In search of libertarian realism: how should anti-interventionism apply in the real world?

• Author: Welch, Matt

On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush landed a Lockheed S-3 Viking on the deck of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego, then delivered a triumphant speech under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished." "In the Battle of Iraq," the president proclaimed, "the United States and our allies have prevailed."

For the next decade, that premature declaration gave way to insurgencies, sectarian warfare, troop surges, corrupt Iraqi governments, 4,000 U.S. combat deaths, even more Iraqi deaths, and $1 trillion in taxpayer money down the drain. The American appetite for war, occupation, and the concomitant surveillance state went on a steady and uninterrupted decline, culminating in the shockingly successful September 2013 public and congressional revolt against President Barack Obama's plans to attack Bashar Assad's regime in Syria. With the occupation of Afghanistan becoming the most unpopular war in recorded U.S. history, and with people telling pollsters they feared their own government more than they feared terrorists, it became possible to imagine a cross-ideological coalition against war, spanning from the progressive left to the constitutional-conservative right, and headed up by the libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

But 2014 has complicated that narrative. The rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) within war-torn Syria, Iraq, and Libya halted the public's decade-long bear market on war, with more Americans favoring combat troops against ISIS in October than in September, in part because of the Islamic State's horrific beheadings of two U.S. citizens.

Land grabs by ISIS across the region gave rhetorical ammunition to hawks and anti-interventionists alike. The influential camp led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) argued that the battlefield successes of ISIS demonstrated the folly of leaving Iraq too soon and of not toppling Assad when we had the chance. McCain's former campaign sparring partner Ron Paul--Rand's father--countered that watching the Iraqi army abandon its weapons after $26 billion worth of propping up by Washington proved the hopelessness of war and nation-building (see "Dr. Never," page 42). Rand Paul, meanwhile, vacillated between those poles, arguing in one...