Pat Buchanan on the War in Iraq

From the Imus in the Morning Newsletter:

MSNBC political analyst & former presidential
candidate Pat Buchanan discusses with Imus his
opinions regarding the deeper intervention in
the Middle East.

Pat Buchanan: "My view is this, the President is
profoundly mistaken. He believes we were attacked
because we are free, he said in his inaugural,
'When freedom came under attack on that day of
fire'. It is not our principles that are being
attacked, it is America's policies. It is really
not our beliefs about Democracy, it is our
behavior. I think the President has got to
understand that the rationale that is driving
this war against the United States of America
is that we are perceived rightly or wrongly as
another imperial power that is dominating their
part of the world. Just as the terrorist drove
the British out of Palestine, the French out of
Algeria and the Russians out of Afghanistan, the
present objective is to drive us out of the Middle
East and therefore in my judgment, massive
American intervention augments and ignites
terrorists rather than cures the causes of
terrorism. This is why we are in such trouble
in Iraq. You know, Teddy Kennedy was half right,
it is the American presence there and American
military operations that is causing the terrorism
and the insurgency. At the same time, the American
military is the only thing that prevents it now
from taking power. So it is a paradox but I think
that the President is mistaken if he believes that
deeper and deeper intervention in there is going
to cure this problem. It is just going to metastasize
the cancer."