency he's trying to appeal that will give him a leg up the the Republican presidential race:
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has had a devil of a time with his amendments related to foreign policy. This week, the Foreign Relations Committee rejected Paul's amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinians. The prospects look better, but not much better, for Paul's co-sponsorship of an amendment to strengthen the 1971 Non-Detention Act. On the campaign trail, Paul likes to talk about his amendment that would have paid for higher military funding with cuts to foreign aid. The story ends with most senators voting against him.
I "stand with Rand" on cutting off the Pals and reallocating foreign aid funds to DOD, although that wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket. I don't know how close the whip count for either was, but I have to wonder how much closer they'd have been if he hadn't smeared his co-partisan colleagues as "ISIS architects" during the Patriot Act/NSA fight.
Thursday, Paul took on another uphill and telling battle. He co-sponsored an amendment from Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, that would bar funding for ground troops being sent to the Levant to fight ISIS. The amendment's text:
No funds appropriated by this Act may be used to support the deployment of the United States Armed Forces for the purpose of ground combat operations in Iraq or Syria, except as necessary-
For the protection or rescue of members of the United States Armed Forces or United States citizens from imminent danger posed by ISIS; or To conduct missions not intended to result in ground combat operations by United States forces, such as-intelligence collection and sharing; enabling kinetic strikes' limited operations against high value targets; operational planning; or other forms of advice and assistance to coalition forces fighting ISIS in Iraq or Syria.
The Islamic State cannot be defeated without massive U.S. military intervention. Period. The past ten months have amply proven that. Senator Paul talks about taking our "war surplus" from Afghanistan and giving it to the Kurds, and that's fine as far as it goes, but the Kurds are the most motivated and capable of the indigenous factions besieged by the ISIS onslaught, and even they are only barely holding their own. The Kurds, quite simply, aren't capable of defeating ISIS, and it goes without saying that neither the Assad regime in its Damascus redoubt nor the Iraqis in their Baghdad "stronghold" have a prayer against them, which is why the White House's announced "strategy" of more training for an "army" that won't fight for a country that no longer functionally exists is such a joke.
It'd be nice to say something along the lines of, "Let ISIS have the Levant, what's it to us?", in the greatest isolationist tradition, but as I discussed yesterday, the Islamic State is vastly larger and more powerful today than al Qaeda was in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks that massacred almost three thousand Americans, while mustering even more bloodthirsty determination to "smite the infidels wherever you find them" than bin Laden's boys did. We simply do not have the luxury of withdrawing into "Fortress America" (which isn't even a fortress because we lack a southern border) and pretending that we can ignore them or our other enemies, because they will follow us here. Hell, they're already here, physically and cyberly. The world was too small for that cherished policy relic of a bygone age eighty years ago. To try and resurrect it now is positively demented.
Not that it will matter much, since the Paul-Murphy amendment woefully lacks votes, and the Democrats are going to defund the Pentagon anyway. So Ron's chip off the old block is buying himself all the same hostility from the GOP nominating electorate without actually having a chance of enacting his obstinately dovish predilictions. If there's a method to his madness, I've yet to discern what it is.
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