In the past week, the leading hopefuls for the Republican presidential nomination weighed in on and clashed over American policy in the Middle East -- with many of them showing signs of backing away from Bush-era interventionism.

During the CNN/Tea Party Express debate in Tampa on Monday, the candidates clashed on Middle Eastern affairs. Repeating his calls for less American intervention in the region, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas argued that military operations overseas have failed -- and have left taxpayers holding the bill.

“There's a difference between military spending and defense spending. I'm tired of all the militarism that we are involved in. And we're wasting this money in getting us involved. And I agree, we are still in danger, but most of the danger comes by our lack of wisdom on how we run our foreign policy,” Paul said.

“So I would say there's a lot of room to cut on the military, but not on the defense. You can slash the military spending. We don't need to be building airplanes that were used in World War II -- we're always fighting the last war. But we're under great threat, because we occupy so many countries. We're in 130 countries; we have 900 bases around the world. We're going broke.

“The purpose of al-Qaida was to attack us, invite us over there, where they can target us. And they have been doing it,” continued Paul. “They have more attacks against us and the American interests per month than occurred in all the years before 9/11, but we're there occupying their land. And if we think that we can do that and not have retaliation, we're kidding ourselves. We have to be honest with ourselves. What would we do if another country -- say, China -- did to us what we do to all those countries over there?”

As he had in previous debates, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania challenged Paul on the issue.

“On your website on 9/11, you had a blog post that basically blamed the United States for 9/11. On your website, yesterday, you said that it was our actions that brought about the actions of 9/11,” Santorum told Paul. “Now, Congressman Paul, that is irresponsible. The president of the United States -- someone who is running for the president of the United States in the Republican Party -- should not be parroting what Osama bin Laden said on 9/11.

“We're not being attacked and we were not attacked because of our actions,” Santorum said. “We were attacked, as Newt (Gingrich) talked about, because we have a civilization that is antithetical to the civilization of the jihadists. And they want to kill us because of who we are and what we stand for. And we stand for American exceptionalism, we stand for freedom and opportunity for everybody around the world, and I am not ashamed to do that.”

Paul promptly responded to Santorum and expanded on his position.

“As long as this country follows that idea, we're going to be under a lot of danger. This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this, and they're attacking us because we're free and prosperous, that is just not true,” he fired back. “Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida have been explicit -- they have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians fair treatment, and you have been bombing ...”

At this point, some in the crowd started booing.

“I didn't say that,” Paul clarified. “I'm trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing; at the same time we had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years. Would you be annoyed? If you're not annoyed, then there's some problem.”

While the clash between Paul and Santorum was one of the more dramatic moments in the debate, some of the other candidates weighed in on American policy in the region, as well.