If I were a presidential candidate... 

A look at what the GOP field should have been asked — and how the candidates should have responded — at Saturday's big foreign policy debate

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5. If you had been president in 2010, would Hosni Mubarak still be in power today?

U.S. governments had been urging Mubarak to step down since 1991. I certainly would not have supported the violence against his own people necessary to hold power for Mubarak. But I also had no illusions that what would follow Mubarak would be much of an improvement, and I hope those who imagined that it was Facebook and Twitter that toppled the ruler of a country where half the people live on less than $2 a day feel appropriately silly.

6. Do you believe there is a peaceful way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons?

Yes. The computer viruses and other non-military instruments used against Iran have successfully delayed that program while avoiding a devastating Middle Eastern war. 

7. It's often said that our present energy policy leaves us dependent on oil suppliers who do not like us. Our top 10 suppliers are: Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Russia, Algeria, Iraq, Angola and Colombia. The anti-U.S. feeling of the Chavez regime is notorious. Which of the other nine would you describe as a supplier who "does not like us?"

The problem is not any one single supplier, but the shape of the whole oil market, and the effects of rising oil use on the planet's climate. We should be shifting from taxes on work, saving, and investment to taxes on fossil fuels and pollution in an effort to encourage useful changes. Let's redevelop our cities so that people have less need to drive, and re-engineer cars for enhanced efficiency.

8. Afghanistan: At the end of your first term do you think we'll have more or less than 20,000 troops in that country?

What Jon Huntsman said. We are way over-committed to Afghanistan. Worse, the more invested we are in Afghanistan, the more dependent we are on Pakistan — which manages despite its lack of oil to excel in the "does not like us" department.

9. Iraq: Knowing everything you know now, if you had been in Congress in 2002, would you have voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein, yes or no?

No. For an Iraqi, there was no price too high to pay to rid the country of Saddam Hussein. For Americans, the issue was not Saddam's badness, but his nuclear weapons program. Knowing that the nuclear program was not a real threat, the invasion was too large a commitment. The world is a better place without Saddam, but as with everything, the question is one of costs and benefits. The costs to the U.S. were too high, the benefits to the U.S. too few.