Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said while President Donald Trump was “probably the least interventionist minded president we’ve had in a long time,” the generals who surrounded him with didn’t ‘want to admit that there isn’t a military solution” in Afghanistan.
Partial transcript as follows:
MAJOR GARRETT: From your point of view, Senator, on the defense side of the equation is the spending and the mission, are they reckless?
PAUL: I think the mission is- is beyond what we need to be we’re actively in war in about seven countries. And yet the Congress hasn’t voted on declaring or authorizing the use of military force in over 15 years now. So I’ve been one that’s been bugging the Senate and Congress to say how can we be at war without ever voting on it don’t the American people through their representatives get a chance to say when we go to war. I think the Afghan war is long past its mission. I think we killed and captured and disrupted the people who attacked us on 9/11 long ago. And I think now it’s a nation building exercise. We’re spending 50 billion dollars a year. And if the president really is serious about infrastructure, a lot of that money could be spent at home. Instead of building bridges and schools and roads in Afghanistan or in Pakistan. I think we could do that at home and the interesting thing is I think the president’s instincts lean that way but —
GARRETT: His policies, his policies, have not though.
PAUL: And that’s sort of the problem and this is something that we’ve seen even going back to Reagan conservatives said, “Oh, we love Reagan.” Then the people appointed around him were often big government types. That’s a little bit of the problem I see here is that I think Donald Trump is probably the least interventionist minded president we’ve had in a long time. I mean he criticized George Bush for the intervention in the Iraq war. I think he’s not that excited about continuing the Afghan war forever. But the generals who surrounded him with don’t want to admit that there isn’t a military solution. And so the war goes on and on and on. And really I think after 15 years and a trillion dollars that the Afghan it’s time for them to take over their country.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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