The United States made things worse in the Middle East when it decided to go to war with the Iraq in 2003, especially in light of the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), says former Texas Rep. Ron Paul.
"I've taken my cues from our early presidents and our constitution," Paul told J.D. Hayworth on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV Friday.
"They preached the gospel of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other nations, not to get involved in international consequences and that's all we've been doing," he explained.
"When do we start to realize 'maybe it was a good idea to . . . rid of Saddam Hussein', but guess what? ISIS is made up of people that used to be part of Saddam Hussein," he said.
"We're worse off than we were in 2003 when we went in there with our troops," he added.
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The former presidential candidate said that "it's so sad because I look at the tragedies of the veterans coming back, the suicide rate, the dollar spent and the people over there that get killed — for my viewpoint as bad as it may seem over there, getting involved unnecessarily makes it worse."
Paul said that "if people feel compelled" to go to war, "why don't we just follow the rules and say let the American people speak out, make their Congressmen vote on a Declaration of War and then be serious about it if it's a serious problem."
"This idea that we can go in when we feel like it, try to intervene, have a new election and if we have somebody that gets elected that we don't like, then we ignore them and try to get rid of them, that's a failed policy," he explained.
"I'm hoping that we move in a direction that we started off with" when the country was founded "and stay out of the internal affairs of other nations, mind our own business, trade with people and be friends, but not get so involved in all these wars that are going on."
The former Texas congressman also told Newsmax that because of the destruction of the dollar, Americans are "going to get poorer."
"When you destroy a currency, you undermine the middle class," Paul explained. "The middle class gets smaller, more people become poor and the rich get richer just because of the transfer of wealth by manipulating the currency, and that's what we're seeing."
"We have a third of the people now on welfare, unemployed and that's going to get worse," he added.
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