{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/article/rare-op-ed-trump-should-pick-a-secretary-of-state-who-understands-that-iraq-was-a-debacle", "Rare Op-Ed: Trump should pick a secretary of state who understands that Iraq was a debacle", "2016-11-28", "2016", "2016-11", "Republican", "House", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Rare Op-Ed: Trump should pick a secretary of state who understands that Iraq was a debacle \n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\nMonday, November 28, 2016\n\t\nDonald Trump should pick someone to be his secretary of state who will advocate for Donald Trump\u2019s views on foreign policy. That sounds simple, but the mix of candidates\u00a0bandied about by the media includes several who\u00a0don\u2019t share the president-elect\u2019s worldview.\r\nTrump has been\u00a0clear and consistent about his opposition to the Iraq War and to regime change. The media never really understood and still largely doesn\u2019t\u00a0understand the significance of Trump\u2019s grasping\u00a0our failures in the Middle East.\r\nThe media, never shy from engaging in the petty, obsessed over when exactly Trump opposed the Iraq War instead of exposing the stark differences between Trump\u2019s worldview and Clinton\u2019s worldview. Clinton\u2019s regret over her support for the Iraq invasion\u00a0seemed more contrived than heartfelt. She certainly never really grasped the historical lesson of Iraq, that regime change often leads to unintended and undesirable outcomes.\r\nIran is stronger and more of a menace because of the Iraq War. Iraq became a vacuum and then a sectarian-divided country closely aligned with Iran. If Clinton ever absorbed this lesson, it was not apparent given her continued advocacy for regime change in Libya and Syria.\r\nRegardless of when Trump first opposed the Iraq War, he without question vocalized his opposition consistently throughout the campaign and drew clear conclusions that regime change often doesn\u2019t make America safer, that nation-building is expensive and frequently\u00a0doesn\u2019t work, and that, in Syria, regime change is\u00a0likely to make ISIS stronger. Clinton never got one iota of the lesson of the Iraq War, and those of us who want war to be the last resort are lucky that she\u00a0will never be president.\r\nTrump needs a secretary of state who supports his domestic agenda as well. He won\u2019t be able to rebuild America if we continue to spend billions rebuilding other countries at the same time. Most Americans get this: there is not enough money to build bridges abroad and rebuild at home.\r\nThe U.S. has spent over $100 billion on infrastructure in Afghanistan, including $80 million on a Clinton disaster of an embassy in Mazar-e Sharif that will never be occupied because the State Department ignored every security restriction and\u00a0built a facility so unsafe that personnel refused to move in. The Obama Pentagon also spent $45 million building a natural gas fueling\u00a0station in Afghanistan, a country that did\u00a0not have a single vehicle that runs\u00a0on natural gas.\r\nDonald Trump needs a secretary of state who understands that we can\u2019t build nations abroad and have enough money to rebuild our own nation. Both Trump\u2019s foreign policy and domestic policy depend on him picking someone who has fully learned the historic lesson of the Iraq War: regime change and nation-building don\u2019t work and cost too much.\r\nTrump should be Trump and pick a secretary of state who will put America first.\r\nhttp://rare.us/story/rand-paul-trump-should-pick-a-secretary-of-state-who-understands-that-iraq-was-a-debacle/", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/article/rare-op-ed-trump-should-pick-a-secretary-of-state-who-understands-that-iraq-was-a-debacle"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9838300757110119, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}