Rubio on Iraq: “It’s not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation.”

REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE MARCO RUBIO: I think we have a responsibility to support democracy. And if a nation expresses a desire to become a democratic nation, particularly one that we invaded, I do believe that we have a responsibility to help them move in that direction. But the most immediate responsibility we have is to help them build a functional government that can actually meet the needs of the people in the short- and long-term, and that ultimately from that you would hope that would spring democracy.

FOX HOST: That sounds like nation-building.

MARCO RUBIO: Well, it’s not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation. We have a vested interest in doing that. The alternative to doing that is the chaos we have now. Because in fact what happened in Iraq under this administration is they rallied around [former Prime Minister Nouri al] Maliki, a Shia leader who used his power to go after Sunnis, and that created the environment that was conducive for ISIS to come back in and create all these problems.

(Transcript from Fox’s Outnumbered via Vox; emphasis ours.)