Rand Paul is the only likely presidential candidate so distrustful of the powers of the office that he once publicly speculated an American president could task a drone to kill Americans “in a café in San Francisco or in a restaurant in Houston or at their home in Bowling Green, Kentucky.” He questions troop deployments almost anywhere outside the United States, even in Europe and South Korea. He wants to decimate defense spending. He thinks the problem with Russia’s Vladimir Putin is that the U.S. hasn’t been nice enough to him.
Paul rejects the label “isolationist,” but he’s as close to the real thing we’ve seen in high office since the early days of the Cold War. Were he elected president, which is, fortunately, a remote possibility, he would radically reduce America’s role in the world to the point where the alliances and relationships we have relied on to maintain a mostly stable and advancing liberal world order would almost surely collapse.
A terrorist organization, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS), so extreme it’s been disowned by al-Qaeda, is making such swift territorial gains in Iraq that it has stirred even the somnolent Obama administration into action. ISIS is well armed, well organized, well financed, and has drawn recruits from all over the world, including Europe and North America. It is unyieldingly hostile to the West. It is intent on establishing its own nation-state, from where it would surely plot and organize to kill Americans. Its ambitions are a clear and present danger, and must be stopped.
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