Senator Rand Paul wrote an essay for The Wall Street Journal last week, "America Shouldn't Choose Sides in Iraq's Civil War," in which he associated his attitude toward overseas interventions with the foreign-policy principles of Ronald Reagan. "Though many claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan on foreign policy," Sen. Paul wrote, "too few look at how he really conducted it." Essentially what this means, Sen. Paul continued, is that "Like Reagan . . . we should never be eager to go to war."

The...