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MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was defiant on Thursday as he answered fellow Republicans who have attacked his foreign policy as naïve and misguided, telling them “war is not a game” to be exploited by over-zealous politicians.

“Too many lawmakers in Washington haven’t learned that lesson,” he said.

Speaking here with the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Yorktown as his backdrop and near Fort Sumter, where the Civil War started, Mr. Paul said that politicians owed the men and women who serve in the military “the wisdom to know when war is necessary” and when it is not.

He invoked the lives lost when another ship with the same name sank in the Pacific during World War II, saying those men did not need to boast about their toughness. “They knew better than anyone in Washington the sacrifice necessary to protect liberty,” he said. “They didn’t talk about strength and courage. They lived it.”

The criticism from conservatives who think Mr. Paul would allow the United States to shrink from the world stage came even before he announced his candidacy for president this week. One group has already started running ads accusing him of empowering Iran.

In introducing Mr. Paul, J.C. Watts, the former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, noted the ads with a sense of pride and repeated one of his father’s sayings: “Dogs don’t bark at parked cars.”

Mr. Paul tried to refute the notion that he is an isolationist or a peacenik, saying that if he were commander in chief, “the world will not mistake our desire for peace for passivity.”

“The world should not mistake our reluctance for war for inaction,” he added. “And if war should prove unavoidable, America will fight with overwhelming force, and we will not relent until victory is ours.”