Do you think things would have been different with anybody else in there democrat or republican for that past 8 years? or would it have been a bad time for anyone who would have been so unlucky to have had the office at that time? The last time we were attacked like we were in 2001 we ended up nuking a country! this time we are simply over there after running a murdering dictator out of office and trying to rebuild a country, and bush is slammed for this. I will admitt he didnt do so well in katrina; however, bush is not entirely to blame, the director of fema is the one who should be in prison for his lack of actions and also people should have a little common sense and leave a place that is under sea level when you live on the coast and a cat. 5 hurricane is on its way, and everybody in that town had a free ride out. And the exploding economy we were in before this depression was something that we have never seen before and really had no true answer if it was going to last or not, yes we had graphs and experts and some bullsh*ters but we cannot tell the future. I believe all of this would have happened regardless of who was in office, hopefully we will learn from our mistakes.
Hallo auburntiger11,
Could you please explain what the attack of 2001 had to do with Iraq?
There is first the question of whether another president, more attuned to his subordinates, might have taken better action to actually prevent the WTC/Pentagon attacks. (I doubt that Bush is responsible for those attacks getting past our defenses, but it is one issue about which some people fault him).
More importantly, Bush pulled resources away from Afghanistan, where we had a legitimate reason to be involved with the country that sheltered our attackers, to use dishonest methods to get us to launch an unnecessary war against a contained dictator, overriding our own generals’ calls for enough troops and supplies to do the job right, ravaging that country, massively increasing our debt, employing torture, recruiting more enemies to oppose us, and earning the scorn and distrust of much of the world, and leaving us the need to go back into Afghanistan at a disadvantage.
Edited to add: Welcome to the SDMB. You will probably receive more attention and courtesy to your posts if you take the time to use capitalization and paragraphs. Just a suggestion.
The OP says that the last time the US was attacked the way we were attacked on 9/11, the US ended up nuking a country. I would point out that in WWII the US was attacked by Japan and ended up nuking Japan.
On 9/11, the US was attacked by mostly Saudi nationals with support from the de facto government of Afghanistan and the US invaded Iraq. Richard Clark, formerly of the NSC, said in his book that the choice to invade Iraq after 9/11 was as if after Pearl Harbor FDR decided to invade Mexico.
The invasion of Iraq almost certainly would not have happened under another president.
Because it was his idea and his fault, period. As the years have gone on, people have somehow come up with the idea that an invasion of Iraq was inevitable after September 11th. It wasn’t, and therefore the invasion itself and all the problems that came afterward fall squarely on Bush’s administration. It was their choice and it was handled as they wanted.
The director of FEMA was appointed by Bush even though he was unqualified. Calling the flooding of a fairly large city is “doing so well” is sugarcoating it; it was a failure of amazing and historic proportions.
They should, yes.
I thought most of the transportation never showed up, but I may be misremembering.
I wouldn’t pin this crisis on Bush, but he did little to prevent it and didn’t do much about it in his last few months in office.
No, but you should at least attempt to learn the consequences of your actions.
Most of it would not have happened with anyone else in office.
Not with that attitude.
President Cheney most certainly would have conquered Iraq too!
Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and Gore would never hav contemplated invading it. The likelihood is that Gore would have sent troops to Afghanistan, just like Bush, removed the Taliban and tried to find bin Laden. He may or may not have succeeded at the latter, but he would have devoted more resources to it and not wasted so much blood and treasure on a ridiculous fiasco in Iraq.
Gore would have also not alienated world opinion to the extent that Bush did, and would not have wiped his ass with the Bill of Rights.
As for Katrina – Bush is the one who rolled FEMA (a previously very well functioning and respected organization) into DHS and appointed an unqualified crony to run it. There is some level of cronyism in every administration, and Gore probably would have been no different, but agencies like FEMA usually get left alone because most Presidents understand that you actually need qualified people running them. I think it’s also doubtful that Gore would have started a new department like DHS at all, much less folded FEMA into it.
You also would not have seen Gore giving such generous tax cuts to the super rich, or seen the rampant deregulation which led to the current economic crisis.
I doubt that Gore would have been perfect, but I think he would have been competent, which Bush was not, and while Gore would have made mistakes, he would not have made the same mistakes that Bush did, and would not have made them on such a colossal level. He might not have thrown perfect strikes, but he would have been around the plate. When Bush missed the plate, he missed for size. Gore would have at least kept the ball in the batting cage.
I recently finished Scott McClellan’s book “What Happened”. It offered a good insight to the Bush white house and how things were done.
I’ve heard the ‘a lot of bad stuff happened while Bush was in office - it’s not his fault’ before. But really, only two things happened that likely would have happened no matter who was in office - 9/11 and Katrina. In one case, (9/11) - Bush’s immediate response was favorable (well, at least until the Iraq thing). In the other (Katrina), his response was poor. Part of the reason for this (as McClellan explains) was that the Bush white house kinda sat on their laurals in terms of being able to handle a crisis. People forget how favorably they viewed the Bush white house after 9/11, and the president’s handling of the tragedy.
All other bad things that happened were heavily influenced by decisions he made during his presidency. So he doesn’t get the get out of jail free card from me, because he largely did it to himself.
- You do know that the CIA installed Saddam in the first place?
- The primary reason for invasion was to seize WMD’s. (None were ever found.)
- There have been between 100,000 and 1,000,000 casualties in Iraq from the invasion (the country is in such a mess it’s hard to count). This is what you call rebuilding?
I would.
It is hard to say if another President would have prevented it either. Probably not. Even democrats were helping on the deregulation side. That said I doubt another president would have been as permissive in deregulation and oversight. Keeping up more stringent oversight may have at least mitigated the scope of the economic crisis.
Then add in Bush inherited a budget surplus when he took office. He then lowered taxes and increased spending (a huge chunk of which was for the ill-advised war in Iraq) thus plunging the US into deficits heretofore unseen. Now, when the economic crisis hits, the US is woefully in the hole already and ill-prepared to respond. Had we maintained a budget surplus and paid down the debt and avoided an expensive war that did nothing we’d still be hurting but far less so than we are today.
I believe you can lay all that at Bush’s feet.
At least it was the right country. If Bush had been President in 1941, his response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor would have been to declare war on Brazil.
Actually when Bush took office the economy was not “exploding”. We were actually in a minor recession. That recession should properly be applied to Clinton’s watch, not Bush (there is a lag between when a new administration takes power and gets their policies running such that a loose rule of thumb is the first year of a Presidency is more economically put at the feet of the previous president).
Further, the economic expansion afterward was a funny one. The very rich got very richer. The vast majority of Americans however did not profit at all from it seeing wages stagnate.
Right. What bit of Bush deregulation are you asserting led to the current economic crisis?
The super-rich paid more in absolute $$ terms, as well as a % of total tax revenue, after the Bush tax cuts than before. So if you’re correct, a Gore administration would have led to a less progressive tax system (and less federal revenue from them).
If Bush is to blame for anything, its for the Paulson-led hysteria for the original bailout, and the auto-maker bailout.
Until Bush decided that the US would stay in Iraq, he was doing just fine. He’d scared the bejeezus out of people like Ghadaffi and rid the world of a vile dictator.
Had Gore been President, I think he’d have done much the same with Afghanistan. I don’t think he’d have invaded Iraq, leastwise not for WMD or terrorism. The US would appear much enhanced.
I’ll queue up this Bush:
By and large I agree with what most posters are saying here wrt the OP.
Vastly. Had Gore been president we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq for one thing. That probably would have been the biggest difference. Undoubtedly our commitment in Afghanistan would have been different in one way or the other as well. As for the economy…that’s less certain. I’m not sure what Gore would have done that would have been substantially different (save the tax breaks)…though of course we’d have saved a couple hundred billion dollars by not invading Iraq which would have helped.
But we were attacked by a nation state in 1941, and it was total war. In 2001 we were not attacked by any nation state, and it wasn’t total war…so, it’s hardly a valid comparison. And as others have pointed out, there was no connection between 9/11 and Iraq in any case (though there was some connection between 9/11 and Afghanistan, which is why I figure we’d probably still have been involved in that regardless)…so, it’s highly doubtful Gore would have invaded Iraq as Bush did.
I think the response for Katrina would have been basically the same. As you say it was more a local issue than a national one, and I doubt Gore COULD have done much more than Bush did. The difference might have been the spin put on it, and also that Gore might have made more of an effort to be PERSONALLY involved…but I think FEMA would have been substantially the same and certainly the local response would have been the same as it was.
That said, I think a Gore presidency would have been quite a bit different from a lot of perspectives than Bush’s presidency was. Whether we’d be better off today is debatable, but even assuming everything else was the same we would be a few hundred billion dollars ahead of where we are today without the Iraqi war.
Installed him? Cite?
From Wiki:
He installed himself.
It’s untrue to say none were found. I agree with your general point (those that were found were small in number and fairly obviously no threat to the US), but you are making categorical statements that aren’t true.
We killed many more people in Japan and did orders of magnitude more damage…and we still rebuilt it. Again, I agree with your theme here that Iraq was a mistake, etc etc…but I think the examples you are using don’t really help your case.
The best thing I can say is that regardless of if Iraq is rebuilt or not, it was still stupid for us to go in there when and how we did it. It cost a lot of lives (especially Iraqi, but also allied) a a LOT of money…and in the end it was just the wrong thing to do. And wrt the OP, there is a nearly zero probability that Gore would have done the same thing. I think it’s just up from ‘snowballs chance in hell’…
-XT
The financial markets, mostly, but Bush deregulated a number of other consumer protections as well. He was a corporate butt boy through and through.
The super rich did not pay anything close what was commensurate with their share of the total wealth. Saying they paid more “in absolute terms” is rhetorical slight of hand. How you infer that Gore would have been less progressive is beyond me.
Yes, but he was propped up, and supported and supplied with WMDs by the Reagan Administration (which was also largely responsible for putting the Taliban in power in Afghanistan).
Can you point to specific regulations that Bush (and not Clinton) deregulated that would have positively effected the current economic crisis? AFAIK, all of the relevant regulations that are impacting the current crisis (as well as what happened to Freddy and Fanny) were pre-Bush, and would have been carried over (and perhaps even accelerated) under a Gore administration.
-XT
Propped up does not equal ‘installed’…which was the point I was making. We certainly supplied him with weapons and money during the Iran/Iraq war (realpolitic and all), but we didn’t install Saddam…which was what glee stated. He installed himself, and even when we were supplying him with weapons and money he wasn’t our puppet by any stretch…he was also getting weapons and money from the old Soviets during that period as well.
-XT