Rand, like Ron, decries the folly of US foreign policy toward Israel

From the American Spectator:

During his Senate campaign, Rand Paul walked a careful line on foreign policy: he shared his father's basic skepticism of interventionism but tried to be much more respectful of the majority viewpoint within the Republican Party. Sometimes that led him to state his positions differently from his father; sometimes it led him to take different positions than his father.

So it was interesting to read the Kentucky senator's statement on President Obama's Middle East speech. As expected, Paul slammed Obama's liberal interventionism: "Our mistakes in foreign policy have always been from hubris. We somehow believe that we can dictate the policies of the world, and enforce them with our military and economic strength. While this might sound like a good idea to many, it has its limits and its consequences." Yet even in opposing the Libya war, Paul took a pro-Israel line: "For example, instead of seeking proper authority from Congress and the Constitution to go to war with Libya, President Obama empowered the United Nations and the Arab League, two bodies that together endanger the security and sovereignty of our ally Israel."

Senator Paul continued his criticism of Obama's stance on Israel:

It is the United Nations who is threatening to impose a Palestinian state without a guarantee of safety for Israel. It is members of the Arab League who foment hostilities or refuse to recognize the right to safety and security of Israel.

But far worse than that, today it was an American President who stood before the world and once again demanded Israel act against her own strategic interest in the name of a false peace.

Peace from weakness or peace from outside coercion of Israel is a fool's errand. Unfortunately, the President today proved himself willing to play that fool.

Israel and her enemies have fought wars for the better part of the past 60 years. And terror-supporting countries in the region have spent the better part of those years feigning interest in peace while lobbing rockets across borders.

For President Obama to stand up today and insist that Israel should once again give up land, security and sovereignty for the possibility of peace shows an arrogance that is unmatched even in our rich history of foreign policy.

Paul then concludes on a noninterventionist note:

I agree with the President. This is in fact a moment of opportunity. It is time to seize control of our foreign policy from those who have spent the past decade policing the world, trying in vain to build nations after destroying them, and bankrupting our children and grandchildren in the process.

This opportunity will pass us by if we simply repeat the same mistakes, over again.

UPDATE: Ron Paul's statement is strikingly similar, with some twists (the elder Paul is tougher in his antiwar language and hints he thinks it might be in Israel's long-term interests to voluntarily make concessions).

emphasis added.

So, which is it, Israel? Get your story straight

Netanyahu and his new Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces quoted today:

AFP - The Israeli military is "ready for all eventualities" as the Arab and Muslim world undergoes "an earthquake," Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday just days after Egypt's regime collapsed.

"An earthquake is shaking the whole Arab world and a large part of the Muslim world and we don't yet know how these things will turn out," the premier said at a swearing-in ceremony for new army chief Major General Benny Gantz.

Tsk, Tsk...politicians...

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Another Israeli website known for behind the scenes military analysis, debka.com:

"Friday night, Feb. 11, as Cairo's Tahrir Square rejoiced over Hosni Mubarak exit, Israel counted the cost of losing its most important strategic partner in the region.
Thirty-two years of peace with Egypt leave Israel militarily unprepared for the unknown and unexpected on their 270-kilometer long southern border: the current generation of Israeli combatants and commanders has no experience of desert combat, its armor is tailored for operation on its most hostile fronts: Iran, Lebanon's Hizballah and Syria; it is short of  intelligence on the Egyptian army and its commanders and, above all, no clue to the new rulers' intentions regarding Cairo's future relations with Israel and security on their Sinai border."

[But other than that, Israel's military is "ready for all eventualities"...-HM]

"The Israeli Defense Forces are trained and equipped to confront Iran and fight on the mountainous terrain of Lebanon and Syria. After signing peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel scrapped the combat brigades trained for desert warfare, whose last battle was fought in the 1973 war, and stopped treating the Egyptian army as a target of military intelligence. Israel's high command consequently knows little or nothing about any field commanders who might lead units if they were to be deployed in Sinai."

Si vis pacem para bellum, General Gantz...