What is Gore had won?

Great Debates
21

Well, your “MO” is BULLSHIT. Are you just trying to sound like you’re the only even-handed person on this board by taking the oh-so-bold stance that every politician is equally depraved, and that they all crave to take on the exact same policies, no matter what? It’s not working, just so you know. While I was never much of a Gore fan, I find it highly doubtful that he would have played on public insecurities—which, by the way, is what the Bush administration started doing right from the start of this crisis. A more reasonable president would have treated the September 11 attacks as the criminal act they were rather than the excitable “attack on America,” and the ensuing panic that Bush gave rise to would have been more of a move toward caution than a lust for revenge.

Go ahead and scream BULLSHIT again if you want, though I’d prefer a more polite response, if you can manage it. Thank you.

22

From Chance the Gardener

Well, knew this was coming. Only myself to blame, as I let my emotions get ahead of my brain. As I said before, sorry for the strident tone, and sorry for the stupid ‘bullshit’ thing too.

I still disagree. I feel that, while Gore might not have played on the fears of the people like Bush did, that the people would STILL have demanded some form of retribution, something that showed them clearly that the administration was DOING something. I don’t think that any American President, who wanted to STAY President, could have ignored that. I’m not one of the people that would have been screaming for it, and you don’t sound like you are either, but you have to know that a lot of our fellow citizens would have been. Its a debatable point, and neither of us has one shred of anything to back up our positions save opinion though. But based on what Gore SAID post 9/11, I think that Afganistan would still have happened much like it did. Again, this is just conjecture on my part.

/aside
As you can probably tell from my tone I’m pretty down on politicians these days…ALL of them. I’m sorry if you feel this is cowardly, but I think that, at heart, they are all essentially the same. Their creed is self, party country IMO.
/aside

-XT

23

At the risk of being slammed mercilessly, I think Gore’s election would in no way have prevented terrorist attacks. In my observation, Clinton and Gore did just about squat about addressing terrorism. Gore’s response would have been weak, vapid, professorial and not at all effective. Maybe something like what happened after the attacks on the Cole. Remember how forceful that was? Sure sent a message, didn’t it? Just like the message sent after the first attempt to destroy the WTC. That sure had the bad guys shaking in their boots. Right.

Someone mentioned talking and negotiating with the Taliban. Get real. Groups like that see talking and negotiating as a sign of weakness, the mark of a coward and an easy mark.

Gore might have tried to get a larger international coalition, too, and would not have had any more success than GWB did. Except he would not have had the cojones do anything else, and the Taliban would still be in power. There would be blathering about more sanctions, resolutions of dismay, handwringing and pontificating, but no action.

Sorry, Chance, when somebody blows up both military and civilian targets on our own soil, that’s a criminal act and beyond. It’s also an act of war.

BTW, as I said earlier, I voted for Gore. It was a reasonable choice based on the information I had at the time. I am now glad he didn’t win because he is not as forceful and decisive, and that’s what I think we need now.

OK, let the flames begin.

24

And what is this idea supported by, other than personal biases and stereotypes?

All I’ll say is that if Gore had won, the yowling from the Conservative Right would make the whole Whitewater/Lewinsky/Starr witch-hunt look like love letters by comparison. You thought Ann Coulter was crazy now…

25

Gore did win. If you want to be non-partisan about this. You really should have said “What if Gore had become President in 2000”.

And as for that question. I’m in the 9/11 probably would not have happened camp. Weak as Clinton’s actions on terrorism were, he still managed to have a presidency completely unmarred by attacks in the USA. And we know that, if anything, the concern over Al Queda and Bin Laden was increasing at the end of the Clinton administration.

Gore was always more of a Hawk than Clinton, so he would undoubtedly have continued if not expanded that emphasis.

Whereas, Bush basically ignored the alarms that were handed to him (And the Hart/Rudman report) and Cheney shut down everything until he could do his own terrorism assesment. Unfortunately, he hadn’t finished it by 911 so the administration was caught flat-footed.

The Gore administration would not have been.

But, if we assume that the 911 hijackers were just too well concealed to stop, then Gore would have reacted much the same as Bush initially. Only he woundn’t have spent the first day running and hiding, nor the first critical hour reading stories to children.

The decision to go into Afganistan after Bin Laden was something anyone would have done under those circumstances. Anyone who says Gore woldn’t have done that is either a liar or delusional. He would have gone in on his own, but even if you believe the fiction that he’s weak and venal, he still would have gone in because it’s what the public overwealmingly wanted.

In fact, Gore probably would have used more force then Bush, substantially more ground forces and less air power. The objective was to get Bin Laden, rather than pound the country into (smaller) rubbble, and air power just wasn’t going to do the job. And, in fact, Bush did fail to achieve his primary objective in Afganistan - Bin Laden is still at large primarily because Bush tried to do to much using bribed Iraqi’s who didn’t really have the USA’s best interest at heart. Gore might have failed to get Bin Laden too, Bin Laden is one slippery SOB, but Gore would most certainly would have been more focused on the real problem - Get Bin Laden. Bush seemed to focused on conquoring Afganistan instead.

And as for Iraq. No way. The country is not a threat, and it was not a threat to the USA, and it was not responsible for 911. Gore would have recognised that and spent his time and energy on more important things. Korea and Israel/Palestine most likely. Quite possibly a renewed inspection regime in Iraq with a bit more muscle behind it, but not invasion unless inspections weren’t working. (And we now know for certain that they were working).

I think far too many of you have no really idea of who Gore is. He’s not a taller version of Clinton. Most of what
the press reported about him during the election and an year or two prior is fiction. The real Gore is honest,
decent, a brilliant and far-seeing thinker. He’s far more hawkis than Clinton, And probably a real Bore to hang out with.
(not that I expect to ever hang out with presidents…) If you want to really understand how much of what you believe
about Gore is based on press fabrications, read the back issues of the Daily Howler. http://www.dailyhowler.com.

26

I’m interested in reading more about this, but your cite seems to point to an article from The Onion. Could you repost the link?

27

Tejota:

Who was the president when the WTC was bombed in 1993?

(as an aside, I typed “bomb WTC” into google to get the date. I hope you guys aren’t right about Ashcroft, or I’m a goner.)

28

Clinton. <b>unsuccessful</b> terrorist attacks don’t mar anything.

But thank you for trying to score cheap feel-good points rather than addressing any of my actual points.

29

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.htm

Call me biased, but it seems to me that the main reason Clinton barely made headway in pursuing Al-Qaeda and other terror operatives was a lack of cooperation on the part of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, not from any lack of enthusiasm.

30

I think it is a toss-up whether 9/11 would have happened. As much as I don’t like them, I don’t think Bush and his administration really had much time in the 9 months or so that they were in office to substantially shift the inertia of the intelligence community. Yes, Bush and co. shifted from anti-terrorism to NMD. But I am unclear how much budget shifting actually happened in those first 9 months.

I’m going to assume 9/11 happened. Gore would have gone into Afghanistan not only because the public demanded it, but it was a helluva good target. Liberals had been crying out for years at the human rights and especially women’s rights abuses in Afghanistan. The Taliban was an international pariah, and them harboring the #1 most wanted man in the world made them absolutely irresistable. I think the war effort would have gone about the same. The Pentagon learned a lot from the Kosovo and first Gulf War actions, and new ways of fighting these types of wars were devised independently of the administration. Remember, Bush’s military policy during the campaign was based on the Powell doctrine of overwhelming force with a clearly defined exit strategy. That doctrine has been explicitly not followed so far.

I think the differences would have become apparent after the actions in Afghanistan. Though Gore is more internationally oriented than Bush, he would have gone it in Afghanistan largely alone, because America desired and needed it. After the war, however, he would not have cut bait and allowed the British and NATO and whoever to administer the aid. Much more focused effort would have been brought to rebuilding the country, perhaps to the point of establishing a new US civilian force to administer day-to-day affairs. IIRC Gore said that this would be something he supported during the campaign (during the questioning about nation-building). Kind of like a Peace Corps-plus.

Gore’s internationalism would have taken hold after the war. Focused effort to root out terrorists would have been far more effective if we hadn’t upset so many countries with our international stances. This was evident even before Iraq. This ranges from backing out of the ICC, Kyoto and other environmental talks, refusing to acknowledge protests against the World Bank, breaking out of the ABM treaty, and first and foremost stepping away from the MidEast negotiation table.

With focused efforts on Israel/Palestine, perhaps the intifada would have been over or dwindiling by 9/11. Perhaps we could have taken lightning actions with the support of security agencies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan as well as Pakistan (which Bush went right after). We could have gotten the really dangerous recruiters – remember all 19 of the 9/11 terrorists were Egyptian or Saudi. I’m not clear if this would have been to our long-term benefit, but it may have looked very nice short-term. Our support of the Egyptian and Saudi regimes will only lead to more long term instability.

Iraq would have been a non-issue. North Korea would have been treated like Clinton treated it. Before Bush, we submitted to Kim’s “nuclear blackmail”, and in turn NK adhered to their 1994 treaties. We paid them off in oil-for-food and grain subsidies and whatever, and they locked up their reactors. Again, it may not be for the long term benefit, but it would have looked better in the short term (I suppose it couldn’t look much worse in the short term than how Bush has handled it…)

Some questions for debate. Do you think Gore would have been as successful as Bush and co. at deflecting criticism? Do you think he would have been able to stave off and defuse congressional investigations? Do you think we would be sitting through another independent counsel type thing on 9/11 right now? (I know the independent counsel law has expired).

31

One problem with the treaties with NK. THey didn’t follow them. They took the money and did what they wanted to anyway.

32

I dunno about that. They seemed to be manageable, especially when all those talks about some repatriation with the South were ongoing. All reports that I saw said that they weren’t reprocessing fuel rods, which was prohibited under the 1994 accord. Do you have something that says different? Granted, I’m no expert…

33

Gore would have done almost exactly what Bush did. There’s already a pretty good model for this: Tony Blair. Blair is a ‘new Democrat’, very much in the mold of the Clinton administration.

Lest we forget, the Clinton administration was the first to adopt ‘regime change’ as official U.S. policy, and Clinton and Blair worked together (and in defiance of the U.N.).

Gore made statements fully in support of Bush’s actions towards Iraq, as did Clinton. And if anything, Gore was more of a hawk than Clinton.

The big question is whether Gore would have surrounded himself with a heavyweight administration like Bush did.

But here’s another difference: The Iraq war would have had far more support in the Government. Being a Democrat, Gore would have had more support for a war from other Democrats, and the Republicans would have supported it because Republicans are hawkish about these things. Tony Blair again is a good example - he had more support from the Tories than he did from his own Liberals - imagine if the Prime minister at the time was a Tory - he wuoldn’t have gained any extra support on his own side, already having full support. But he wouldn’t have had as much support from Liberals as Tony Blair did.

Also, I’d bet dollars to donuts that a lot of the partisans opposing this war would have supported it if Gore were president, and a lot of partisan Republicans who supported the war would have opposed it. For some people, partisanship trumps everything.

For example:

Tejota Said:

I see the '93 WTC attack was already mentioned, and you weaseled out by claiming it was an ‘unsuccessful’ attack, and therefore doesn’t count. Two problems with that - one, I’m sure it’s no comfort to the people killed in the bombing, and two, the attack came damned close to being successful. An investigation afterwards showed that if that Ryder truck had been parked something like 30 feet closer to one of the main supports in the tower, it might have brought it down. Clinton deserves no credit for a fluke.

And if that tower had come down into the other one as planned, there would have been no warning, and no time to get anyone out. The death toll could have been five times higher than the Sept. 9 attack.

Clinton also presided over the Khobar Towers bombing, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Not to criticise Clinton overly much here, but the idea that the U.S. was safe because Clinton was a great terrorist hunter is ludicrous.

34

I think Iraq would have been a non-issue because of how much flak Clinton got over Kosovo. If there had been a crystallizing event with Iraq (the much-heralded “smoking gun”) – a picture of Saddam and bin Laden a la Nixon and Elvis, a chemical attack with Iraqi nerve gas – then we may have seen something. With Bush, it seems like many small bits of tenuous evidence were overblown and politicized and crammed together to make a case on Iraq. Gore would have lacked the neocon vision of reconstructing the region with American standards and thus lacked the impetus. Remember the Republican impressions of Kosovo and Somalia – peacekeeping missions with no exit strategies in regions of marginal pressing national interest. In the Gore USA, the US going after Iraq because it was in defiance of the UN would have been played up as eerily similar to the US (and NATO by proxy) going after Kosovo for being in defiance of the UN. And, honestly, I don’t think Gore would have had the balls to deal with it on such tenuous evidence. Our line would have been the status quo: yeah, Saddam is a bad guy, yeah he may be going after chemical and biological weapons, but since he is not an imminent threat and since we have no hard evidence of anything, we will blow up a few radar sites and hope that this will contain him.

I think Gore would have depended on diplomatic pressure on neighboring countries to cooperate with anti-terrorism initiatives post-9/11 to increasingly alienate Saddam’s regime. Wolfowitz is right – Saddam was sitting on a sea of oil and he may have never been displaced. But if we could have used the international upswelling post-9/11 to encourage liberalization movements in the region (especially in Iran and Saudi Arabia), Saddam would have become increasingly alienated and substantially weakened.

35

Oy, let me enjoy a cigarette at the $3/pack they still are, envision the $7/pack they’d be if Gore were President…you know, I’m not sure I’d care about Afghanistan after the anti-tobacco Gore did his damage. But assuming so…

…I’d hope for a more isolationist Gore. After all, my alternative, Mr. John McCain, was hardly an isolationist. However, I suspect Gore’s foreign policy would be more like the int’l folk want our policies to be, interventionist but at their direction, not our own. The powerful US military at the disposal of the UN, to intervene where they point, to abstain when they frown.

But knowing the Clinton presidency, he had a knack for manipulating the int’l community into doing what we wanted. I think a Clinton-trained President would have had the guile to persuade the int’l community into cooperating, and doing what had to be done, w/o dirtying our own hands.

36

I’m sure there are several opinions yet to be posted, but just to summarise what I’ve read so far.

Almost everyone feels that Gore would have invaded Afghanistan, and more likely would have gone it alone rather than as part of a coalition. The reasoning, from what I’ve understood, is that the people demanded it (correct me if I’m wrong about this), and that setting up a coalition would have taken longer than what was politically acceptable.

Despite the fact that it’s worrying (to me) that public opinion can push the world’s mightiest military to invade another country with the purpose of tearing it apart, I do feel that the US perhaps did have the moral authority to act the way it did. I don’t particularly like Bush and his policies, but I can’t find fault in his actions w.r.t. Afghanistan. Maybe the way he went in was wrong, viz. military strategy, but that’s a topic for another thread.

With respect to Iraq, the majority seems to feel that Iraq wouldn’t even have been an issue with Gore in charge - a lot has to do with the character of the man, as I’ve understood it - and even if it did come up, he would’ve handled it in a way acceptable to the rest of the world. In other words, Iraq wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the things-to-do list of the President of the USA (hypothetically speaking, of course). And as a result, it probably wouldn’t have been an issue with the American public either.

Is it safe to say that this opinion is one which has developed with the advantage of hindsight? IIRC, most people were in fact convinced of the existence of a credible Iraqi threat to the USA when the evidence was put forward by the Bush admin.

If not (safe to say that…), and assuming that this board (the american members of) is generally representative of the the American People, I’m finding it difficult to fathom that despite the large majority here feeling that Iraq would not have been an important issue (on the scale it has been projected at by the Bush admin), public opinion in the US is still divided over whether or not the Iraq war was necessary.

Please correct me if I’m wrong about the last paragraph!

37

I feel Gore would have done what Clinton did in 93, target the small goup of people that did the dammage. He would have asked the taliban to turn over Bin Laden and when that didn’t happen there would be a large cruise missle attack then a declaration of victory. Gore would talk about how we didn’t punish the innocent and would say justice would be found in the international courts. In short do enough to say he did something about it then pretend it never happened just like Clinton did in 93.

38

Not necessarily. You need a legitimate government to have a war. Al Qaeda was never a government, and the terrorists were not acting on behest of the government of Afghanistan. Efforts to bust up Al Qaeda cells would have intensified, but the invasion of Afghanistan would not have been seen as necessary, nor would it have been presented as such. It’s possible the United States might have worked with Pakistan to allow some bombing of Al Qaeda positions in Afghanistan, but the real work would have been in Europe and America. Instead of announcing on TV that the United States is going to make everything better by invading another country, President Gore would have told us that he was going to make everything better by ramping up counterterrorism efforts. Terrorism is criminal and must be stopped.

The idea that the American people “needed” an invasion of Afghanistan to make themselves feel better is wrong. We needed to have our feelings channeled somewhere, though; that’s one thing the Bush administration got right. They just channeled those feelings (whatever their intentions) in the wrong direction. Like the aftermath of the U.S.S. Cole bombing, there will always be someone sputtering, “We— we were attacked! We gotta invade somebody now!” But this is not a logical reaction, but an emotional one, and a good leader would recognize that you don’t always have to appease bellicose reactions. After the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, after the Cole bombing of 2000, Clinton didn’t rush troops into action, nor should he have. Increasing police work and working with other governments is the way to handle this. I don’t think the American people are as bloody-minded as some say, so I don’t think there was anything embedded in the American psyche that “needed” the invasion of Afghanistan or of anywhere else.

I think the large part of the American support for operations in Iraq stems from the belief that it’s misguided to question our actions there as long as we’ve got troops in harm’s way. I certainly don’t see it this way, but a lot of people do. I suspect the majority of Americans don’t care whether the war in Iraq was necessary, or even think about it that much. One could argue that we’re thus “divided.” One thing that’s telling is how the nine Democratic candidates for president have such varying opinions about the war. Debate among the candidates has not centered on the Iraq issue, which seems to indicate that they don’t think Iraq is going to be much of an issue in the 2004 election, which is probably true.

When it’s coming from Washington—whether they’re talking about Iraq or Afghanistan or Panama or wherever—enough people do get worked up about a declared threat. Had the Bush administration never said that we needed to invade Afghanistan or Iraq, sufficient threat would never have been perceived and there would have been practically no outcry to do so. Had the Bush administration said that we needed to invade, say, Canada or Spain, there would have thus been at least some support, just because the president says it’s a good idea—despite the fact that invading those countries would seem to most people a reckless and unnecessary adventure, to say the least.

39

I still disagree, Chance. 9/11 killed more than Pearl Harbor. It was the first attack on the USA (ignore those balloons carrying bombs sent by Japan) since the Civil War – Hawaii was a territory in 1941. You may be able to look back and say that Gore would not have turned this into a call to war, but I think that is unrealistic. When nearly 3000 are killed right under our noses, I’m pretty sure even the most dovish leader would make sure we took a mostly unilateral action in response. The Taliban may not exactly equal al-Qaeda, but it certainly was evil in its own right, and it did its part in aiding and sheltering al-Qaeda. It was far too irresistable to escape attack.

40

But edwino, in 1941 we were attacked by a government, by Japanese planes emblazoned with the symbols of the Empire of Japan. Pearl Harbor is a poor analogy for September 11.

We look at how Bush treated the September 11 attacks and it can be difficult to imagine how the crisis could have been dealt with differently. While evacuating lower Manhattan, I remember saying to a friend of mine, “I want to know who did this.” Terrorism in America: it was awful. But how do you deal with terrorists? Should Great Britain invade Ireland? Should Israel invade every country surrounding it? Of course not, and those countries don’t. But you can’t sell the American people short: we’re not that simplistic; we can process complicated ideas. If you explain to them that we have to hunt down the criminals who attacked us instead of make war on some other country because of a terrorist attack, we’ll support that. Declaring “war” on terrorism is like declaring “war” on the Mafia. Fighting the Japanese Empire, we knew where to go and what would mean we were finished. Fighting terrorism is a complicated job, and it’s not obvious when we’ll be done. This is a social ill to root out, not a military campaign. If Washington would treat it as such, we’d all be much better off. Considering that Al Gore had plenty of exposure to what Al Qaeda was, I’m sure he would have had the wisdom to treat the hunt for terrorists as the search for criminals that it is, rather than an ongoing military campaign, had he had to deal with the September 11 attacks.