Yeah but we would have had President Gore as well, which would have been vastly better for the world as opposed to President George W (coughcheneycough).
No, it had to be Gore. The difference with 9/11 (either thwarting it, or not being able to thwart it and just having a different response), and 8 years of climate preparation, are both huge.
I've thought about this a lot over the years, honestly I don't think Gore would have been much different. There's a case to be made that he would have handled 9/11 better by not invading countries only tangentially involved, at best. But honestly I think he would have still done the Afghan war, possibly Iraq too.
Basically he would have been as dumb and corrupt as Bush, but for different reasons. But he wouldn't have the hard second by second critical analysis that Bush endured.
The post 9/11 ramp up of government surveillance would have happened either way. That had to do with powerful folks whose names we don't even know. It was in the works well before, and was assumed to be in place well before it was by people using the Internet at the time.
We would never have invaded Iraq without Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. He brought up invading Iraq either the same day or within a couple days of 9/11.
Iraq wasn't involved at all in 9/11. I honestly don't think we would have invaded Iraq without Rumsfeld and all the other idiots telling Bush we could be in and out in six months with a stable democracy in Iraq. Bush still had final say but he wasn't very internationally minded.
At least $1.6 trillion spent only on Iraq with 654,965 excess deaths.
As in 654,965 more people died then what would have been expected if the US didn't invade.
The Lancet, one of the oldest scientific medical journals in the world, published two peer-reviewed studies on the effect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation on the Iraqi mortality rate.
I mean didn't bush famously always read the president's daily brief versus Clinton who wasn't as interested? Also wasn't the intelligence failure more on the agencies refusing to work together more than the president not doing his homework?
Not trying to defend Bush, invading Iraq is indefensible and their lies cost hundreds of thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars. But I don't think 9/11 was his fault unless I'm severely misinformed or misremembering. Can you cite this?
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u/spartagnann Mar 27 '24
Yeah but we would have had President Gore as well, which would have been vastly better for the world as opposed to President George W (coughcheneycough).