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History didn't start on 9/11. The US has been meddling in various Middle Eastern countries since at least World War II, and arguably earlier. How do you resolve the dilemma of having popular governments who want to have good relations with you, but which relations are contingent on selling them weapons they explicitly intend to use against a country you're a strong supporter of, if not exactly allied with? What if the alternative to selling them weapons is that they'll end up buying them from your biggest geopolitical rival instead? The US tried to walk a fine line on this policy throughout the postwar era, and it's easy to criticize them for it now but hard to state confidently what a better path would have been. You can say the same of a hundred other foreign policy decisions the US made in the region between WWII and 9/11.
I agree that the Iraq invasion was a mistake, and said so at the time, but it's kind of a "you had to be there" sort of thing. The feeling—if not the explicit argument being made—was that Islamic terrorism was only able to reach into the United States because of the support of anti-American dictatorial governments that tolerated their presence. The 9/11 hijackers may have been Saudi, but the Taliban let them operate with impunity in Afghanistan. Sadaam was an old enemy and a convenient target, so even if his actual connection to terrorism was tenuous, it wasn't difficult to imagine him harboring terrorists. Plus, these people were universally despised by their own populations, who would be glad to get them out of the way.
It's also worth pointing out that Cold War-era stereotypes about third world countries "not being ready for democracy" were seen as increasingly old-fashioned. Much had been written by that point about how America's insistence on keeping dictators and emirs in power over democratically elected governments that might be too leftist led directly the predicament we were in. At best, some would find an outlet for their dissatisfaction with the current government in religious fanaticism. At worst, the fanatics would take over the government entirely, and use America's support of the previous regime as license to engage in terrorism at the state level, as in Iran. If these long-suffering people were only finally given the chance to determine their own futures, they'd find a better path forward. Everyone forgets the cheering in the streets the day Baghdad fell and the statue of Saddam was toppled. Of course, it didn't exactly work out like that, and one could have easily predicted that at the time, but the argument was there.
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