The Republican Presidential race is getting ever more heated and divisive, as the fight over who is to blame for the rise of ISIL (ISIS) rages.
The standard argument of many Republicans is that Barack Obama is responsible for the rise of ISIL (ISIS). And some blame Hillary Clinton since she was Obama’s Secretary of State in his first term.
At the same time, Democrats say it is George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who are responsible for the rise of ISIL (ISIS).
But now, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who could be described as a “dove” in foreign policy, blames neither Obama nor Bush and company.
Rather, he blames fellow Republican Senators and Super “hawks” John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham (a soon to be announced opponent for the Republican Presidential nomination) for the rise of ISIL (ISIS)!
And, to top it off, the Wall Street Journal says it is Rand Paul who is responsible for the rise of ISIL (ISIS), as he is an “isolationist”!
So civil war is breaking out in the Republican Party over the Middle East and military intervention.
It is clear that IF somehow, highly unlikely, Rand Paul were to win the GOP nomination, the neoconservatives who took us into Iraq in 2003 would refuse to support him, all to the good for Hillary Clinton or any other Democratic nominee for President in 2016.
But if somehow, even less likely, Lindsey Graham were to win the nomination, he would face an equally divided party, and would have even less chance of defeating any Democrat for the White House!
The question is not who is responsible for the creation of ISIL, (Obama claims global warming had an influence??) but the question is would ISIL be in the position it is today if the US has left 10/15 thousand troops in Iraq. And the answer is probably not. Now the Bush administration is responsible for the de-Ba’athzation of Iraq’s military. This idea of kicking out everyone from the Iraqi state bureaucracy was stupid. In a single party country, as was Iraq, if people didn’t belong to the Ba’ath Party they simply could not survive or get a job. So to kick all of them out you ended up kicking out people who were actually qualified and knew what they were doing and replaced them with inexperienced people.
I agree with the Democrats. We should have never invaded Iraq.
If the United States wants to bomb another country…make the requirement for doing that be that South Carolina U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham ride that bomb just like Slim Pickens did in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”