In a recent video for Voices of Liberty, Ron Paul gave his take on the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“There’s still a lot of news coming out of Iraq with the problems there, especially since ISIS has come to the forefront,” said Paul. He mentioned that although ISIS has been working to obtain a grip on Iraq for a while, “They seem to have surprised a lot of people.”
Paul brought up 2008 Presidential candidate, Republican John McCain, calling him “nearly hysterical,” regarding the situation with ISIS, and his attempt to get the U.S. to “bomb more people and send more weapons.”
However, Paul pointed out that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who Paul argues should know more about the subject than McCain, says he has “no evidence there is anything imminent or planned” by ISIS for the United States, and that we shouldn’t “expect them to do anything here in the United States.”
“National security really isn’t threatened,” said Paul. “What is threatened is maybe a little prestige about the continuation of our failure in Iraq.”
Paul mentioned a recent article in the New York Times, which discusses the U.S. and Iran being “unlikely allies” in the Iraq battle.
“Now, that is brilliant,” said Paul, calling the fact that the U.S. is aiding Iran-backed militias a “relative success,” due to the fact that “the Iranians weren’t supposed to be our friends.”
Paul pointed out that even though the previous weapons the United States sent into Syria and Iraq had landed in the hands of the Islamic State, and U.S. airpower was now seeking to destroy those weapons, John McCain is still insisting, “They need more weapons! Send them more weapons to help solve the problem!”
“If that doesn’t wake some people up, nothing ever will, because it just goes on and on,” said Paul. “The militias that we set up really didn’t do the trick. They were the ones that dropped their weapons and ran.”
Paul described the current United States’ foreign policy as a “policy of schizophrenia” where one day the United States is “sending weapons, and the next day those weapons are with another group, used against us, and then what do we do? We just respond by going back in with more weaponry.”
While Paul said that while the “military industrial complex,” is a problem in the United States, he also mentioned the “media industrial complex,” which he says is providing an endless stream of propaganda.
Rather than interviewing individuals who are willing to question the current policies, Paul maintains that the media sticks to those who are in favor, because, “Everybody is a hawk. Everybody wants war!”
Paul said that even if, hypothetically, things settled down, and the United States left the Arabs and the Muslims to settle their disputes, “there wouldn’t be any settlement.
“It would still be Shia against the Sunni, and that war has been going on for 1,300 years,” said Paul. He claimed that when the United States gets involved in this religious war, it only intensifies the “civil strife and civil war that has been going on for a long time.”
According to Paul, after Saddam Hussein warned the United States that invading would lead to the “mother of all battles,” Eric Margolis had the best description when he referred to the Islamic State’s current actions as the “mother of all blowback.”
“It will surprise a lot of people, but quite frankly, if we did less, we would have more,” said Paul. “If we did less, there would be more peace and less of a problem.”