Rand Paul: Senator Exchanges Volleys With Dick Cheney Across Sunday Morning News Shows

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky took to the Sunday morning news talk shows today to answer questions regarding the quickly deteriorating situation in Iraq.

While ISIS, the Islamist militia group, continues sweeping across Iraq, most recently taking over four more towns near the Syrian border, Rand Paul is voicing his opinion that the U.S. should stay out of the conflict, reports The Huffington Post.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union program, Rand Paul made clear that U.S. ground troops should play no role in Iraq’s current situation and any U.S. involvement should really be up to congress:

“There needs to be a full-throated debate in Congress, and Congress has to decide,” said Paul. “Militarily, we could go back in. The surge worked. Obviously, we have the military might and power. But the country as a whole has to decide, do we want to send 100,000 troops in? Are we willing to have 4,500 young Americans die to save a city like Mosul that the Shiites won’t even save, that they have fled?”

Meanwhile, over on ABC’s This Week, former Vice President Dick Cheney took a break from eviscerating President Obama’s Iraq strategy to express his disagreement with Rand Paul’s:

“Rand Paul, with all due respect, is basically an isolationist,” said Cheney, setting up the rest of his Rand Paul critique. “He doesn’t believe we ought to be involved in that part of the world. I think it’s absolutely essential. One of the things I worried about 12 years ago, and that I worry about today, is that there will be another 9/11 attack and that the next time it’ll be with weapons far deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters.”

Despite Cheney’s fears, and criticism of President Obama and himself, Rand Paul expressed support for the President and his decision to limit involvement in the fight for power between the different Islamic sects in Iraq. While some Republicans think Obama should have taken out Syrian President Bashar Assad, particularly because of evidence that the Syrian President used chemical weapons on citizens last year, Rand Paul sticks with his view that the U.S. should limit involvement in the region, not increase it:

“We went into Libya and we got rid of that terrible Qaddafi, now it’s a jihadist wonderland over there,” said Paul. “There’s jihadists everywhere. If we were to get rid of Assad it would be a jihadist wonderland in Syria. It’s now a jihadist wonderland in Iraq, precisely because we got over-involved.”

As far as ISIS posing a current national security threat to the U.S., Rand Paul doesn’t believe they do, and as for going into Iraq to put down Islamic extremists, Rand Paul says he looks at it from a “personal basis”:

“I ask, ‘Do I want to send my sons or your son to fight to regain Mosul?’ And I think, ‘Well yeah, these are nasty terrorists, we should want to kill them.’ But I think, ‘Who should want to stop them more?’ Maybe the people who live there. Should not the Shiites, the Maliki government, should they not stand up? And if they’re ripping their uniforms off and fleeing, they don’t think Mosul is worth saving. How am I going to convince my son or your son to die for Mosul?”

President Barack Obama is sending 300 troops into Iraq as advisers, but, like Rand Paul, believes holding back on military support is the right thing to do at this time.