Rand Paul is in the news this week for rightly pointing out that the rise of ISIS can in large part be tied to the disastrous neoconservative policies of the last two decades, which have completely destabilized the region -- most notably the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. After Jeb Bush kept changing his position on the war his brother started, the media has been pushing other Republican candidates to say what they would have done about Iraq "if they had known what we know now." There has been lots of Republican muscular talk about war and foreign policy. But given that "the facts" the United States used to justify the invasion of Iraq were all wrong, most of the candidates have admitted they might not have launched that particular war.
Those responses have caused some backlash from the neocon hawks that still have apparently learned nothing from their desire to invade Iraq in 2003, despite the horrible costs of that decision. If everything hasn't gone the way they claimed it would in Iraq, they say, it is simply the fault of President Obama and has nothing to do with them. Their logic and arrogance is both intellectually ridiculous and morally indefensible.
What we have yet to hear from presidential candidates or the habitual hawks is the appropriate spiritual response to the war in Iraq -- repentance. Instead, we hear this defensive language: "Everybody got it wrong." Well that's not true. The people who ultimately made the decision to invade, occupy and completely destabilize Iraq did indeed get it wrong. But so far, they have been unwilling to admit their incredible mistakes that we all now have to live with: the enormous number of lives lost or permanently damaged; the extremely dangerous exacerbation of the sectarian Sunni/Shia conflict that now rules the entire region; and the creation of the conditions that led to ISIS. Except for Rand Paul, none of the Republican candidates has been willing to admit that ISIS is a consequence of our complete devastation and destabilization of Iraq -- leaving us with the greatest real threat the international community has faced for some time.