If the 9/11 terrorist attack had happened in 1993 when Clinton had just been elected president, instead of 2001, how do you think things would have played out differently? Would the US have invaded Afghanistan? Iraq? Five years after the fact would we be having the same debates that we’re having now on torture and wiretapping? Would Saddam Hussein still be in power?
** My apologies if this has been done before; a quick search didn’t find any exact matches.
Yes.
No. Why would we have?
Doubtful, since we’d have stopped with Afghanistan.
Yes.
Would the Taliban be in power in your hypothetical 1993 (they weren’t in real 1993)? Would they be sheltering AQ?
Would Saddam be involved? The likelihood of Saddam being involved in 1993 would be kind of high since he was looking into various ways to get back at us for Gulf War I.
The political situation was truly a lot different than right now.
If there was even a SMALL shred of evidence showing Saddam was even remotely friendly to the people who perpetrated 9/11/03 then he’d probably be ousted as the world had very recently dealt with some very bad behavior of his.
I think Clinton (or any President) would have invaded Afghanistan, and I think most Presidents probably would have overstepped their bounds in some way or other - probably related to surveillance - in the effort to find terrorists and not get caught off-guard again. I’m not sure about a lot of the other particulars. If all the other facts about September 11th stay the same, I don’t think Iraq would have been invaded, and I think the small group of conservatives who would’ve advocated that invasion would have been dismissed for trying to sidetrack the anti-terror effort.
I don’t think there would be so many accusations from Amnesty International, the International Red Cross and the United Nations of human rights violations. We would not be involved in Iraq, but we would be doing more in Darfur.
I the early '90s, ObL was located mostly in the Sudan. He only took up residence in Afganistan again in 1996. So, I doubt we would have invaded Afghanistan in 1993. Also, the Taliban did not control Afghanistan until 1996.
Maybe you should’ve used 9/11/98 as the year, rather than '93. In that case, yes, we would’ve invaded Afghanistan. Depending on how that went, Gore almost certainly would’ve won in '00. That assumes Bush would’ve gotten the Republican nomination, though. Given the wartime situation, McCain migth have been seen as the better Republican candidate.
The problem with these kinds of “what ifs” is that you can’t simply hold all other things constant. Once you change something as significant as the 9/11/01 terrorist attacts, you also change many other things.
I think he probably chose '93 because it was the first year of Clinton’s term, just like 2001 was for Bush. I’m sure a first-year President faces different issues. Of course, the WTC bombing happened in 1993 (in February). Does that still happen? If September 11th was the second attack within eight months, that would have been very different for Clinton.
I think for this hypothetical it would work better to assume that Clinton became President when he won the 2000 election.
Given our heroic intervention in Rwanda (snerk) I think it is hardly a given that we’d be doing more in Darfur.
Remember, we’re contemplating intervention in Darfur only because we know the consequences of Clinton’s failure to act there.
Well, it would have been a Saturday, so fewer people would have been working, and there likely would have been fewer deaths, so that’s a good thing.
No matter what response he made, he’d still get accused by the RW-media yammerers of wagging the dog.
Now that was good for a laugh. Contemplating intervention in Darfur are we? Oh, that’ll be a fine day when we roll in after YEARS of genocide and slaughter to save the day. Juuuust like we did in East Timor.
Thanks, that’s kind of more what I had in mind. I’ll have to be more careful in my hypotheticals…
So if Clinton had just started his presidency in 2001 and all other factors were the same (the location of ObL, the status of the Talaban, etc.) how would things be today?
Invaded Afghanistan? Certainly (unless different circumstances somehow impelled the Taliban regime to give up ObL & Co at our initial request).
Invaded Iraq / Removed Saddam? Probably not. In our timeline, Clinton did make removal of Saddam an official policy in 1998 (IIRC), but I think he would have focused on the immediate threat if the WTC had been destroyed on his watch.
Debates on torture and wiretapping? Almost certainly. In our timeline, Clinton asked for pretty much the same expansive surveillance powers (or, perhaps, the ongoing apparatchiks dusted off the same old wish list and got his endorsement) in the wake of the OKC bombing. As for the torture part, such an event would inevitably evoke suggestions that anyone we catch who might have information about future attacks ought to be questioned By Any Means Necessary.