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Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
I honestly don't think that most people cared too much who was President then -- or that almost anyone said (in the first few weeks) -- "Thank God its Shrub and not that weenie Gore!"
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Yes.
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Anything is possible -- but this is an inflammatory bit of counterfactual speculation.
I think that it is almost unimaginable that a Democratic President pre-9/11 would have taken the drastically-heightened border security and counter-terrorism steps that could potentially have kept many/most of the hijackers out.
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I agree. I don't think we have any reason to think that Gore would have stopped 9/11 before it happened. But maybe he would have done something with the plan to take out OBL. Bush didn't.
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Also -- the airlines/Congress would _never_ have gone for the drastically heightened and monumentally expensive pre-screening prior to 9/11.
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Agreed.
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These are all reasons why those on the right and left who talk about this Clinton/Bush "should/could have done more" issue are just masturbating. You can't take a country where it doesn't want to go; in my view, there is no realistic scenario by which the American people could have been convinced of the need for and value of all of these new security measures between (say) 1996 and 9/2001 without the 9/11 attacks or something similar.
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Hank and I were talking about doing more to go after Al Qaeda, which is a little different.
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Since we're going counterfactual -- I think/hope that Gore would have invaded Afghanistan. Are you suggesting that it was poorly done? It seems to me to have been a raging success -- at least as compared to prior foreign interventions in that country. I don't see that Bush/Gore would have made much difference.
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I agree.
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I don't question your feelings post-9/11. However, you must admit that, coming from you, this seems a little rich.
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Que? He was my President, too.
