The clamor for a no-fly zone among some in Congress and in US civil society, however, displays a remarkable amnesia, and it is perhaps in part because the phrase “no-fly zone” is a misnomer.

Let us recall what happened in Libya. During the Arab Spring youth revolts, demonstrations broke out in Benghazi on February 15-16, 2011, against the regime of dictator Moammar Gaddafi, several of whose sons were military commanders. On February 17, youth active on the internet coordinated a nationwide Day of Rage, with rallies throughout the country. By February 23, Gaddafi had lost Benghazi in the east and Misrata in the west to the youth revolutionaries.

On March 10, a defiant Gaddafi ordered Libyan war plans to bomb the north-central city of Brega, targeting the rebels. By March 18, regime armor had advanced to the outskirts of Benghazi with mass murder on their minds.

And here’s a couple of important developments. The Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE etc.) called for a no-fly zone for Libya. Then on March 12, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, announced that the organization was asking the UN Security Council to put a no-fly zone over Libya, to protect civilians. This organization with 22 members groups the whole Arab World, some 400 million people, and they wanted a no-fly zone over one of their member states, and they clearly wanted someone else to provide it.

On March 17, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 1973, authorizing a no-fly zone for the protection of non-combatants and an arms embargo on the Gaddafi regime. China and Russia abstained from the vote but did not use their veto to protect Gaddafi.

According to the UN Charter, there are two legitimate grounds for war. One is self-defense. The other is if the UN Security Council designates a government as a destabilizing force for world order. The Security Council forwarded Moammar Gaddafi and his son Saif to the International Criminal Court for prosecution as war criminals for having targeted their own civilians from the air. The UNSC does not have its own armed forces. It can only act like a sheriff in the Old West, deputizing townspeople to go sling guns against the outlaws terrorizing the town.

On March 19, French fighter jets hit Gaddafi’s troops and armor who were attacking Benghazi.

Also beginning on March 19, President Barack Obama ordered the US Air Force to destroy all of Gaddafi’s anti-aircraft batteries and to ground his helicopter gunships and fighter jets. This involved massive air strikes all over the country.

You see, a no-fly zone needs to be imposed and policed. You have to fly your jets over the zone to make sure no one is targeting non-combatants. But it is not safe to fly your jets over territory that has anti-aircraft emplacements. So you have to destroy them. It isn’t safe to fly your jets in contested air space where the enemy might scramble his own jets and try to shoot you out of the sky. You have to try to destroy his air fields and as many of his fighter jets and attack helicopters as you can.

The prerequisite for a no-fly zone is all-out war.

When the Arab League and their citizens saw two days of mayhem, with US rockets and missiles leveling key military installations in Libya, they suddenly had buyers remorse. Secretary-General Amr Moussa came out and said, no, no, that wasn’t what they had meant by a no-fly zone. Moussa exclaimed, “What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone. And what we want is the protection of civilians and not the shelling of more civilians.”

But that is how you make a no-fly zone, by bombing the bejesus out of the zone first, so you can safely patrol it and thereafter protect the civilians. I favored the no-fly zone over Libya, and still think it saved hundreds of thousands of lives. But the Gaddafi regime did not have nukes and Russia and China had decided to stay out of it.

Now in the case of Ukraine, the enforcers of a no-fly zone such as the United States would not have anything to fear from Ukrainian anti-aircraft emplacements or from their fighter jets or helicopters.

The US would, however, have to hit any anti-aircraft systems the Russians brought in with them, including any Russian troops that might have man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) such as the 9K333 Verba, and would have to clear the air space of Russian Migs.

In other words, the prerequisite for a no-fly zone over Ukraine right now would be a massive American attack on the Russian military.

Russia is a nuclear state with 4,477 nuclear warheads, many on inter ballistic missiles that can reach the United States.

As a child of the Cold War, let me just tell any youngsters among you out there (i.e.people under 70) that you really, really don’t want to play nuclear chicken with Vladimir Putin.

Back in the 1960s, we had nightmares about a nuclear exchange. My grade school teacher sent us home in tears during the Cuban missile crisis because she said we should go home and pray that the world did not end. We were haunted by films like Dr. Strangelove and Failsafe (1964). You can rent the latter on YouTube, and it is worth watching. Here’s a clip:

So, no. Just, no. We don’t want a no-fly zone over Ukraine that could drag us into nuclear war.

The philosophical difference between the Libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and the GOP hawks has burst into open name-calling. First, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that Paul had been more wrong than right, and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) jumped in, calling him “naive.”

On Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” on Tuesday, Paul hit back, calling Graham and McCain “Obama’s lapdogs,” who wanted to follow his policies abroad but intensify them:

Sen. Rand Paul Appears on America’s Newsroom on Fox News – April 21, 2015

Paul connected Graham and McCain to the Libya intervention backed by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which he called a mistake, and said it had led to the rise of Muslim radicalism in that country. He admitted that he thinks the US needs to intervene against ISIL in Iraq, but said he regretted that ISIL had so many American weapons, which fell into their hands after Graham and McCain voted to invade Iraq, create a new army, and arm it with American weapons.

Paul said he was against bombing the facilities in Syria of President Bashar al-Assad, because that would make ISIL stronger. He also opposes arming Syrian rebels because, apparently, he does not trust them to remain American allies; they could defect to al-Qaeda or Daesh (ISIL or ISIS). (It is true that many former moderate Free Syria Army forces have now joined one or the other extremist group).

It has come out that Hillary Clinton was in favor of arming the Syrian rebels early in the Syrian turmoil, but was blocked by President Obama. McCain supported the same policy, though urged it be even more muscular, and wants a full-blown US intervention in Syria to overthrow the al-Assad regime.

McCain and Graham fired back on Wednesday. McCain called Paul “the worst possible candidate” on foreign policy. Graham said Paul’s approach was “one step behind leading from behind.”

What are the rights and wrongs here?

It is true that McCain and Graham haven’t seen a war they wanted to stay out of. They watered at the mouth at the prospect of invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and only regret we couldn’t just permanently colonize them. They supported the Libya intervention but wanted Obama to do more than provide a no-fly zone, going all the way to directly overthrowing dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

In contrast, Obama opposed the Iraq War and was unenthusiastic about the Libya intervention (one leak said he called it a “turd sandwich.”). He basically gave in to Samantha Powers, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton because the National Security Council predicted tens of thousands dead in Benghazi if Gaddafi’s murderous sons were allowed to crush it with their tanks.

So Paul’s characterization of McCain and Graham as “Obama’s lapdogs” is inaccurate. It is true that where Obama has intervened, as with bombing raids on ISIL, those two senators approved and wanted him to do more. But they supported many wars and interventions that Obama opposed or felt lukewarm about.

Paul is also being a little disingenuous, insofar as he approves of the bombing of Daesh in Iraq and Syria, so he is not a consistent anti-interventionist. It is a little difficult to see the difference between bombing Iraq to stop Daesh from taking it over and bombing Libya to stop Gaddafi from winning out.

The really big difference to which he points is that he wants to stay out of Syria even more fervently than Obama does. Whatever Obama says, he hasn’t actually created a credible pro-Western rebel force that could take on the Baath regime in Damascus. He has avoided bombing Baath facilities. His main targets have been Daesh and al-Qaeda. So Paul’s proposed Syria policy looks a lot like Obama’s actual Syria policy. It is true that it is non-interventionist and contrasts with the interventionism of H. Clinton and John McCain.

One take-away is that Rand Paul seems a little bit of a defensive realist insofar as he can live with an al-Assad-ruled Syria, even though al-Assad is by now a war criminal.

Here is a transcript from the appearance at Fox News’ America’s Newsroom :

“HEMMER:… Let’s talk about your campaign because people want to know if you get the nomination how you would govern. Lindsey Graham said this about your world view, “Generally speaking, you have done more wrong than right.” John McCain says, “You don’t understand. You displayed this kind of naivete since you came to the Senate.”

What’s going on there?

PAUL: This comes from a group of people who’ve been wrong about every foreign policy issue over the last two decades. I’ll give you a couple of examples, where they support the President’s foreign policy and I don’t. They supported Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya. They supported President Obama’s bombing of Assad. They also support President Obama’s foreign aid to countries that hate us.

So if there’s anyone who is the most opposed to President Obama’s foreign policy, it’s me. And these people who call loudest to criticize me are great proponents of President Obama’s foreign policy. They just want to do it 10 times over. But I’m the only one actually standing up and saying: the war in Libya was a mistake; the bombing of Assad would make ISIS stronger; the arms to the Islamic rebels would make ISIS stronger.

So I’m really the one standing up to President Obama. And these people are essentially the lap dogs for President Obama and I think they’re sensitive about that.

HEMMER: Well, how would you define yourself? I mean, you’re an inventionist or an isolationist? You will be asked that question repeatedly. And you will say what?

PAUL: Yeah, I’m a Reagan Republican. I believe in a strong national defense. I believe in peace through strength. I think that intervention is not always the answer and that some interventions lead to unintended consequences.

So for example, Hillary’s war in Libya has made Libya less table, more chaotic and has allowed the rise of radical Islam. So we are more at risk after that war. It was a mistake for that war to occur and for the U.S. to be involved with toppling Gadhafi.

Realize that these people who criticize me were for giving arms to Gadhafi last year or the year before, they were for toppling Gadhafi. So they’re on both sides of so many wars. Some of these critics are for bombing both sides of the Syrian war. Their foreign policy is so disjointed, confusing and chaotic that really people need to re-examine those who want to be involved in every war. I say we get involved when there’s American interest. I think we do have to militarily stop ISIS. But I am sad that ISIS got a lot of the weapons from interventionists in my party and the President who gave them the weapons indirectly.

HEMMER: The word I got from New Hampshire over the weekend is that you guys are playing nice. Perhaps not?

PAUL: I’ll play nice, if they’ll place nice. But if they’re going to trot around the country, criticizing me, I’m going to make sure that the American public knows that these are precisely the people that support President Obama’s foreign aid, Libyan war and the Syrian war. And they need to explain themselves.

HEMMER: I know you had a big weekend in New Hampshire and you’re back in Iowa later this week. Senator, we will speak again. Thank you for your time today.

PAUL: Thank you.

HEMMER: You bet. Rand Paul, the Republican from Kentucky.”