Of course not, he would have issued Letters of Marque.
Are you suggesting he would have attacked terrorist bases in Yemin, in Somalia, in Lebanon, and, of course the nation of Iraq who fired on our troops on a daily basis.
I would have supported those actions, but you know he wouldn't.
In fact none of those forces would be there. The middle east would be an Islamic/Soviet lake, safe transit for oil I'm sure. And yes, I think access to oil is a legitimate national interest. As to future attacks, there will be none once we've withdrawn our forces from around the world, we'll have no enemies, so future attacks are irrelevant.
Actually if Ron Paul were president, the USS Cole bombing wouldn’t have happened.
I’ll quote him on it.
“No one should be surprised by the terrible USS Cole tragedy. If the administration understood the history of the region, it would see the total folly of anchoring a war vessel in an enemy port....The USS Cole disaster was needless and preventable. The loss of this vessel and the tragic deaths of 17 Americans were a direct consequence of an interventionist policy. This policy has led to a lack of military readiness by spreading our forces too thin, increasing the danger to all Americans and our servicemen in that region in particular. It’s positively amazing we do not have the ability to protect a $1 billion dollar vessel from a rubber raft, despite our $300 billion military budget. Our sentries on duty had rifles without bullets, and were prohibited from firing on any enemy targets. This policy is absurd if not insane. It is obvious that our navy lacks the military intelligence to warn and prevent such an event. It is incapable even of investigating the incident, since the FBI was brought in to try to figure out what happened.”