Aside from being an unelectable mayor with literally no federal experience, the specter of a Giuliani presidency is a terrifying one, replete with fear-mongering and an oversimplified world of good and evil--the mistake that landed us in Iraq. Instead of rationally examining cause and effect when it comes to 9/11, he uses rhetoric as frightening as it is inaccurate.

Case in point: during the May 14th Republican Debate Giuliani exploded at Ron Paul for saying "They attack us because we've been over there [Saudi Arabia]; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it..." Giuliani thundered heroically out of turn to tell Paul "that's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement--as someone who lived through the attack of September 11--that we invited the attack. ... I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th." Is it really so radical to propose that our own actions could have effects? Evidently.

After the audience finished its standing ovation for the irrational patriot, Ron Paul rebutted with facts: the CIA is correct when they teach about "blowback." When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the Shah, blowback amounted to an enormous hostage crises and a "revolutionary" government. When we bombed Iraq, and made several Arab countries western puppets, we encountered blowback in the form of terrorism. If we ignore the logical system of cause and effect, we do so at our own risk. If we think that we can act promiscuously and not incite hatred, then we have a problem of willful and pernicious ignorance.

Paul said, "They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were--if other foreign countries were doing that to us?"

Essentially 9/11 was a culmination of interventionist foreign policy: occupation and armament. Occupying the land of two holy sites, an occupation Bin Laden calls "veiled colonialism," provides a lightning rod through which extremism is channeled. We are not without fault: Reagan supported Osama Bin Laden against the Red Army, supplying his budding organization with arms and aid.

Osama has declared his principle reasons for disliking us in nearly all of his videos: that is, we support a corrupt government in Saudi Arabia. Robert Pape suggests that offshore balancing between Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia would render a polarizing and visible presence in the Middle East obsolete, while maintaining regional stability. We must keep those three states in relative equilibrium so none of them gains hegemony. But that is largely beside the point--Iraq has already become, for all intents and purposes, a power vacuum and terrorist breeding ground.

Nevertheless, it is very dangerous to dogmatically refuse, as Giuliani does, to understand that 9/11 had a political motive. It is almost psychotic to simplify our current geopolitical situation to "they hate us for our freedom." We must no longer rely on the emotional yet empty rhetoric of "good" and "bad."