Rand Paul, Rick Perry Squabble Over Iraq

We've got a few years yet before 2016, but two potential GOP candidates are already taking shots at each other in dueling foreign policy pieces. Texas Gov. Rick Perry got the party started with a Washington Post op-ed, in which he attacked Sen. Rand Paul for being "curiously blind" to the national security threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Paul, Perry argues in the piece, advocates doing "next to nothing" to confront the situation, whereas Perry would prefer to take action. That action, he writes, could include "intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sharing" as well as airstrikes.

Paul took to Politico to offer a batch of what Slate calls "snappy insults" in return. If Paul is "blind" on ISIS, then Perry's "new glasses haven’t altered his perception of the world, or allowed him to see it any more clearly," Paul writes. He accuses Perry of getting his views so wrong that "I wonder if he’s even really read any of my policy papers." The truth, he notes, is that the US is already involved in or considering the strategies Perry supports, and Paul has laid out a number of proposals himself. "If the governor continues to insist that these proposals mean I’m somehow 'ignoring ISIS,' I’ll make it my personal policy to ignore Rick Perry’s opinions." Click for Perry's piece, or for Paul's piece. (More Rand Paul stories.)