Let’s say that Gore had won the election instead of Bush.
Let’s assume that 9-11 was going to happen no matter who was in the White House…everyone seems to agree on that I think.
I don’t know why for sure, but I think that no matter what we would still be in Iraq today regardless of who is in the White House. Of course I can’t prove it one way or another but to think that we are in Iraq because of ONE man…ONE president is ludicrous to me. I don’t think for a second that all the important decisions come down to one man…or am I just really, really, really naive? There are ALOT of cooks in the kitchen! To think otherwise is ummm naive?
So anyways, just recently, in an interview with Fox news Clinton said that he had tried *very hard * to kill Bin Laden. Clinton implied that during his administration Republicans were being counter-productive to him getting Bin Laden killed. Bin Laden was so successful with several other attacks on US interests during the Clinton administration that I think it is very safe to say that 9-11 would have also been the horrible “success” it was with Gore, Bush, the Cookie Monster or whoever was unlucky enough to be president on 09/11/01. Agree?
So my point is that after 9-11 the Democrats would have had their ‘gotcha’ moment where they could win public support and drive home that they had been trying and trying to get Bin Laden, but the Republicans were making it very difficult. Finally, they would have gotten a much-needed “blank-check” to do whatever they wanted to do to get Bin Laden along with some “interest” to take it to the next level. Much like what went on with the Bush Administration when we attacked Afganistan…people protested and such but crushing the Taliban was inevitable. Republicans were able to do what they wanted and that was to show force, and go out there and make some people pay for what happend on 9-11.
Now as far as Iraq goes…it just makes sense to me that the alternate *Gore Administration * would also have gotten us into Iraq. Why do I think that? Well because just about everyone out there says that we are in Iraq for…oil. The whole world is so dependant on oil that no one including the U.S. can allow that kind of abundant energy source to be controlled by someone like Saddam Hussein, or be held at risk or even hostage by the likes of Hussein. I think that it was a case of many people just itching to get a toe-hold over there again, and I think that whoever was president at that time would have taken that oppurtunity via 9-11. Perhaps a Democratic administration would have gone about it much differently, but the end result would always have to be a U.S. presence in the Middle East come Hell or highwater to protect/control the oil in that region.
Of course all this is a bit conspiratorial…but really now…how hard is the Democratic party trying to get us out of Iraq? There is a certain “appearance” but at the end of the day we are still there, and we will be there for a long, long time because of what’s at stake in that region. The security of a precious resource that the world cannot function without.
Well, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the idiotic neo-cons are hardly “one man,” (although, in each case, there is one man that had to select them to give them the power to make the stupid decisions).
As for playing “what if?” games for what amounts to a tu quoque argument: :::shrug:::
“Everyone says”? I have heard all sorts of reasons, from oil to GWB wanting to “avenge” his father, (either for being mocked for not going into Iraq following Kuwait or for the purported assassination attempt), to the Wolfowitz term paper thaty blithely asserted that disrupting another culture we failed to understand would magically turn them into a nice Western style democracy, so I am not sure that we can assume that Iraqi oil would have led Gore to make the same disastrous error.
Our oil supply isn’t actually cheaper or more secure due to being in Iraq. There’s little reason for anyone to go into Iraq over oil.
The reasons for going into Iraq, regardless of some speculation on the left, weren’t really rationally about oil, but about the imperialist ambitions of Project for a New American Century, which had the GOP’s ear but not the Democrats. Party does make a difference.
We’re talking about* Al freakin’ Gore* here. He doesn’t want to make oil cheaper, he’s a true believer in cutting carbon consumption to slow global warming.
On the other hand, in reality, we had George Bush’s son, who had an arguable blood feud with Saddam since Saddam allegedly tried to assassinate George Bush.
I wasn’t talking about “our” oil supply…I was talking about the “world’s”.
Never heard of that…must look it up.
Like I said it isn’t about what “one” man or president, but about the larger picture of what really is at stake in terms of economic security for the entire world.
Getting into Iraq and taking out Hussein was just a bonus for GWB…
No, they don’t. There’s a good chance that it would have been prevented by almost anyone else; either by incompetence or malice Bush and the neocons did everything they could to let it happen.
And perhaps the democrats would have gone after Afghanistan, but been serious about it and caught Bin Laden. Or perhaps they would have gone after Saudi Arabia. Not Iraq.
I wasn’t talking about “our” oil supply but about the larger issue of what needs to be secured for the entire world…and even if the costs are added up the money still “left over” far exceeds everything else spent already.
We didn’t invade to secure your oil supply. We invaded to secure Exxon’s oil supply*.
That said, I don’t see any particular reason why President Gore would have gone into Iraq like President Bush did. The President may be only one man but he’s also the head of a large conglomerate of special interests. Gore was not connected to the same corporate or ideological interests that Bush is.
*I’m using Exxon as short hand for the big oil companies. Please don’t bother quibbling about which oil company is shipping oil out of Iraq. My point is that the invasion is putting Iraqi oil back on the market and somebody’s going to make a bundle selling it.
Keeping the oil from the rest of the world was one of the aims of PNAC, and one of the purposes of this war. This is a war of selfishness and malice, not the Noble Deed you keep trying to spin it as.
Wait, we went into a country with relatively modest reserves, bombed them, ruined their infrastructure, thus incited insurgents to attack wells to keep them from us–to safeguard the world’s oil supply? What?
Successful politicians are like water. They move with the environment, taking no form in and of themselves. One day they are for X, the next they are against X, depending on how it runs by the polls and how it affects their campaign contributions. As far as the power elite go I respect Al Gore. He’s still a dirty rat, but he’s a likable rat. But let’s face it: Al Gore is, by all indications, endlessly malleable. Gore went into the Senate a pro-life tobacco farmer and staunch ally of the NRA and remained such until it was necessary for him to alter his views in pursuit of higher office. Up to 2002 we can cite endless quotes of him making a boogeyman out of Saddam Hussein during the '90s and criticizing George H.W. Bush for supporting Saddam Hussein while he "supported international terrorism” and talking about regime change.
Remember what hypothetical we’re talking about here. Gore would’ve been a winner in 2000. He wouldn’t have been the sore loser he was in our universe. Hell, he would’ve been the all American hero who won the popular vote and kicked the Taliban’s misogynist ass all over the Hindu Kush. And the zeitgeist was right there, ready for the plucking. America was ready to kick the shit out of Iraq. Sure, Afghanistan was nice and all but it just wasn’t very satisfying. Strangely enough, we could’ve seen in this alternate universe the Republicans being painted as traitorous pussies (a la Kosovo) by the Dems for opposing the invasion.
Additionally, there would have been tremendous pressure coming from all sides on Gore, stemming from powerful institutions. The Democratic leadership were for the invasion and continued occupation and thought the idea of opposing it politically dangerous. For god’s sake, his Vice President would’ve been Joe Friggin Lieberman.
So will I say Al Gore would’ve invaded Iraq? No. I actually don’t think so. I’m thinking 60/40 odds against. To say he wouldn’t as if it’s an obvious fact like many in this thread I find a tad naive. I’m sure Saddam Hussein would’ve had several of his fancy palaces turned into shiny rubble either way. But a full scale invasion with 160,000 troops? Not Gore’s style. Not the Democrat’s style in general. They are smart imperialists, ever since Vietnam. They may posture with the best of the “RAH! RAH! USA!” crowd for domestic consumption and dog whistle politics but when it comes down to the basics they prefer to work behind the scenes. They’re also great at hiding what they do, to make them seem noble and charitable.
As for the role of the Middle East in future geopolitics: have you ever thrown a ribeye into a cage with two starving jackals and there’s not enough for either? Not pretty, is it?
Gore has said he is against preventative war. Since there was no imminent threat from Iraq, I think the odds are good he wouldn’t have invaded, particularly once the inspectors were let back into Iraq and started returning data indicating that the WMD intelligence needed to be reevaluated. I also don’t think he would have been likely to divert such a large amount of resources away from Afghanistan until it was stable, and that would have taken most of his presidency to do, even if he used the right resources.
But who knows what an alternate future would bring?
Iraq’s oil reserves are hardly modest. But oil doesn’t get stale. Under the status quo in 2000 oil was one of the few things in Iraq that was feeling safe and secure - it was just lying there underground and it would have been content to sit there for another hundred years and it would be just the same. So there was no need to “safeguard” Iraq’s oil.
But nobody makes a buck off of oil lying underground. People wanted to get the oil out of the ground and start pumping it and refining it and transporting it and selling it - all activities that turn oil into money. The problem was that we had pretty much committed ourselves into not dealing with Saddam Hussein and he was showing no signs of going anywhere in the immediate future. Businessmen didn’t want to have another embargo like Cuba where they got shut out of a market for fifty years. So some people who said we should invade Iraq and change the regime were found and supported and introduced to the right people in Washington. Rumors and wishful thinking were turned into facts and the invasion was on. As an added bonus, big business got to make a few extra dollars off of supplying the military operation and rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure in addition to the oil money. American troops were killed, the neocons were discredited, the Republicans lost Congress, Bush lost his approval ratings, and Iraq was devastated - but for the corporations, the mission was a resounding success.
It was not necessary to invade to keep the oil flowing. Iraqis can’t eat sand. They have oil, but it’s only any use to them if they sell it. What do you think the Iraqis were going to do, burn it all out of spite just to annoy everyone? The oil in Iraq was always going to depart Iraq to be used by the rest of the world. This is not a proposition that is seriously in issue. To suggest that the US needed to invade to achieve this makes no sense whatsoever.
Conceivably it might make sense to suggest that US interests were served by invading in order to secure the oil for the US, but I’m not at all sure that Gore is sufficiently venal that you can assume he would have been prepared to commit robbery with violence to grab it in the same way Bush arguably was (if that was indeed Bush’s motivation).
Nonsense. There was no connection whatsoever between Iraq and American anger about 9/11 until the Bushistas began a barrage of plausibly deniable slander designed to create it. Immediately post 9/11, before that barrage occurred, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Palestine and Indonesia and other less moderate Islamic states were much more closely associated with support for AQ. Iraq was known for its lack of support for external terrorism, and its moderate views on Islam.
No I don’t think that the Iraqis were gonna burn the oil out of spite. The oil itself of course would always be there and ready for the pumping, but the question is WHEN that oil would be pumped. Not IF but when.
You seem to be missing my point. It isn’t just ONE man/president who decides what America is going to do. I kind of feel…bad for any president in America because he is the ultimate PR man who takes the heat for all that goes wrong with America. Each party has an agenda that they try to achieve and it is a TEAM effort. They mostly work together to achieve that agenda, and if it doesn’t make sense to the rest of the America at first, it eventually will years after the dust settles.
Saudi Arabia would never have been touched by U.S. despite the fact that most of the hijackers came from there. The other countries as far as I can tell don’t have much at all in terms of resources nor do they have a tyrannical dictator as a leader. In fact look at Cuba. Castro is a “evil” dictator to for some, but really now, in today’s world we won’t invade Cuba unless they do something awful to us because they don’t have anything of value down there except…what…a tourism industry?
Not at all. The operation would have been attempted no matter who was in the WH, but might not have succeeded if the administration had been more vigilant. Gore is the kind of man who would actually pay attention to a report that al-Qaeda was planning a terror strike in NYC, and make sure his subordinates did so too.
I don’t think i’d put down the president’s role that much. Yes, they’re one person, but they’re the president! Besides, on top of that, they’re the ones that get to pick the team (at least legislatively) and set the agenda.
I also wouldn’t give presidents/governments that much credit. Sometimes after time has passed people still think they fucked up. They aren’t infallible.