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Republican presidential candidates question U.S. Mideast policy

Xinhua, December 16, 2015 Adjust font size:

Major Republican presidential candidates on Tuesday questioned whether the United States should continue its efforts to seek regime change in the Middle East, including Syria.

"If we topple (Syrian President Bashar) Assad, the result will be (that) IS (Islamic State) will take over Syria, and it will worsen U.S. national security interests," said Senator Ted Cruz during the fifth Republican primary debate in Los Vegas, Nevada.

"We keep hearing from President (Barack) Obama and Hillary Clinton and Washington Republicans that they're searching for these mythical moderate rebels ... they never exist," said Cruz. "These moderate rebels end up being jihadists."

Echoing Cruz, billionaire developer Donald Trump, the current front-runner in the still crowded Republican field, said that the United States had to "do one thing at a time," which was the anti-IS campaign, and cast doubt on whether the U.S. government should spent a staggering amount of money "trying to topple various people."

"If we could've spent that 4 trillion dollars in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our airports and all of the other problems we've had, we would've been a lot better off," said Trump.

Meanwhile, Ben Carson, a retired African-American neurosurgeon, used an air travel analogy to explain why he believed that the United States should focus on domestic needs instead of toppling foreign governments.

"No one is ever better off with dictators, but there comes a time when you're on an airplane, they always say, 'in case of an emergency, oxygen masks will drop down," said Carson. "Put yours on first and then administer help to your neighbor."

"We need to start thinking about the needs of the American people before we go and solve everybody else's problems," he added.

Senator Rand Paul pointed out that so far U.S. past efforts to seek "regime change" in several countries, including Libya, had not worked.

"Out of regime change, you get chaos. From the chaos you have seen repeatedly the rise of radical Islam," said Paul. Endi