MESOP TODAYS ARGUMENTS & ANALYSIS II

“Hot Take on the GOP Debate: National Security” (Kori Schake, War on the Rocks)

“Everybody was a mess on the Middle East.  Ted Cruz thinks ‘speaking the truth’ is evidently the way to defeat the Islamic State and dissed General Dempsey for not saying the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ Carson seemed to think political correctness is what needs fighting, inverted the civil-military relationship so that the generals would have a free hand to win the wars (and sounded suspiciously close to endorsing torture). Rand Paul argued we should destroy the Islamic State…but not fight them. He seemed to believe we were actually arming the allies of the Islamic State and should stop. After arguing for disengaging from the Middle East, he argued we should have ‘negotiated from a position of strength’ on Iran. Jeb Bush still doesn’t have a convincing answer to the Iraq question and conflated Iran and the Islamic State.  Everybody — with the possible exception of Paul — would vacate the Iran deal, but nobody had any bright ideas about how to contain Iran’s multidimensional threat.  Walker sounded trite, explaining he’d slap more sanctions on Iran and get the Europeans to follow. Huckabee ominously said of Iran ‘when somebody loads a gun and points it at your head, by God you’d better take them seriously,’ but his prescription was unclear.”
-J. Dana Stuster