Republican Senator and presidential contender Rand Paul of Kentucky said Monday that it was a "mistake" for the U.S. to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein and suggested that the U.S.-backed ousting of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya led to the country's deterioration.
Paul has been working hard to persuade those who support Israel and an aggressive foreign policy that he is not actually an isolationist, as his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, has often been portrayed.
But what he told a group of Orthodox Jewish leaders at the headquarters of the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools in Brooklyn, N.Y., this week didn't exactly highlight his hawkish side.
"Hillary's war in Libya is, was, and continues to be an utter disaster. Gaddafi wasn't a good guy but he suppressed radical Islam," Paul said, according to The New York Times. "Each time we topple a secular dictator, I think we wind up with chaos and radical Islam seems to rise."
Paul insisted, "I'm not an isolationist. I'm somebody who believes that war is the last resort."
"All the way back to the Iraq War, I think it was a mistake to topple [Saddam] Hussein. Hussein was the bulwark against Iran. The Sunnis didn't like the Shiites, now Iraq is a vassal state for Iran," Paul said, according to the New York Observer. "I'm worried [Iran] is twice as strong as it was before the Iraq War."
When it comes to Iran, Paul said he is "for negotiations as opposed to war."
"If there's a way we can have a negotiated peace, I want peace as opposed to war," Paul said, adding, "That doesn't mean I favor a bad deal, though."
