Thanks to you, too, Dio. I have admired the way you’ve changed your posting style since my early days here, and so perhaps you can be an inspiration to me as I attempt to change mine. :eek:
And now I’m off to dinner with a relative. Goodnight to you all.
I can understand your confusion. The solution is the realization that Democratic politicians are usually extremely far to the right of many of their supporters, including posters on this board, and that many left leaning people view them with disgust but also conclude they are, on the whole, a better choice than the GOP.
Look at Bill Clinton. His bombing of Sudan, for all intents and purposes, was worse than 9/11 in its effects on the host country. We bombed an extremely important pharmaceutical factory in a country in desperate straits based on laughable intelligence (indeed, even if the claims were true the bombing could be argued to be extremely immoral). We don’t even know how many died in the resulting lack of supplies because no official human rights organization can do one.
Something our current president could be proud of.
Take the Iraqi sanctions. I have the feeling you agreed with them but that’s beside the point – their effect on the country of Iraq can not be understated. They were the most comprehensive sanctions in history, across the board. The current administration was shocked at the advanced decay of basic infrastructure after the invasion. Basic services were in disarray, on the verge of collapse.
Most importantly, depending on the source, anywhere from 800,000 to 1.5 million people died, most of them children.
He also wasn’t shy about bombing random areas in Afghanistan or Iraq, either. At the time many said he was attempting to divert attention from his sex scandal. Whether true or not, he had no trouble going through with them.
Oh, and don’t forget all those little operations. Somalia. Kosovo.
He continued U.S. involvement in East Timor, despite his claims to fix the situation on the campaign trail. In the end, U.S. business interests trumped human rights.
So, really, if you grant that Gore and Clinton are similar in their outlook, how could Gore not invade Afghanistan? I doubt he’d need to be persuaded. He’d eat it right up.
Even the Afghanistan war would have been less likely to occur under President Gore. Having *not * pretended the Al Qaeda threat did not exist and ignored all evidence that it did, quite the opposite in fact, it would have been much more likely that he would have acted on actionable intelligence about the 9/11 attacks, and thereby prevented them. They still certainly could have happened, though, and probably would.
But we know how the Loyal Opposition would have characterized any military action he did take against AQ, of course. The only debate would have been about which dog he was wagging, and if necessary, they’d have created an appropriate dog themselves.
Invade Iraq? What the hell for? Gore would certainly have continued the highly-successful, zero-US-casualty containment policy there. He’d have had no reason to invent a line of rationalizational bullshit for the Kool-Aid set.
I suspect he was off slightly and was thinking of the Tet offensive of January 1968. That was the beginning of Johnson’s decision not to run for re-election, his announcement of such coming 2 1/2 months later.
Clinton was happy enough to bomb Baghdad in December 1998. Considering what a thorn in the side Saddam had been all those years, I wonder whether Clinton wouldn’t have invaded if he thought he could have gotten away with it.
This is in fact correct. I was going to post this, but you beat me to it.
However, I think the Dem stand was entirely justified under the circumstances. The vote took place just three weeks after Saddam released the last of the 3,000 foreign nationals held by Iraq, that were in Iraq and Kuwait when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
The point being that if you respond to an action like that by effectively saying, ‘good - now we’re free to go to war against you’, the next dictator in possession of foreign hostages (American or otherwise) has been given the best of all reasons to not do the same.
Not impressed by that arguement. There’s a reason why great leaders are great leaders, and it’s not because they pull their punches in case there’s a next time. They make the toughest decisions of all because only they ever have such burdens thrust upon them. Having to sacrifice hostages for the greater good, even if it means war, is one of those tough decisions you have to be prepared to make. Churchill had to do it during the London Blitz. He knew a raid was coming onto Coventry but he couldn’t warn the population because it would have let the Germans know that the British had cracked the Enigma coding protocol. To have let Saddam Hussein off the hook in 1990 because he’d let the foreign hostages free would have been one of the great pussy displays of leadership in history. My only regret regarding Gulf War v.1991 is that it was a massive opportunity gone begging to have renormalised relations with Iran. Our enemy is your enemy, and all that.
When I heard about how the advancing Northern Alliance (and others) found a field full of Taliban sitting there with three CIA operatives, I thought how incredibly brave those three guys must have been.
It took me some time to figure out that the Talibanis individually knew and trusted those guys from way back.
With 20/20 hindsight, I’m not sure that it was necessary to go into Afghanistan, it was Osama that we wanted, and a relatively small number of his followers, bear in mind those guys would have had problems talking to the Taliban - they shared little in common, probably they used English.
Probably simply sending in supplies that were consumable, or needed consumables, would have got them into a ‘trading situation’ - petrol is more addictive than heroin.
At the time I fully supported the invasion of Afghanistan, and apart from the fact that it was not followed up, I still see it as a rational solution. However ‘Plan B’ could have worked, and I think it could still work.
I also suspect that something similar is being worked on, which is why ‘The Dutch take tea with the Taliban’. In the meantime using them as a training ground is not a bad idea, but sowing the seed that they might become 21st Century Ghurkali is also not entirely dumb.
I would seriously think about carpet bombing Helmand with well packaged Honda portable generators and a few accessories.
Milo Minderbinder might have been an arsehole, but he was no fool.
What, into Iraq? How could we possibly have gone into Iraq before Afghanistan was taken care of? I think W invaded as soon as he plausibly could – it took time to build up troop strength in the Gulf and time to build up a political case for the war.
And then there’s China. On the campaign trail in 1992, Clinton denounced Bush Sr.'s willingness to grant most-favored-nation status to the country that had perpetrated Tianmen Square. Then he went and did the same.
Caridwen was pretty clearly talking about Afghanistan, not Iraq, I believe.
First I’ve heard of that.
Ghurkali?
While there’s no way of knowing for sure, I think it’s very possible. The speech cited above makes the following clear:
It’s instructive to look at the reasons Gore gave for why he didn’t support the war:
But presumably he thinks that were he President, he could have garnered more such support. (And I think he’s right.)
A valid concern at the time that has been shown to be not the case; ironically, Bush is seemingly the only one left who is willing to engage in nation-building.
But this is a “not now” argument , not a “not ever” one. I think were he actually in the White House getting military advice, he’d be forced to conclude that Afghanistan is a) not a prime candidate for rebuilding a state and b) one of the worst places on earth to pick to fight a guerilla war, and that we needed a better battlefield. If the US had made Afghanistan the target of an “invade in full force and nation build” policy, the result would have made the current Iraq mess look like a ringing success. I don’t think Gore would be stupid enough to do that.
But even if we presume that Afghanistan went swimmingly, and Al-Quaeda was wipoed out in a few years, Saddam would still have been sitting there in 2005, 2006, 2007, and Gore would still have had to deal with it, and he’s still have the same set of options: Do nothing in the face of defiance, pursue more sanctions, pursue bombing and/or blockade, or else invade.
There’s obviously no way of knowing, but if you sit down and try to walk through alternative timelines and look at what options people would have, I’d argue that some sort of large-scale confrontation with Iraq was inevitable no matter who was President.
How would Gore have built support for invasion without the wholesale intelligence cooking of the OSP? Wolfowitz, Feith, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Pearle, Franklin, Bolton etc. wouldn’t have been part of the picture. Who would Gore have gotten to peddle Curveball’s alarming tales?
Would Al Gore have INVADED Iraq? I have serious doubts. As others have pointed out, there was no real reason to with the sanctions in place and working (sort of). i DO think old Al would have tossed a few Tomahawks ole Saddam’s way at one point or another, could very well have authorized some additional air strikes, and generally bombed the shit out of some likely military targets in Iraq. While perhaps not likely (or perhaps so), its plausible, and its also things that Clinton had done when Gore was VP.
I think the US government (as well as a lot of other governments) would have STILL thought (erroneously) that Iraq had WMD and continued under that mis-assumption for a long time to come. Saddam’s bluff would have continued to work for the foreseeable future (in this alternative history).
As for Afghanistan, I think thats a slam dunk…I can’t see how Gore could have gotten out of invading to be honest. The Taliban were and had been clearly harboring AQ…and Bin Laden. They had supported them in the past and continued to support them. There were terrorist training camps in the country for gods sake! I don’t believe there was nearly the universal support for Afghanistan that some in this thread have claimed (I recall protests, especially outside of the US), but there was certainly enough OFFICIAL support from our major allies (as seen by the numbers of them that DID go there to fight…and are STILL there), as well as overwhelming support here in the US (80%?) for an invasion of Afghanistan in light of AQ and Bin Laden involvement in the country that it would have been political suicide for Gore to ignore all that and simply bomb the country instead of invade.
I DO think that Gore wouldn’t have moved as fast to invade as Bush did, taking longer to do so…which wouldn’t have been a good thing. However, to counter balance that, I think he would have hit them with a bigger hammer and we would have been more committed for the long term, which most definitely would have been a GOOD thing.
I’m not a big fan of Gore. I didn’t vote for him in 2000 (I didn’t vote for Bush either, FTR 
), and I don’t think he would have made a good president from my viewpoint. But…he would almost certainly have made a better president than the one we got. I know, I know…setting the bar kind of low there. But its true. Of course, if he WAS president today, its very possible that HE would be the one with abyssal rating from the people, that Congress would NOT have shifted back to control of the Democrats (in fact, I rather doubt it would have), etc. So, maybe from the Dem’s perspective it all worked out for the best!
-XT
I don’t think that he would have taken longer to invade Afghanistan. On what do you base that assumption? Anything more substantial than the mistaken republican fearmongering that democrats are “weak on defense”, or the Fox TV rallying cry that democrats hate America and want the terrorists to win?
I think Gore would have been more likely to engage in the necessary nation building in Afghanistan, and I think he would have been more likely than Bush to use diplomacy with Iran and Pakistan to do that. If the US had put all the necessary resources into rebuilding Afghanistan and handled it correctly, (and there’s no guarantee that would have happened, but I will say that it would have been handled better under Gore than the clusterfuck that BushCo has created), It would have gone a long way towards building our reputation with the rest of the world. Just because we’re the only military superpower left in the world for the moment doesn’t mean that we don’t need allies.
With Pakistan and Afghanistan as allies and with at least normalized relations with Iran, and Saddam no friend of radical Islam, I think Iraq’s containment would have been more solidified.
Personally, I’d rather we had an intelligent, articulate, competent and sane person in the oval office than what we have now. And the idea that Gore would have such a low aproval rating were he in charge today is ridiculous wishful thinking. Bush’s lack of popularity is because of his incompetence and the institutionalized stupidity of his administration. The Republican party’s losses in the last election is because of their own scandals, incompetence and cronyism. The idea that the incredible waste and destruction that’s happening in Iraq is “good for Democrats” is really sickening.
Why yes, since you ask so nicely, and since you are so full of…um…assumptions. Bush et al moved extremely aggressively, and there was some comment at the time as to the strategy they used. This consisted of basically getting light units into the area ASAP and relying on the local forces to carry the majority of the water, combat wise. I have serious doubts that without Rummy (and Bush to back him), this would have been the strategy Gore would have taken, instead doing something similar to what we did in the first Gulf War…i.e. build up our conventional forces, build international consensus and alliances, especially with regional powers, etc. This would have taken, IMO, several months…maybe 6 or more. It takes a LONG time to move large conventional formations AND their logistics and equipment into position for a forced entry assault on a country like Afghanistan. And I THINK (I don’t know mind you…just my opinion) thats what Gore et al would have done. Probably bombing the shit out of ground targets the whole while (again, like in the first Gulf War).
On what basis do you feel that Gore would have followed the exact same strategy Bush did? Knee jerk reaction to what you assumed was my reasoning, or do you have something more solid? :dubious:
Personally, I would rather people read what I write, not what they THINK I write…but we can’t always get what we want. I base the premise that Gore MIGHT (might mind you) have had as low an approval rate as Bush currently does on one thing…that had we focused completely on Afghanistan THAT would probably be where the majority of the insurgency would have been. After all, Afghanistan is tailor made for that kind of fighting…ask the Soviets. There is nothing that I’ve seen to indicate that had the US remained there that things would have been peace and light…far from it. I think things got distracted from this because we went on to Iraq…and that Afghanistan was pretty much forgotten except for the locals. Had inter nation attention (especially that of folks who are none too fond of the US and the West) STAYED in Afghanistan, its far from a fantasy that there would be the same level of fighting going on THERE as is going on in Iraq right now. After all, we KNOW AQ was there already. Just like happened when the Soviets invaded, its a distinct possibility that pissed off and poor Arab’s from the region would have flocked to Afghanistan.
As for Congress, let me ask you a question…if Gore was in charge, just why do YOU think there would have been a sea change in Congress exactly? Do you REALLY think it was various scandals of 'Pubs that caused such a sea change…and not Iraq?? Do you have any basis for this?
-XT
I think **Elvis1ives ** is correct, I may add that there are many steps that Bush did that would had been missed on the way to a War in Iraq:
Changing policy to make it easier to accept intelligence from sources that were tortured, problem was that then torture got us false information regarding the connections to Iraq an Al-qeada and the trouble was that that was what the administration wanted to hear.
I have trouble seeing guys like Chalabi getting close to a Gore administration, here is another piece that I think would be missing or minimized: a willingness to take intelligence from dissidents; ever after the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, it should have been common knowledge that intelligence from people who do want to change a regime through violent means, should be taken with a monumental grain of salt.
And since Congress was in Republican hands, a stunt like the Plame affair would have been impossible, I would not have been surprised that if Gore had left Osama escape from Afghanistan that Republicans would have impeached Gore if he had dared plant information in the press and pushed the nation to a war in Iraq when the perpetrators of 9/11 were elsewhere. Not to mention that pointing out that 9/11 happened during Gore’s watch that the extreme right wingers would be blaming him for 9/11 right now.
[ hijack ] There is a persistent misunderstanding regarding Rumsfeld and the light attack concept. It is not Rumsfeld’s idea. Rumsfeld was carrying out Bush’s idea. Bush was quite heavily influenced by a guy (whose name I’vce forgotten) prior to his election who believed that the U.S. had to re-orient the military away from the European set-piece battle model toward a more diverse configuration that could be deployed swiftly to fight Somali type battles. (It may, indeed, have been a very good idea in the overall, akthough I am not sure it has been implemented as planned.) Rumsfeld was brought in to make the change happen, based on the idea that he could use his contacts and his knowledge off the miulitary from the 1980s to bring the Pentragon over. Unfortunately, under Bush’s prodding, he attempted to make it happen all at once and the military dug in their heels and resisted his changes. Through the summer of 2001, there were increasing rumors that Rumsfeld would be gone by Christmas because he was failing to get the military to change fast enough. The WTC/Pentagon attacks saved his butt, as no one felt that changing Defense Secretaries would be a good thing right then and the military went on more of a “follow orders” war footing in September. Rumsfeld deserves his share of the blame, (particularly for overriding the Joint Chiefs in his decision to use the "new’ policy in Iraq when it was clearly one plave the old policy would have served better, but he was not the architect of the new military, only its construction manager.
[ /hijack ]
This is a possibility.
On the other hand, The Taliban were universally condemned in the Muslim world. We had a lot of support from Muslim nations to go into Afghanistan and without the blunder of Iraq, there would also have been fewer hooks to get young men throughout the Middle East to come drive out the “invaders” (particularly since we did, indeed, use the local Afghanis to prosecute that war rather than sending in the U.S. Army to do it–a strategy that I suspect would have remained in place under Gore, since it appears to have originated in the military and not the White House).