Thread by @RJBrodsky

Well done, @FoxNews. When there’s an issue with an ally, you were sure to book Rand Paul. He has a predetermined narrative for all things foreign policy - regardless of any development. His is a policy that would weaken America.

Rand Paul says we should never sell arms to any country unless it lessens the risk to the US and that selling arms to #SaudiArabia to use in #Yemen puts the US in greater risk. That is an absurd reading of the Middle East that demonstrates a lack of understanding.

Rand Paul said he’s furious over what Saudi Arabia did to #Khashoggi, claiming we should punish them on humanitarian grounds. But there’s never been a conflict or number of civilian casualties that he would support acting against, including selling weapons. It’s a double standard

Rand Paul is simply an isolationist in the mold of Republicans in the 1930s, who learned painful lessens when the war landed on our doorstep. Add up all of his foreign policy suggestions and we stand by no ally, oppose no foe, and talk ourselves into inaction. A disastrous policy

Asked about #Putin’s claim that the US has a double standard given our different response to his poisoning & killing spies in #London and our reaction to #SaudiArabia. The answer should be easy: #KSA is an ally; #Russia is not. To quote @davereaboi “membership has its privileges”

Rand Paul is also wrong about Trump’s decision to get out of the bilateral nuclear agreement with #Russia unless Putin honors his commitments to the deal and we can include #China. All in all, this was a disastrous interview for the Senator.

Jane Harman said our foreign policy is based on values and interests in making her case that #SaudiArabia’s actions meet neither. Wrong. Our alliance with KSA is about intel sharing and common interests, not values. It’s the wrong metric for constructing alliances.

Jane Harman appears to be like many others in the foreign policy establishment who categorically reject regime change any time the subject is brought up. But they have no problem telling #SaudiArabia to change its leadership. Their inconsistencies are dizzying. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

These are just reckless comments by a leader of a think tank. Jane says the “feckless war in #Yemen... is the largest humanitarian catastrophe on the planet right now...” Half a million #Syrians would disagree but they’ve been ethnically cleansed.

I’m getting tired of people saying how the war in #Yemen is so brutal, even with #SaudiArabia using our weapons. Only the US & #Israel go to extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualties. If you don’t want to fight the war with American soldiers, then THIS IS WHAT WAR LOOKS LIKE.

My tweet above 👆🏻 brings it back to Jane Harman's absurd understanding of our alliances based on values & interests. US & #Israel share interests & VALUES, which can be seen in their conduct of war, democratic values, free press etc. US & #SaudiArabia alliance is about interests.

We should not confuse values with interests. In the past few weeks it seems that half the world awoke after some Rip Van Winkle slumber only to discover the Middle East works different than the West. Many who do so should know better, which means they have an ulterior motive.

To grasp this concept in the simplest of terms consider the US alliance with #Britain and the #Soviet Union during WW2. With the #UK our alliance was both values & interests. With the Soviets we didn't share values; we shared interests. We did Lend/Lease with the #UK not #Russia.

And yet allying with the Soviet Union during WW2 against the Nazis (the real ones, not those on #Erdogan's long list 🙄) was the right decision, despite the fact that Stalin was a brutal bastard and the long Cold War followed that alliance. This should be a simple concept.