He implied that we’re responsible for 911, but while I heard him say it, I don’t believe he really meant it and could probably forgive him knowing that.
Things like that don't happen in a vacuum.
We as Americans need to come off this fantasy-land delusion that we're white knights in gleaming armor astride a majestic white stallion, championing the cause of liberty and justice throughout the world.
We may be that sometimes, in some places, but we most assuredly have not been, over the decades, in the Middle East.
We used those nations as tools, as pawns, in the Cold War as bulwarks against Soviet expansionism. We tolerated, installed, and supported thugs, tyrants, brutally repressive monarchs, and criminals as long as they pledged fealty to us and against the Soviets. And straight to hell with the ordinary citizens of those nations, for all we cared.
The CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran, in favor of the Shah, who promptly demolished constitutional limits on his power and converted himself into an absolute monarch while jetting over to visit the White House every so often. When he was finally overthrown, we protected him and spirited him out of the country, instead of allowing the Iranians to hang him as he so richly deserved, and this was followed shortly thereafter by the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran.
Then, we backed Saddam in the bloodbath eight-year proxy war against Iran - an example of "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" thinking - at a cost of anywhere from 900,000 to one and a quarter million Iranian and Iraqi lives, a hundred thousand or more ending in excruciating agony as a result of chemical weaponry, with the help of covert CIA intelligence channels supplying satellite reconnaissance to the Iraqi army.
The term "blowback" is a well-understood piece of jargon in the lexicon of military action and international relations.
It's too bad that some people are so blinded by the gleam of shining armor in their mind's eye that they can't see the reality that Ron Paul has come to understand as a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee.