When the United States steps into Middle Eastern affairs and topples dictators, it often creates chaos rather than peace, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said Wednesday.
"I think one of the true things you can say about the Middle East is, every time we've toppled a dictator, chaos has ensued and really radical Islam has risen and we're more in danger," Paul
told MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews Wednesday night, reports Real Clear Politics. "America has had more danger from these regions after we've toppled secular dictators."
And Paul, a potential candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, said that such actions have come from leaders of both parties.
"That includes Republican wars such as the Iraq wars, but it also includes Hillary [Clinton's] war in Libya," said Paul. "So really I think we need to think before we act. And the other thing we need to do is to obey the constitution which says you don't go to war without the authority of Congress."
Earlier on Wednesday, Paul called on Congress to
formally declare war on the Islamic State as debate intensified in the Senate and House of Representatives over the campaign in Iraq and Syria.
He introduced a Senate resolution seeking to declare that a state of war exists with the militant group, the target of four months of air strikes by U.S. and allied forces.
And Wednesday night, Paul reiterated that unintended consequences seem to rise when the United States works to overthrow dictators.
"I told them a year ago when they wanted to bomb Syria, I said the unintended consequences of this is that we will be back a year later maybe fighting against our own weapons," Paul told Matthews. "I said if you supply weapons to those Syrian rebels that we may well be back there having to fight against our own weapons and it is absolutely true now. If we have to go back in there, we will be fighting against our own weapons."
Back in August, Paul called the United States' military involvement in Libya "Hillary's war," blaming the rise of the Islamic State on that military engagement, saying it was not the result of President Barack Obama's lack of action in the Middle East,
reports Breitbart News.
"I would say the objective evidence shows that Libya is a less safe place and less secure place, a more chaotic place with more jihadist groups — and really, we’ve had two really bad things happen because of Hillary’s push for this war," Paul told Breitbart in August.
"One is that our ambassador was killed as a consequence of not having adequate security and really as a consequence of having a really unstable situation there because of the Libyan war, and then most recently our embassy having to flee by land because they couldn’t leave via the airport because of such a disaster in Libya. So I think it’s hard to argue that the Libyan war was a success in any way. From my perspective, the first mistake they made was not asking the American people and Congress for authority to go to war."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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