re: Rand Paul Calls Hillary Clinton a 'War Hawk' in NBC Interview

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The great thing about counterfactuals is that they're not falsifiable.

Cf: Literally any article written by a neocon or liberventionist on Ukraine. "If Nobama had only acted more strongly in [NO SPECIFICS GIVEN] then Putin would never have had THE STONES to invade this country full of Russians literally next door to him!"

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More examples of counterfactuals:

If Carter had been "stronger", the Iranian Revolution wouldn't have happened.

If Obama had been "stronger", the Arab Spring wouldn't have happened.

Here's how George Will put it when Mubarak was toppled three years ago:

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Those Americans who know which Republican will win next year's Iowa caucuses can complain about those who did not know that when a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire, he would set a region afire. From all other Americans, forbearance would be seemly.

It also would be amazing, because there is a cottage industry of Barack Obama critics who, not content with monitoring his myriad mistakes in domestic policies, insist that there must be a seamless connection of those with his foreign policy. Strangely, these critics, who correctly doubt the propriety and capacity of the U.S. government controlling our complex society, simultaneously fault the government for not having vast competence to shape the destinies of other societies. Such critics persist because, as Upton Sinclair wrote in 1935, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

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