Rand Paul: “I have a few questions for my colleagues. What if our foreign policy of the past century is deeply flawed and has not…”

“I have a few questions for my colleagues. What if our foreign policy of the past century is deeply flawed and has not served our national security interests? What if we wake up one day and realize that the terrorist threat is a predictable consequence of our meddling in the affairs of others and has nothing to do with us being free and prosperous? What if propping up repressive regimes in the Middle East endangers both the United States and Israel? What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan--and bombing Pakistan--is directly related to the hatred directed towards us? What if some day it dawns on us that losing over 5,000 American military personnel in the Middle East since 9/11 is not a fair trade-off for the loss of nearly 3,000 American citizens--no matter how many Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghan people are killed or displaced? What if we finally decide that torture--even if called 'enhanced interrogation techniques'--is self-destructive and produces no useful information and that contracting it out to a third world nation is just as evil? What if it is finally realized that war and military spending is always destructive to the economy? What if all wartime spending is paid for through the deceitful and evil process of inflating and borrowing? What if we finally see that wartime conditions always undermine personal liberty?”