Very true, 9/11 is way too charged and candidates (ie Giuliani) will jump on that in a heartbeat... But if you listen to what Paul said and the way he said it, he cares about this country and firmly believes our policies are weakening us instead of strengthening us.
I'm sure Paul is a patriot. The problem is that the bottom line to his argument is that whomever kills Americans should get to set our foreign policy. There are a lot of governments - friendly ones - that disagree with our policies. Friendly though they are, they don't get to set our foreign policy - we do. But they don't set about killing Americans because they disagree with these policies. Only jihadists have this peculiar idea that it is their right to slaughter us en masse because we have policy disagreements. If we don't let our friends set our foreign policy, why should we let jihadists do so?