Rick Santorum is still stuck in 2002:

Radical Islamists oppose us not because of our policies, but because of our freedom.

This was a silly slogan when Bush and his supporters were using it ten years ago. It takes a certain willful blindness to keep saying it today. If the slogan were true, it would mean that perpetual war for the U.S. I understand that interventionists don’t want to acknowledge that policies they favor provoke violent resistance that can endanger Americans, but how does Santorum square his slogan with the reality that policies are frequently what jihadists cite when giving their justifications for their attacks? More to the point, why would anyone who doesn’t share Santorum’s ideological views agree with him about the correct policy response to jihadism when he misunderstands the phenomenon so badly?

Santorum’s article includes many of his other standard claims. I thought this one was remarkable for its self-importance:

I stood for the Green Movement in Iran when President Obama sat down.

What did Santorum do to “stand” for the protesters in Iran? It’s true he did write some op-eds, and in those op-eds he was already making the “missed opportunity for regime change” argument that would later become a favorite Republican talking point. This wasn’t so much a case of “standing” for the protesters as it was one of completely misunderstanding their goals. Iranians aren’t going to help the U.S. overthrow their government now, and they weren’t going to do it in 2009. There were a lot of Iran hawks in the summer of 2009 eager to exploit the protests to undermine the regime, because they projected their desires for regime change onto the protesters and saw an opportunity that didn’t exist.