Whatever the history of U.S. intervention in Iraq, our priorities now should be to protect our people and defend our national security interests, not to try to resolve an intractable religious divide some 1,500 years in the making.
I don't think we should be engaged in nation-building. It's not our job to turn foreign nations into democratic utopias, to try to turn Iraq into Switzerland. It is the military's job to hunt down and kill our enemies, to kill ISIS before they murder American citizens and they wage jihad.
If we were living back in 1789, your musket would be really useful in a military conflict. If you were called up to service, they said bring your musket. And indeed, the First Congress passed a law. You want to know the first gun control law in America? First Congress passed a law mandating that all able-bodied men must own a musket.
The Second Amendment was designed explicitly to protect weapons that would be useful in a military context.
Any military force should be dictated by the vital national security interests of the United States. And if and when we use force, we should use overwhelming force for a clearly stated objective. And then when we're done, we should get the heck out.
Do you know the rate of military enlistment among Hispanics is higher than any demographic in this country?
There's a real danger when people get distracted by peripheral issues. They get distracted by democracy building. They get distracted about military conflicts. We need to focus on defeating jihadism.
Ronald Reagan reignited the American economy, rebuilt the Military, bankrupted the Soviet Union and defeated Soviet Communism. I will do the same thing.
