“He’s trying to be very thoughtful on this,” a Paul aide explained to The Daily Beast. “There are no easy solutions.”

In recent days the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS), a group disavowed by al Qaeda, has captured key cities in north and western Iraq, threatening the stability of the government in Baghdad and prompting the White House to consider military action. …

Chris Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a longtime observer of Paul’s foreign policy views, said the senator has nothing to gain from supporting further American military intervention in Iraq.

“It’s quite clear that there is no public sentiment in favor of deeper U.S involvement, and so there’s no particular reason for Rand Paul to make that case, even if that were his inclination…Politically, it wouldn’t benefit him,” Preble said.”[Paul] appreciates that our attempts to build foreign countries like Iraq or Afghanistan…have been extremely costly, and they haven’t delivered clear benefits to the United States. So I think his inclination is to avoid these kinds of conflicts as much as possible.”