The op-ed could serve as a potential line of attack in the future for Perry against Paul.  | AP Photos Perry rips Paul on foreign policy

Texas Gov. Rick Perry in a Friday op-ed criticized the isolationist foreign policy of Sen. Rand Paul and argued for greater U.S. intervention in the world. 

In the opinion piece for The Washington Post, the Republican governor criticized Paul for advocating policies he said would further endanger U.S. national security. 


“[I]t’s disheartening to hear fellow Republicans, such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), suggest that our nation should ignore what’s happening in Iraq,” Perry wrote. 

Perry wrote that “Paul seems curiously blind” to threats from a mobilization of the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant, the Islamist militant group that has taken over much of the northern and central part of Iraq. 

The op-ed could serve as a potential line of attack in the future for Perry against the Kentucky senator, who appears to be near the front of a wide-open field for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.  Though neither Perry nor Paul has officially declared a run for president, both have expressed some interest in a potential bid. 

The governor also contested Paul’s June op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, in which he argued against intervention in Iraq in part by stating former Republican President Ronald Reagan would not recklessly engage in civil conflicts. 

“But his analysis is wrong,” Perry wrote of the Kentucky senator. “ Paul conveniently omitted Reagan’s long internationalist record of leading the world with moral and strategic clarity,” he said, citing Reagan’s actions against the Soviet Union. 

The op-ed comes after a busy week for the governor.  In advance of President Barack Obama’s visit to his state, he initially declined to meet the president on the tarmac at the airport in Austin and called on the president to visit the U.S.-Mexico border to survey the crisis of undocumented children there.  He later agreed to meet with the president at the airport and for a meeting to discuss the border situation.  Since the meeting, Perry has remained critical of Obama, and will appear this Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and “Fox News Sunday”. 

In the op-ed, the governor took his shots at Obama’s foreign policy — namely the president’s comments in August 2012 that Syrian President Bashad Assad’s potential use of chemical weapons against its own people would be a “red line” for his administration.  After revelations that the regime almost certainly used chemical weapons on parts of the Syrian population, Obama opted against airstrikes. 

Later Saturday, Paul’s team shot back at Perry, saying the governor should be focusing on the border crisis in his state instead of writing foreign policy op-eds. 

“60,000 children just invaded Texas, and their Governor has time to write an op ed in a Washington newspaper mischaracterizing Senator Paul’s foreign policy,” Paul senior adviser Doug Stafford wrote in an email to POLITICO. “ Perhaps he should concentrate on the invasion of his Southern border.”