The Patriot Post® · Rand Paul Attacks GOP 'Hawks'

Last week, Sen. Rand Paul attacked his fellow Republican colleagues for ostensibly laying the groundwork for the Islamic State’s takeover in the Middle East. “ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS,” he said, adding, “They’ve created these people.”

Paul’s assertion is simply unfounded. In his latest column, Mark Alexander wrote:

The objective of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) in 2003 was 1. to remove Saddam Hussein from his reign of terror and disable his capacity to establish a regional hegemony; 2. to eliminate Iraq as a principal state sponsor of terrorism and find and remove any weapons of mass destruction that could end up in the hands of terrorists; 3. to establish a stable democratic government in Iraq; and 4. to establish a forward deployed military capability in Iraq to ensure regional stability.

Our military forces, at great cost in blood and treasure, accomplished the first of these objectives and largely accomplished the second and third under President Bush. The fourth was well underway and was left up to Bush’s successor, Barack Obama. But out of pure political expedience, Obama chose failure.

Simply stated, tyranny does not tolerate a vacuum, and when Obama vacated Iraq the “JV Team” quickly filled it.