Much of the buzz after last night’s GOP presidential debate has centered around Giuliani’s outrage in response to Ron Pual’s explanation for why 911 occurred. Basically Paul argued that 911 was a response to decades of US interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East. Upon hearing this Guiliani jumped in with righteous indignation demanding that Paul retract his analysis (sounding much like a global warming alarmist when faced with a arguments of s skeptic for whom he has no other retort). He then went on to say that “as someone who lived through 911” he has heard a lot of “outrageous” explanations as to why it occurred but he had never heard this one before. First this reminded me of trying to explain to someone of my parents’ generation what the cause of the great depression was and being told “don’t tell me what caused the great depression, I lived through it.”  But it was the next thing that the former mayor said which really floored me. He said that he had never heard the argument that Paul was making before. My first thought after hearing that statement was, are you really that woefully ignorant of foreign policy debates that you have never heard of arguments based on the idea that 911 was a response to past US foreign interventionism? Particularly in the Middle East? This is someone whose strong suite is supposed to be foreign policy. Instead of cheering Giuliani’s response to Paul, the audience should have have been scratching its head wondering why this top-tier presidential candidate was so woefully ignorant of the actual foreign policy debates that are going on around him. Paul’s argument may be a minority argument and it may or may not be correct, but it is certainly considered a legitimate argument in foreign policy circles. What should be the real concern for Republicans is that Giuliani never heard it before.