Taking a Stand

by Rand Paul

  The Middle East Today

  How would the foreign policy I envision look in today’s Middle East?

  Well, first of all, this foreign policy would understand that hatred toward us exists, and would acknowledge that interference in elections or the administrations of foreign countries may well exacerbate this hatred. We must realize that a good part of the answer to terrorism will come when Islam polices Islam.

  In The Art of War, Sun Tzu writes: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” We see the wars we fight in the Middle East, even our excruciatingly long ones, on an American timetable. It’s the Mission Accomplished syndrome. The Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting for centuries. As I have already mentioned, when we think the war is over, they’re just getting started. That’s the mindset we have been fighting against. Does that mean we have to fight in the Middle East forever? No. I think we have to take care and not be forced into reacting to the volatility of the region.

  Knee-jerk reactions by the barnacled boots-on-the-ground crowd who fill the halls of Congress with angry rants seldom solve long-term problems. We can defeat ISIS militarily, but the threat from radical jihadists will continue. Do future terrorist organizations in the Middle East and elsewhere shake in their boots at the prospect of fighting America? I don’t think so. I think the moment we defeat or even “degrade” ISIS, as Obama’s fond of saying, the next terrorist movement is already waiting in line. That’s because the underlying reason for ISIS—age-old grudges, new grudges, economics, and religious extremism—will still exist and, for the most part, exist out of our control. For example, ISIS has built something of a terrorist pipeline between the poor suburbs of Istanbul and the front lines of their so-called caliphate. Many of the young men they persuade to fight for them are vulnerable and angry because of poverty and drug addiction.15

  With aggressive diplomacy we need to seek out new alliances and solidify the ones we already have to form long-term diplomatic relationships that will help bring structure to the region. Much of the solution, like combating local drug abuse, is out of our hands. Turkish suburbs and other terrorist incubators will remain fertile breeding grounds until Islam takes care of its own house. Until then, organizations like ISIS will continue to thrive.

  I hope that by the time you’re reading this we will have already kicked ISIS to the gates of hell where they belong, though I don’t think it will happen that quickly. Our long-term challenge is to guard ourselves in the future against any terrorist organization whose growth poses a significant threat to the United States or our allies.

  That said, we would be wise to remember former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s warning that our foreign policy has become overmilitarized. Yes, we must eliminate all terrorist threats to our freedom and way of life, but to accomplish that we shouldn’t throw our might around indiscriminately. All that does is alienate the allies and encouragers among the civilized Islamic nations, the people we will ultimately need to succeed against these threats.

  My foreign policy would also include protection of our allies’ interests. We should help reinforce Israel’s Iron Dome protection against missiles, for instance. A realistic foreign policy would include diplomatic reengagement with Middle East and European allies to recognize the threat that radical Islam poses to world peace and the growing influence of Jihadists.

  Important partners such as Turkey, a NATO ally, Israel, and Jordan face an immediate consequence from ISIS and other terrorist groups, and unchecked growth endangers Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Gulf countries such as Qatar, and even Europe. Several potential partners—notably, the Turks, Qataris, and Saudis—have been reckless in their financial support of ISIS and other organizations, which must cease immediately.

  There is no silver bullet to the threat of jihad, which is why I have advocated for a long-term strategy to oppose with vigor the terrorist threat wherever it arises. Part of that strategy would reverse our current trend of toppling governments, a strategy that allows radical jihadists to flourish.

  We should also engage with countries we would normally not look to for help to isolate terrorist organizations such as ISIS. Despite our differences and our occasional disputes, China and Russia must be engaged in continuous diplomatic engagement. We must not allow the reckless voices in public discourse to rush us into a war we spent seventy years successfully avoiding.

  Some argue we shouldn’t negotiate with the Chinese or the Iranians or the Russians. We can’t trust them! We take China’s money; how can we not negotiate with them? Yes, trust isn’t easily achieved with adversaries, but it can be done by finding common ground.

  Both China and Russia have radical jihadist threats of varying degrees of their own—an aberrant regime in North Korea is not to China’s benefit. We share common interests with countries like China, and those common interests can offset our differences. I have no doubt that diplomacy among the great powers can bring about more stability to the world.

  As complicated as the Middle East is, our role should not be that hard to figure out. All we have to do is stay true to who we are: a country with compassion, resolve, and the strength to put fear in the hearts of those who hate us.

  At home, my policy would emphasize secure borders and an immigration policy that prevents ISIS and other terrorist infiltration. It would revoke passports from any American or dual citizen who is fighting with ISIS and other terrorist groups, and it would eliminate all student visas from countries with fighters in ISIS until we can thoroughly check the backgrounds of those who wish to enter.

  A program that George W. Bush started and Obama ended, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), provided extra scrutiny of people traveling to the United States from certain countries that are hosts to radical Islamic movements. I would reinstitute that program.

  In fact, I would heighten scrutiny of travel to the U.S. from any nation with known jihadist cells. For the foreseeable future that would mean fewer student visas until we can get a handle on who is visiting, where they are going, and when they leave. It would also mean much more scrutiny of international travelers and much less hassling of domestic travelers. The one good reform that has occurred with regard to travel is the frequent traveler program. We should expand and encourage this program as a way for most Americans to opt out of the excessive frisking at our airports.

  Our border is porous, and rather than acting to secure and protect it, the administration uses unconstitutional executive action legalizing millions of illegal immigrants. I oppose and will continue to oppose this unlawful usurpation of power.

  The administration’s policy of student visas requires a full-scale reexamination. Recently, it was estimated that as many as six thousand foreign students are unaccounted for. Let’s not forget that the 9/11 hijackers were here on lapsed Saudi student visas. How can we allow this loophole to remain open? This is outrageous, and I’ve fought the administration about it for almost as long as I’ve been in the Senate. I proposed legislation that would pressure the Department of Homeland Security to finally follow through on the broken promise of a secure border and an effective visa tracking system.

  Our Heroes in Uniform

  If you asked me what I believe is the primary characteristic of America’s greatness, I would tell you without hesitation that it is our courage. Nowhere is courage embodied more than in the hearts of the men and women in our armed forces.

  Unequivocally, I am for a strong defense. With the right resources and equipment and decision making, our courageous men and women in uniform are unmatched and will remain so. They should be treated as our most precious commodity.

  More than 5,000 brave American men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. Although the VA has stopped releasing this data, at la
st count nearly a million American soldiers have been injured in wars in the Middle East.16 Of those, some 50,000 have suffered multiple traumatic injuries, including 15,000 amputations. More than 500 have lost multiple limbs. Here at home, one in five returning veterans suffers from PTSD, and some eighteen commit suicide every day. The cost of caring for these deserving veterans is astronomical. Medical care, disability payments, and other benefits from the long war in the Middle East will cost between $3.2 and $4 trillion, according to the Eisenhower Research Project.17

  Most of these soldiers are in their twenties and thirties. All of them have families, mothers and fathers and brothers and wives and sisters and children who suffer along with them.

  When political opponents try to question my resolve for war, I think of the blood our brave soldiers have spilled on battlefields halfway around the world.

  I think of Sgt. J. D. Williams.

  The roadside explosive device that he stepped on threw J.D. twenty feet in the air and left a thirty-foot crater. With his body literally blown apart but still conscious, his first reaction was to reach for his weapon. The enemy was shooting at his team—his platoon had walked into an ambush. When he realized how badly he was hurt, his thoughts went to his wife, Ashlee, and his baby daughter, Kaelyn.

  The blast took both of J.D.’s legs and one arm. His team was able to move him away from the firefight. They did so in a wheelbarrow. He was airlifted to Kandahar Air Base, where a medical team fought valiantly to save him, although his vital signs held little hope. That’s when one of the doctors took J.D.’s heart in his hand and began to massage it.

  The doctor had good instincts. As hearts go, J.D. has one of the strongest. The next voice the young hero heard was Ashlee’s. J.D. had been airlifted to a hospital in Germany, where the medical staff made the phone call for him. “When I heard my wife on the phone,” J.D. said, “it was like speaking to an angel.”18

  J.D. now lives down the road from me just outside of Bowling Green. An organization called Helping a Hero, with funds raised and work donated by hundreds of people in Bowling Green and Warren County, built a fully handicap-accessible house for him and his family. Kelley and I were privileged to be part of the effort, along with the hard work and generosity of builders Bennie and Laura Jones, Larkin Ritter, and businessman Fred Higgins.

  He goes bow hunting with friends now and mows his own yard. “I’m just glad it was me who stepped on that IED,” he would later say. “Otherwise it would have been one of my buddies.”19 When I talk with J.D., he is hopeful for his future. What might be even more remarkable is he’s hopeful for the country for which he has given so much.

  Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.” In human lives, in blood and suffering, the cost of these wars is incalculable. Because we borrowed the money to pay for them, the wars in the Middle East have already cost us $185 billion in interest alone. That number, just the interest mind you, will rise to $1 trillion by 2020, according to a study by Brown University.20

  War is not a game of geopolitical chess. War involves the hands and fingers and feet and lives of our most precious resource—our young. I will not and cannot see our soldiers as meaningless pawns in a pissing match over power.

  Our soldiers fight to defend us, to defend the Constitution, to defend our way of life, but they don’t fight for dominance or for control or for some vacuous notion of power.

  War is not always the answer, and it is most definitely not always the only answer. Every civil war is not a nail, and America is not a hammer.

  Defending America is paramount, but that does not always mean war and does not always mean troops on the ground. American might, peace through strength, is a deterrence to war, not a recipe for war.

  Above all other considerations, the well-being of our soldiers should come first. Every decision to go to war should be made as if the legislator was sending his or her own child to the front of the first line of attack.

  I am not an isolationist. I will not forget what is at stake.

  14

  Peace Through Diplomacy, Trade, and Financial Solvency

  I believe that once enslaved people taste freedom and see the products of capitalism they will become hungry for freedom themselves.

  Last year, I was appointed to the Foreign Affairs Committee. I like being on the committee—I’m especially intrigued by the name-calling. We have neocons, realists, hawks, doves, isolationists, globalists, and idealists. It seems the only thing for certain is this: if you don’t label yourself first, your opponents will.

  I have been a particular target of the neoconservatives. To this crowd, anyone who doesn’t agree with them on every war is the next Neville Chamberlain. To this crowd, diplomacy is a dirty word. To this crowd, anyone who doesn’t clamor first for the military option is somehow an isolationist.

  The irony is that this crowd wants to project power but does so from inside an echo chamber. Though they proudly call themselves neoconservatives, they actually practice a neoisolationism in which diplomacy is distrusted and war is, if not the first option, the preferred option.

  I believe that most problems that confront us around the world can and should be approached by engaging both friend and foe in dialogue. No, I do not naïvely believe that dialogue always works. I do, however, believe we should avoid the trap of saying that dialogue never works.

  We should approach diplomacy from the belief that dialogue is nearly always preferable to war and that potential enemies should never underestimate our resolve. The threat of force empowers diplomacy.

  Theoretically, diplomacy is similar to a market transaction. As I see it, it’s only successful when both parties feel they have won, when each party perceives they have gotten the best possible outcome from the bargain. But the market can also literally mend ties that seemed irreparable.

  When I was about ten years old, I used to play chess with an old Ukrainian named Pete Karpenko. Captain Pete, as we called him, told us stories of fighting the Bolsheviks when he was fourteen years old. He and his family were little more than peasants, but they resisted the idea of collective farming. Captain Pete fought with the White Army against the Bolsheviks and fled when the communists won. Fifty-five years later he was still afraid to return to the Soviet Union.

  So it’s easy to understand that around my house we had little use for communists or their sympathizers.

  Like many conservative middle-class families, our inclination was to resist anything to do with Red China. In that black-and-white world, you were either for us or against us. Trade with China was thought to be trade with the enemy.

  A funny thing happened, though, along the way. Many conservatives came to understand a larger truth. Trade with China not only improved our economic well-being, it made us less likely to fight. Recently, we’ve had this same debate over Cuba.

  My family not only despised communism but collectivism, socialism, and any ism that deprives the individual of his or her natural rights.

  I have great sympathy for those who fled Castro’s iron fist. More times than I can remember, I’ve heard horror stories of those who escaped Castro’s Cuba. I ran for office to fight for the individual and against statism of any kind anywhere and yet… I think a policy of isolationism toward Cuba is misplaced and has not worked.

  I support engagement, diplomacy, and trade with Cuba, China, Vietnam, and many countries with less than stellar human rights records because I believe that once enslaved people taste freedom and see the products of capitalism they will become hungry for freedom themselves.

  President George W. Bush wrote that “trade creates the habits of freedom,” and trade provides the seeds of freedom that begin “to create the expectations of democracy.” I agree. Once trade begins it is hard to hide the amazing products of capitalism. The Soviets used to produce documentaries depicting poverty in America but their plan backfired when Russian viewers noticed that even in the poorest of circumstances they could still see televis
ions flickering in the windows, something the majority of them didn’t enjoy. Once trade is enhanced with Cuba, it will be impossible to hide the bounty that freedom provides.

  The supporters of the embargo against Cuba speak with heated passion but fall strangely silent when asked how trade with Cuba is so different than trade with Russia or China or Vietnam.

  It is an inconsistent and incoherent position to support trade with other communist countries but not with communist Cuba.

  Even the supporters of the embargo agree that it has not worked. A policy of isolationism with Cuba and engagement with China and Vietnam does not make any sense. Communism can’t survive the captivating allure of capitalism. Let’s overwhelm the Castro regime with iPhones, iPads, American cars, and American ingenuity.

  While China’s human rights record leaves much to be desired, our engagement and trade has without question helped to open Chinese society. Trade with China and Vietnam has not made either a freedom-loving paradise, but most would argue that the people of those nations are less oppressed than they once were.

  Do those who wish to continue to isolate us from Cuba propose we also isolate ourselves from China, Vietnam, Laos, Russia, and dozens of other less than savory nations? Has such isolationism ever worked?

  Over the years, many conservatives have come to believe that trade with China and Vietnam is the best way to overcome and defeat communism. Trade and relations also make it less likely that we will ever go to war with China, because the two countries have become economically intertwined.

  That being said, it is ultimately Congress, not the president, who will debate and decide whether the embargo will end. Congress, not the executive branch, has dominion over many aspects of the trade and travel embargo. I doubt Congress will vote to end the embargo at this time, but my hope is that restoring diplomatic ties will induce Cubans to rise up and empower them to demand more freedom and more trade with the United States.