SEN. RAND PAUL: I think we have to learn from history. If there's one thing we have learned from the history of the middle east is that regime change didn't work. People like Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio have advocated regime change in Libya, Syria, Iraq, you name it.



Has it worked?



Every time we've toppled a secular dictator, we've gotten chaos and the rise of radical Islam.



This need to be a big debate. I want to be part of it. When the American people hear the failure of our foreign policy in the middle east, maybe they will choose another way.



MSNBC: So should Assad stay in power based on that formula of what we've learned in the past?



RAND PAUL: I think you have variations of evil on both sides of the Syrian civil war, on one side Assad, and al-Qaeda, al-Nursa and ISIS on the other side. I don't think there's a victor there that we should say we'll be a lot better off is Assad is gone.



Look at McCain and Graham and all the others that want perpetual war, if we had toppled Assad, like everybody wnated, ISIS would be in charge of all of Syria now. We need to learn from our history. Regime change has not worked in the past and it will not work in the future. The ultimate victory there is going to be when civilized Islam rises up to defeat this barbaric form of Islam that is ISIS.



MSNBC: Let me ask you a question I've been asking foreign policy leaders on both sides of the aisle for the past year. It's provocative but in line with what you're saying and what a lot of people say off camera. Would the world be safer if Saddam Hussein, Moammar Qadhafi and Assad were comfortably in power today?



RAND PAUL: It is a mistake to say we advocate for those dictators, but it is also a mistake to topple the dictators. Sometimes neutrality in the middle east is a better position. I don't want it to be missinterpreted... but What we have now is worse than what we had before....



But their removal has led to a far more chaotic state...



Every Sunday you'll see on the morning programs, you'll see Hillary Clinton, John McCain all calling for more nation building. They have been wrong, wrong, wrong, and we continue to listen to them. We have to wake up.