What is Gore had won?

I know this asks for pure hypothesis, or guesswork if you will, but still…

Assuming all events leading up to, and including, 9/11 stayed the same, if Gore had won instead of Bush, would his reaction have been any different than that of Bush’s w.r.t. the US’s security concerns? I’m not referring to internal security concerns - the steps taken to beef that up, I would expect from the leader of any country in that position. What I’m wondering about is what steps would Gore have conceivably taken regarding external security.

Meaning:

  1. Would Gore have gone into Afghanistan the way GWB did, i.e. unilateral action, albeit with the full support and approval of the world? Or would he have gone in with a global coalition (which, IMO, would have not have been too difficult to put together given the circumstances), not unlike GB Sr.?

  2. Would Gore have gone to war in Iraq based on the kind of ‘intelligence’ that has been available to Bush? Would Gore have gone into Iraq even if he hadn’t received the sanction of the UNSC?

IIRC, Iraq first came up with that as-yet-unproven link between SH and AQ. From the there story went on to include WMDs, WMD programs, hindrance to the work of the inspectors, and finally the ‘he’s a tyrant’ angle. It was never proved beyond a reasonable doubt (in the opinion of most of the world, at least) that Iraq posed an immediate or any threat to the US, which would perhaps justify an invasion by the US.

Obviously Gore would have a completely different team to aide him and would consequently have different opinions presented to him. However, the people providing the information would essentially remain the same, and so would the analyses they presented (I presume).

I’m not trying to prove a point here, and nor is this a Bush bashing thread (if it comes across as one, it was not intended). I suppose I was wondering whether things would have been different if Gore had become President.

FWIW, I’d be real scared if the majority here felt that things wouldn’t have been all that different.

I would’ve posted this in IMHO, but I figure this will most likely turn into a debate. This way, I’m saving the mods some work :slight_smile:

IMO I think things would have been a whole lot worse had Mr. Gore been elected. And I voted for him, too.

Would you please elaborate on why you feel that way?

This is in GD not IMHO

Sorry if I sounded like an ass in the last post.

We probably would’ve done something in Afghanistan, although whether or not we would’ve overthrown the Taliban gov’t is unclear to me. We certainly would not have gone to war with Iraq. There was no push from the Dems to do this.

Gore is a very cautious man. Too cautious, I think, for an executive. He seems to want a broad concensus before he acts, and that typically means “no action”.

Gore strongly criticized Bush last fall for not deploying sufficient U.S. forces in Afghanistan, allowing much of the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership to escape. I doubt he would have waited for an international coalition before taking action, but his internationalist disposition almost certainly would have led him to take up the rest of the world on its offers of military assistance. (For the first time in history, NATO voted after 9/11 to invoke its mutual defense obligations in defense of the U.S. . . . and Bush did nothing with it.) More than that, I simply cannot guess.

I regard it as highly doubtful that Gore would have gotten Security Council approval, which makes it extremely doubtful indeed that anything like GWII would have occurred. Gore is far more of an internationalist than Unilateral George.

On a related note, let’s assume that Gore had done everything exactly as Bush did (only more coherantly). Same claims about WMD, same military action, etc.

How would the reaction of the American public and the rest of the world differed? Would the hawks and the protesters simply have changed places?

It is unlikely that Gore, not given to fantasizing, would have seen Iraq as a priority, compared to cleaning up Al Qaeda and improving the reality of homeland security. We’d have troops in Afghanistan, and so would a lot of other people, and the Qaeda-supporting Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would be diplomatic targets instead of “allies”. And that’s if 9/11 had happened at all, given his understanding before then of the threat Al Qaeda represented.

Well, this is more an IMO thing, but I’d say that Gore would probably have gone into Afganistan in a similar way. ANY president, faced with what happened, would have HAD to do something substantial…the people demanded it. I can see similar security restrictions, etc, being put into place no matter what the administration. I don’t see Gore going into Iraq, as I think that was more of an agenda for the Bush administration.

If Gore was in office, the difference on this board would be I’d have to be wading through miles of republican rants about Gore and his administration, instead of scrolling through tons of crap about Bush…

A better what if question is, if Gore had of won, and if the US had of successfully invaded Afganistan in a similar way (I’m reasonably sure this would have happened), what would Gore and HIS adminstration do next? ObL would still be at large I’m sure. AK would still be in hiding, I’m fairly sure. What would he do next. And, this is even more important IMO, would would Gore do about North Korea? Appeasement? Force? War? Without an Iraq war (I’m VERY confident Gore would NOT have even bothered with SH…all Clinton ever did was toss a few tomahawks at him after all), and with a defeated Afganistan, the US would have been free to pursue military options in other areas…like North Korea. What would Gore have done…?

-XT

From ElvisL1ves

You are living in a fantasy land of your own. AQ was training DURING Clintons administration (with Gore as VP, as I recall), and they weren’t caught…not even a wiff. Or did Gore know all about it, and was keeping the info to himself out of spite for having the election stolen from him?? Get real…reguardless of the administration, this event would have most likely happened just as it did. It was a failure of our intellegence organs (which are fairly apolitical, with only the top administrators appointed, if I recall how this works correctly). Gore, just by being president, would not have MAGICALLY seen it all coming and put a stop to it. For one thing, it was too soon (less than a year) after he would have taken office for him to have gotten a full handle on things to even begin making an accurate assesement (well, his administration and advisors making said assessment…so that Gore could make a decend DECISION).

Some of you people (on BOTH sides) need to lighten up on the partisan teet some, and come back to reality…

-XT

This Monday Morning Quarterbacking by Gore is hardly an indication that he would have done any different. I suspect his reaction would have been very similar to Bush with regard to Afghanistan.

I think Gore might have been respected more by world leaders than Bush simply because he wouldn’t have appeared to have the “We are going to do whatever the hell we want” attitude. It would seem that this approach to foreign policy has caused some other nations to lose respect for our new way of handling things. I wonder if he could have assembled a larger coalition.

Well, whether or not the September 11 attacks would have happened had Gore been president is, as gouda points out, something there’s just no way we can know. But how would President Gore have acted afterward?

Well firstly, I’m not sure he would have invaded Afghanistan. It’s tempting to point to another country or a leader and say, “There’s the demon who’s responsible! We’ll take him down and everything will be better!” But while removing the Taliban from power has set Al Qaeda back some, I suspect that anyone who listened to intelligence agencies would have paid more attention to terrorist cells within the United States, Europe and anywhere else. Gore would have emphasized coöperation with other countries and tracking down terrorists from California to Calcutta, and all points in between.

Secondly, Gore would never have bothered invading Iraq. The Bush administration has wanted to invade Iraq since day one, and the fact that a number of people in the Bush administration have been members of the Project for a New American Century for years contributes to the fact that the “War on Terror” was simply used as a pretense for invading Iraq. This simply would never have come up in the Gore administration.

The United States would have worked much more closely with Europe, and its interests in stopping terrorists where it could would have led to a much closer relationship with the strategically-located Pakistan, whose coöperation we would certainly need with regards to Afghanistan. That would have been inevitable.

In sum, President Gore would have pushed to move America to security levels more on par with those of Europe, and he’d have worked more closely with our allies. To maintain good relationships with our allies, I don’t believe we’d have entered into these military tribunals or these scary internments in Guantanamo. President Gore would also have emphasized the importance of the International Criminal Court to deter terrorists and terrorism.

At least, that’s what I think would have happened. At any rate, that’s what President the Gardener would have done. Gore, being far more of an internationalist than Bush, would have made decisions more in coöperation with the rest of the world. United we stand, you know…

My opinion is that things would have moved a lot slower if Gore had to deal with these current events.

He did criticize Bush for not deploying enough troops in Afghanistan, but that was probably just a partisan political tactic. He wouldn’t have gone into Afghanistan in the first place without first exercising the Mother Of All Bureaucracies, and sitting down with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and trying to negotiate something.

Gore probably would have ignored Iraq. But if he did go after Iraq, assuming that he would have been given the same intelligence as Bush was given, Gore actually would care what the UN had to say, as well as France and Germany. We would still be sitting at the table with the UN trying to hash out some sort of global coordination, only to repeatedly have it shot down.

But behind all of this, there would be enough bureacracies and policies and judicial wrangling to make the 2000 election look like a trip to the beach. It would be enough to make your head spin, and choke a horse. It would so dilute the main point, that most Americans would grow jaded and just give up.

I’m not sure the situation postulated in the OP would have happened.

With a smoother transition between administrations, I think it’s highly likely that President Clinton’s efforts to find and kill Osama bin Laden would have continued. That would include the resumption of Predator drone overflights of the area in which bin Laden was believed to be hiding.

Osama bin Laden was spotted perhaps three times in 2000, and there was apparenlty a certain amount of optimism that the al Qaeda camps would have been identified once the winter winds over Afghanistan subsided in the spring of 2000. I think there is a good chance that his hideout would have been identified, a team of Rangers and D-boys would have been dropped in, and a serious chunk of al-Qaeda’s command and control would have been bitten off before the final planning for the September attacks was completed.

Moreover, evidence may have been uncovered which would have tipped off the Americans to the kamikaze plans in advance. Had we had just a hint of what was afoot, the existing evidence we collected in advance of the attacks might have been used to actually capture the would-be hijackers before they could complete their training.

But it’s all water under the bridge now.

Sorry, that’s “spring of 2001.”

xtisme, the USE of words IN ALL CAPS is not helpful to someone who wants be considered thoughtful and reasonable.

As for the argument you make, yes, I do agree that 9/11 would most likely have happened anyway. But, given that the administration of which Gore had been a part of for the previous 8 years knew of and understood the problem, and had taken action against it (despite the “dog wagging” shit), compared to Bush’s refusing to consider it a problem at all as of 9/10, forces one to think there’s a non-negligible chance it might not have, doesn’t it?

Your next point, placing all the blame on “intelligence organs”, is also not open-and-shut. There is every reason to believe they told Bush, Cheney et al. what they thought, and were overruled or ignored. Perhaps other threads on this board, if not elsewhere, would be good reading for you if you’d like to get into it more.

Be careful with the complaints of blind partisanship, especially in a thread where that’s inevitable, and especially when you’re vulnerable to it yourself.

From Chance the Gardener

If this was all Gore would have done, I think he would have been a one term president. Think back. Remember the mood of the country? MOST Americans were furious…they wanted blood. How do you think ole Bush got so friggin popular?? At least initially, thats what the people WANTED. Vengence. I’m not saying the ‘people’ were right (I think a lot of my fellow citizens are fools), but its what they WANTED. Gore, being the savy politician he is would have HAD to do something…and he would have realized that. Something tangeble, to take to the people like the head of a criminal on a plate…something they could see, and feel good about, and then go back to sleep. Treaties and cooperation with Europe might have been the SMART play, but it would have been seen as weak by the majority of the people. Hunting down terrorists? As if its that easy. He would have had nothing tangeble to bring back to show for our efforts…and our loss.

IMO, all politicians are the same. Reguardless of whether he thought it was the best thing to do, or the smart thing to do, its what he WOULD have done, or he would have cooked his own goose. Carter, Clinton, Reagan, Roosevelt…it makes no difference. They did and would do WHATEVER it took (or at least what they THOUGHT it would take) to stay in office. Period.
[From Chance the Gardener
QUOTE]I don’t believe we’d have entered into these military tribunals or these scary internments in Guantanamo. President Gore would also have emphasized the importance of the International Criminal Court to deter terrorists and terrorism.
[/QUOTE]

Well, as this is, again, just an IMO, I’ll simply say BULLSHIT. We’ll never know, of course, but I’m sure we would have had the same thing (or something similar). The only real difference I see is there would be a whole different crowd bitching about it…and probably MUCH less bitching from Europe. THAT part I’ll agree with from previous posters, I think Gore would have had more tact and smarts, and also better relations with ‘the world’.

-XT

I agree with ElvisL1ves. Al Gore did have a better understanding of Al Qaeda, since he was around during the Clinton administration. As xtisme points out, Al Qaeda was active during the Clinton administration. In fact, when they tried to blow up the World Trade Center during the fifth week of Clinton’s presidency, counterterrorism became a focus. Counterterrorism was defunded in 2001 by the Bush administration, which preferred to emphasize its missile defense initiatives. Some criticism was hurled Bush’s way back then, but after September 11, 2001 not much criticism was given any air at all.

Sure, those planes still might have crashed into the buildings that day if Gore had been president, but Gore, having been part of an administration that was more interested in stopping terrorism, would more likely have kept the heat on Al Qaeda and stemmed these attacks. The fact that Gore would most likely have continued Clinton’s counterterrorism policies, and the fact that Bush put counterterrorism on the back burner, is not even remotely partisan sniping. That’s a pretty honest assessment of the situation in Washington over the past ten years, and a valuable lesson to keep in mind.

From ElvisL1ves

Well, you are right about that…being as I’m a registered independant I think BOTH the dems AND repubs are full of shit. I think that Bush is a boob, and don’t have a real high opinion of Gore either, so ya…I guess I AM partisan too.

Its sickening to me to see the blatent partisanship and demonization on this board sometimes, especially from some of the posters I respect deeply in other subjects.

Sorry if you don’t like my use of caps…its used to emphasize. I don’t intend to change it, as its how I write, but sorry you disapprove. I won’t sleep well tonight I guess…

From ElvisL1ves

Its obvious that you, like many others, don’t have a clue how intellegence assessments and executive briefings really work. I could see a lot of that in the thread on the Uranium bruhaha. I’m SURE they told Bush about it…as I’m sure they would have told Gore about it. It would have started as position papers like hundreds of others, about ‘possible threats’, ‘potential actions’, with a lot of conjecture and multiple positions by various analysts with widely varying views on what it all MEANS. Those long position papers would have been distilled down and presented to whoever Gore had as his national security advisors staff, who would have further condensed it down as a brief to Gore.

In the end, it might not have even made the list, or if it did, would have been just one more of HUNDREDS (I know, caps again) of items they would have gone over in the few hours they had to spend on that subject a week (you know, the prez has some other things to do, like preen for the cameras, deal with the economy…stuff like that?). Or did you think that Gore (or Bush) had the time to read through the WHOLE analysis, read through every position paper, every conjectured ‘threat’? Or that even his staff had that kind of time?

I’m sure YOU do…that Gore would have magically seen the needle in the haystack and shouted EUREKA!! AQ is going to attack us on Sept 11th!! Call out the troops! OTOH, I’m sure that you picture Bush, being presented with solid gold data about a possible AQ attack, simply sniffing and turning up his nose, while plotting to invade Iraq for fun and profit. Or is that not a fair assessment of your views, based on other things you’ve posted in the past?

From Chance the Gardener

This is pretty reasonable. I’ll conceed that Gore WOULD have been more closely focused on terrorism. I still maintain that the attack would, in all probability, have had a good chance to go through anyway. After all, they did the majority of the training/planning while Clinton/Gore were still in office. If the plan would have been compromised, this was the most likely time for it. This isn’t meant to be a dig at Clinton/Gore either…its simply impossible, IMO, to catch em all. Sooner or later they were going to get through on SOMEONES watch. As the majority of the 9/11 op had basically been planned out BEFORE either Bush or Gore would have taken office, I think that the probability was that it would have succeeded to a greater or lesser extent. But, thats just IMO…

And I wanted to say to Chance the Gardener, sorry for my strident tone earlier. It seems you WEREN’T being partisan after all. Thats a very valid point you made, one I hadn’t thought of. I was wrong. You will prolly flame me for my other posts (including the top of this one), but I do see my error…

-XT