Ron Paul made a point about the underlying causes for 9/11 that inadvertently made the case that we had no alternative but to invade Iraq. Rudy Giuliani's response was superficially strong but wrongheaded. Watch the exchange:
Paul was correct to point out that U.S. pre-invasion policies toward Iraq — the no-fly zones, the military bases protecting Saudi Arabia, the economic sanctions — were front and center in Osama bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war against America. In a post-9/11 world, the status quo toward Iraq was no longer tenable. Neither, though, was the alternative — lifting the sanctions, leaving the Middle East defenseless against Saddam's expansionist fantasies, letting him massacre the Kurds, letting him develop nuclear weapons and continue to fund terrorism, etc. Maybe Paul is arguing that this is the course we should have pursued. Wendell Goler should have pinned him down on that.
