by Rand Paul
Iraqi officials publicly accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of also funding and arming ISIS at the same time. The New York Times has also reported huge arms and financial transfers from Qatar to the Syrian rebels, beginning as early as 2011.11
Sunni Kuwaitis have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to a wide range of opposition forces both in Iraq and Syria, according to reports by the Brookings Institution.
According to the New York Times, Sudan has provided antitank missiles and other arms.
No one really knows whose finger is on the trigger of all of these weapons. It is said there are 1,500 different factions fighting in the Syrian civil war.
What we do know is that since the Syrian civil war started, 140,000 people are dead, including 50,000 civilians. We must ask the question—how many were killed with American weapons?
As Jane’s Terrorism Center noted, the transfer of Qatari arms to targeted groups has the same practical effect as shipping them to al-Nusra, a violent jihadist force. As I’ve said, the so-called “moderate” rebels are merely a pit stop for the weapons. The radical jihadists scarf up American weapons shortly after their arrival by either buying them, killing the person to whom we gave them, or by simply picking them up off the ground after the person we gave them to dropped them and ran.
This is insanity, pure and simple. It has to stop.
We Need to Stop Saying Things that Aren’t True
There’s a movie from the late 1990s called Wag the Dog. A political satire, it was about a campaign spin doctor who represents a president embroiled in a sex scandal. Seeing that it was released in the nineties, the premise wasn’t a big stretch. With the election approaching, the spin doctor, played by Robert De Niro, hires a movie producer to stage a war to take the voters’ minds off the scandal. Dustin Hoffman plays the producer. The “war” is shot on a Hollywood set. While watching the filming of a scene of a hero soldier left behind enemy lines, Hoffman—the producer—turns to De Niro—the spin doctor—and says, “It’s the best work I’ve ever done in my life, because it’s so honest.”
Our foreign policy is not a Hollywood movie. Dramatic music does not swell when the president steps in front of the television cameras to tell the world how we’re going to handle a threat or crisis, nor should credits roll when those actions are carried out. In fact, much of the problem we have in the war on terror is that we think about it in finite terms, with a final act. But while we think of it in movie time, our enemies think of it in biblical terms. Sunnis have hated Shias since at least the Massacre of Karbala in A.D. 680. When we think it’s over, terrorists are just getting started. You have to look no further than Saddam Hussein’s generals who now lead the ISIS forces for proof.
It makes sense, therefore, that the rhetoric that comes out of the Oval Office should be carefully considered. Statements like “that’s a red line,” or “ISIS is a JV team,”12 or “mission accomplished” make us look foolish and embolden our enemies.
Instead, we should take our cue from the masters of the bully pulpit.
In 1901, Vice President Teddy Roosevelt stood on a stage at the Minnesota State Fair and said seven words that would become his legacy and would also become the most definitive sentence ever uttered about American foreign policy. Those words, of course, were “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Eighty years later, in his first inaugural address, President Reagan warned our adversaries not to misjudge our reluctance for conflict as a failure of will. “When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act,” he said.
Reagan knew more about Hollywood than any president. He also knew as much about substance as any of them. We’re the strongest country in the world, his brevity proclaimed. We will act like it.
Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush, and Reagan all occupied the space in between the extremes of foreign policy. Their foreign policies took into account the world as it was and reacted to it by making us stronger and self-reliant. This foreign policy realism rejects the Wilsonian vision of re-creating the world in our image or the utopian vision of nation building. Our government has trouble running the post office. What makes it think it can be somehow successful building nations abroad? Foreign policy realism also rejects the idea that we are the world’s policemen.
So do I.
I don’t believe that either George W. Bush or Barack Obama set out to make the world more chaotic and unsafe. In some ways both were caught up in 9/11 and its aftermath. I think they both believed they were acting in America’s best interest, but the undeniable truth is that their policies did not act in America’s interest. In fact, there is now a swath of the world—from Russia and the Ukraine through the Middle East and into China—that is a flint strike away from eruption. The mistakes of our near past have put us in a difficult place. That’s the bad news. The good news is, I believe it’s fixable.
A Worldview
Having learned from the mistakes of the past, I believe an unshakable foreign policy, one that can withstand any violent eruption, has to be set on a bedrock of fundamentals. Here are the four stones on which my policy would be built.
1. It is essential that we have the might and threat of force to defend our country. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, I believe that the primary function of the federal government is a strong national defense. No purpose has more importance than the defense of our country, none. War is necessary when America is attacked or threatened or when we have exhausted all measures short of war. In times of peace, we should always be prepared militarily to defend our freedom.
2. When war is necessary, the Constitution dictates that Congress initiates war. When we go to war we should do so only as instructed by the Constitution, with an adherence to our core values and with one primary objective in mind: the safety and sovereignty of the United States. Congress, the people’s representative, must always authorize the decision to intervene.
3. I believe that peace and security require a commitment to leadership and diplomacy. President Obama never invested in a relationship with Congress, and the same is true of his foreign policy. To have friends, you have to be a friend. In the run-up to the Gulf War in 1991, Arab nations believed that once George H. W. Bush drew a line, he wouldn’t let Iraq cross it. Bush didn’t “dance on the Berlin Wall” when it crumbled; instead he worked behind the scenes to help the Cold War end calmly. Action is the currency of leadership. Words are the small change of politicians.
4. We’re only as strong as our economy. This might be the most important of all the fundamentals. Admiral Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it succinctly: the biggest threat to our national security is our debt. A bankrupt nation doesn’t project power but rather weakness. Our national power is a function of the national economy. During the Reagan renaissance, our strength in the world reflected our successful economy. Today low growth, high unemployment, and big deficits have undercut our influence in the world.
While my predisposition is to less intervention, I do support intervention when our vital interests are threatened. That doesn’t necessarily mean a direct invasion or attack. There have been, and will be, situations in which some force is warranted to prevent the escalation of events that could put America at risk.
For instance, America must protect the five thousand people serving at the largest American consulate in the world, the one in northern Iraq. The consulate in Erbil is a day’s march away from ISIS-held territory. We must not make the same mistake Hillary Clinton made in leaving the consulate in Benghazi undefended. Some pundits are surprised that I support destroying ISIS militarily. They shouldn't be. I’ve said since I began public life that I am neither an isolationist nor an interventionist but a legislator who looks at the world realistically and acknowledges the Constitution as the arbiter in America's involvement in war.
Our anger at ISIS’s barbarity is warranted, but their barbarity need not dictate our response. Nor should the president dictate our answer to it. Anger mig
ht start the debate of whether to go to war, but it should have little to do with the actual decision, something Washington leaders can’t seem to understand. Colin Powell knows a thing or two about war. He wrote in his autobiography, “War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.”
I agree.
When we have decided that we have an enemy that requires us to intervene, we must have a comprehensive strategy—a realistic policy applying military power and adroit diplomacy to protect our national interests. In Iraq currently, our strategy should include defending our embassy and consulate and aiding the Iraqi government in defeating ISIS. Some say ground troops will be necessary. I agree. I just want those ground troops to be Iraqis, Kuwaitis, Qataris, Saudis—the people who live there.
As I’ve stated, only civilized Islam rising up and saying this aberrancy does not represent Islam can fully defeat ISIS. We can and should help, but ultimately the people who live there must fight.
If our history of military intervention has taught us anything it’s that might doesn’t necessarily equal victory in fights against insurgency. This has held true since at least the Vietnam War. The onus of defeating ISIS is squarely on the shoulders of the Iraqis and Kurds, and victory for them should begin by cutting off ISIS’s ability to fund its military and terrorist operations.
According to a report13 by the RAND Corporation, ISIS funding comes almost entirely through extortion and plunder. Make no mistake: ISIS is a criminal organization with a very lucrative business model. “We believe that ISIS will remain financially solvent for the foreseeable future,” write Patrick B. Johnston and Benjamin Bahney from the RAND Corporation in a recent op-ed in the New York Times. “A conservative calculation suggests that ISIS may generate a surplus of $100 million to $200 million this year that it could reinvest in state-building.”
A path to victory over ISIS can begin with the Iraqis and Kurds cutting off the flow of ISIS-controlled oil from Northern Iraq to eastern Syrian refineries. It can continue by Baghdad decentralizing power and spreading its wealth to Sunni-majority areas.
“Baghdad should also work to strike deals with local Sunni Tribes… [to coordinate] in squeezing ISIS out of local markets,” write Johnston and Bahney. The United States can and must help the Iraqis and Kurds stop the flow of cash to ISIS. But, as Johnston and Bahney contend, ultimately our role should come from the margins.
A comprehensive strategy must also take into consideration the history of those we intend to fight. That means not only knowing the footing of these relationships in ancient terms but having a firm grasp of the recent history. If the Arab Spring showed us anything, it’s that change in the Middle East begins not at the government level but at the level of the street. We were caught flat-footed simply because we didn’t bother to notice the social change that swept through neighborhoods and mosques, nor did we comprehend the reasons behind that social change.
Congress Decides
The Constitution is very clear about who holds the power to send this country to war. In writing about the role of Congress in this regard, James Madison came right to the point: “The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature… the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.” You’d have to agree, there is not a lot of wiggle room in that statement.
The Framers also gave Congress the power to provide a common defense, the responsibility to fund that defense, and the power to define and punish “Offences against the Law of Nations,” the customary rules governing the interaction of civilized countries around the world (for instance, an attack on one of our ambassadors would be considered an Offence against the Law of Nations).
On the other hand, our Founding Fathers gave the president the job to make tactical decisions once Congress has decided to go to war.
As commander in chief, the president’s sworn duty is to keep America and Americans safe. His charge is defensive in nature, not offensive. In making a case in the New York Times for this constitutional principle, my colleague Tim Kaine evoked our third president: “More than two centuries ago, when President Thomas Jefferson decided to take offensive action to eliminate the threat on American ships from pirates off the Barbary Coast, he sought Congress’s approval, arguing that ‘without the sanction of Congress,’ he could not ‘go beyond the line of defense.’”
When Obama ordered airstrikes against ISIS to protect Americans in Iraq, it was arguably within his power, though only for a short time, not for a sustained campaign against ISIS. Even then, it would have been better to come to Congress. As I’ve said, I think he should have engaged Congress in these decisions—with a congressional debate and vote, a more strategic vision, a better plan for victory, and a proposal for extricating ourselves.
Had I been president, I would have called for a joint session of Congress, laid out the threat ISIS poses to American interests, and asked Congress to vote on a declaration of war. In my role as senator, I was the only one to introduce legislation to go to war against ISIS, and the first to try to declare war since World War II.
There was a time when Barack Obama knew that congressional authority was necessary for war. In 2007, then Senator Obama stated that no president should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority unless there was an actual or imminent threat to our nation. “I take the Constitution very seriously,” Senator Obama told a Pennsylvania town hall in 2008. “The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the Executive Branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.”14 I would like President Obama to reread some of the stands that candidate Obama took.
Congress, too, must realize its constitutional duty. Unfortunately, too many times recently my congressional colleagues have shirked that responsibility. In The Daily Beast, Deborah Pearlstein writes how the Framers expected the people’s representatives to be fully engaged in the debate about war. James Madison for one expected Congress to be ambitious and willing to assert their views. “But ours has become a Congress that continues to hide in the shadows of presidents whose own political courage sometimes fails,” Pearlstein writes.
If there were ever a reason to be fully engaged in the constitutional process it’s when the lives of American soldiers are at risk. Last year, when the Senate debated whether to authorize sending arms to Syrian rebels I stood before a nearly empty chamber. Before I came to the Senate, I’d imagined that when war was discussed, everybody would be at their desks, but there I was, with a handful of other senators. Have we become that inured?
Does political fortune now trump the blood of our youth?
I chastised the Senate’s failure to debate the great question of war. I admonished them for deferring any debate until after the 2014 election, and I blasted them for slipping war funds into a 2,000-page spending bill that no one would have time to read.
It was our Founders’ intention to set up an adversarial relationship between the branches so that ambition would be pitted against ambition and so that, by separation of the powers, a sense of equilibrium would result.
Much has been said and written about the distance between the White House and Capitol Hill during the Obama presidency. The president contends that it was the recalcitrant politics of Congress, particularly the Republican Congress, that was at fault for the dysfunctional relationship between the Hill and him. On a political level, there is little question that the Republicans played hardball. But, in my estimation, what Obama would not grasp was the line of communication that exists outside of politics. I don’t care what part of the political spectrum you are from, whether it’s hard right, hard left, or right in the middle, all elected officials share one common trait. This motivation might vary in size and strength, but a
ll of us have it to one degree or another—and that’s a desire to help the people we represent.
One time, when journalists were questioning his cool aloofness, Obama was asked why he never went out and had a beer with Mitch McConnell. “You have a beer with Mitch McConnell,” the president shot back derisively. I truly believe that had Barack Obama worked as hard at building a rapport with us on the Hill as he did at getting elected, his relationship with Congress would have been much more successful and we would have been a better country because of it.
It’s really not that hard to do. Last year, a senator from New York, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, asked for my support of a bill that would take sexual assault cases in the military out of the chain of command. It was Senator Gillibrand’s belief, and I agreed, that victims of sexual assault shouldn’t have to report it to their boss, that they should be able to go to someone outside of the chain of command. At the time the senator approached me, my staff and I were focused in other directions. Once she presented her views, however, I jumped on board.
The point is, Senator Gillibrand sought me out because I’m known in the Senate as someone who puts partisanship aside to get things done that need to be done. In fact, rather than dogmatically stick to her original bill, when I brought Senator Gillibrand some suggested changes to her bill, she happily accepted them. That’s how you get things done here. The working relationship between the executive branch and Congress should be the same, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Throughout history, the foreign policy of dictators has been ruinous. For all intents and purposes, Obama’s foreign policy has been a one-man show. Instead of executive war orders, we need vigorous debate and a working relationship between the executive and legislative branches. Divisiveness at home projects vulnerability to our enemies abroad. If I were president I would not stand for it.