Post 9/11 US under Gore

Discussion in 'World Events' started by eddie monkey, Mar 16, 2003.

  1. eddie monkey FU Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    92
    What do you think the world would be like right now if Al Gore had won the 2000 elections (he did, but what if he had been allowed to keep his rightfully owned position?)?

    Certainly the War in Afghanistan would have continued, but what would it look like in the Middle East right now?
     
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  3. Weisse Bora Registered Member

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    Cluster fluck

    We would be no where in the world. The Taliban would still be ruling Afghanistan and we would have closed borders. Economic ruin would prevail.

    BTW, Al Gore won the popular vote but its the Electoral votes that elect the President. And procedure was followed...
     
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  5. eddie monkey FU Registered Senior Member

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    Re: Cluster fluck

    For the sake of discussion we must assume that Gore would act just like Bill Clinton as President. Clinton wasn't easy on everyone. He ordered Iraq to be bombed several time, and ordered the invasion of Kosovo and Somalia, and tried to take out bin Laden (with as much success as Bush is having) so he wasn't a pasifist. He just didn't want to attack everyone without sufficant reason. So the Taliban would be gone, but I doubt we would be preparing for war in Iraq. Also the economy would be ok under Gore.

    But if Gore had been given all the votes from Florida, he would have received the electoral votes of that state, and would be President today.
     
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  7. Weisse Bora Registered Member

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    Re: Re: Cluster fluck

    No, Clinton, specifically Les Aspin, denied the use of light armor in Somalia and it was Bush 41 who ordered US troops to that African state after the whining of the "he won't send anybody there because there is no oil to be had" crowd. It was Les Aspin acting under Bill Clinton who cemented fate for the circumstances leading to the death of 18 US servicemen in Somalia. Get your facts straight before engaging.

    As far as Clinton "engaging" bin Laden, a few cruise missles is not a military campaign. Furthermore, Clinton HAD his chance as the government of Sudan offered bin Laden but Clinton refused. It was only after bin Laden returned to Afghanistan did he launch the cruise missle attack and that was of dubious motive since it was in the height of the Lewinsky affair.

    Gore would not have attacked Afghanistan. He would still be trying to get UN approval.

    Gore wanted only a selective Florida recount in the precincts where he had a majority. The results show he might have won in that case but a complete recount in the state proves these electoral votes rightly were awarded to the winner of the majority in this state. End of story. If you cannot get the facts on who sent troops to Somalia, an easily proved fact, how can you be expected to get the facts on the results in an election?
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    It would be different, but not necessarily any better

    There would have been no George Bush crying, "Recession! Recession!"

    There would have been no Donald Rumsfeld to start planning how to exploit the situation to get Saddam while the Pentagon was burning. Gore probably would have coughed up the evidence of Bin Laden's guilt that the Taliban asked for, and then we might have discovered the answer to a near-mythical question: Had the Taliban the capability to deliver Osama bin Laden to American custody? It would have been interesting to see them squirm, but I've learned that when dealing with the religious, never put all the eggs in one basket. With the world watching, the Taliban might have reverted to Islam and realized that it was in everybody's best interest to either cough up Bin Laden or invite the Americans to come and get him with their blessings. Woulda, shoulda, mighta, maybe ...

    Gore would have been somewhat patient. It's always worth going through the motions for legitimacy, unless it's the kicking of other peoples' asses, and not justice, that motivates one. But it seems to me that it's always worth it.

    Gore would have continued to harangue Iraq; Clinton loved it. Airstrike here, missile strike there. That's the funny thing about the Gore situation. We wouldn't have been showing slides of a rocket test facility to the UN until after we'd blown it up.

    Gore, after much internal wrangling and begging from lobbyists, would probably have chosen to respect Kyoto. Gore would have chosen to respect ICC.

    The economy would still be in rocky shape; the corporate scandals were inevitable. Rather than browbeating the economy into the ground as Dubya does, Gore's administration would be tied up in so many staff meetings, legal consultations, and committee arguments that the economy would come apart from sheer impatience; it would bleed itself into about the same condition.

    The midterm elections would have been even more resoundingly Republican.

    There would still be arsenic in your drinking water.

    Arianna Huffington would have been taken seriously for this article. (She's allegedly a conservative, but even I wouldn't have gone that far. She paints a compelling picture, though. What can I say? I've been a critic of the drug war for ten years; I would have hedged at the exploitative aspect of it all.)

    My daughter may not have been conceived--I can't possibly connect all those dots for you without boring you to tears, if not to the grave. But we have that in common--born under a bad sign. (I was born during the Nixon administration. :bugeye: )

    Gore would have been no more dignified than Bush regarding Israeli atrocities in the West Bank.

    The Freddie Phelps/Al Gore scandal would actually matter.

    The only thing the Republicans could do to blow it under a Gore presidency is what Gingrich did--lose all sense of dignity.

    There would be no Patriot Act. The persecution of American Muslims by the Justice Department would be considerably different and lesser. Nonetheless, Gore would have to be shouted down by the Democratic Party in order to achieve that state.

    There would be no "Homeland". I find the term repugnant because my generation grew up mocking such notions as fatherlands or motherlands or "homelands". And at present think of the Palestine: there is Israel, and also a call for a "Palestinian homeland". Both sides raise identification with land to the point of atrocity. I mean, come on ....

    Whoops. Sorry. Editorial comment aside: There would be no "Homeland". Democrats just don't play that game very well.

    Saturday Night Live would still be on the air, anyway.

    Al Gore would cop a South Park joke in his inaugural address. And one of his daughters would be arrested for substance.

    I also wanted to mention of the election: Michael Moore, in Stupid White Men, essentially accuses the GOP of coordinating electoral fraud in Florida. And not what most people are used to hearing. Thousands of Democrats in Florida apparently suffered an abrupt revocation of their voting rights according to severely questionable interpretations of the law. In one case a county election commissioner who was a registered Democrat had her voting rights stripped. This was apparently because felons are not allowed to vote in Florida. As the story goes, these thousands of revocations were inappropriate--in other words, the people were not convicted felons--and heavily, if not exclusively focused on Democrats. Bush won Florida's popular vote--and therefore its electoral votes--by hundreds. Thousands of Democrats were locked out. Unfortunately, I have not a copy of the book at present, and it would be a hideous violation to reproduce that much text here. Nonetheless, Mr. Moore also does us the courtesy of providing source references for his allegations, so doubters are apparently welcome to check up on his allegations. It paints an interesting picture, especially for me, who was quite resigned to the electoral reality. It's happened before and everybody knew it going in. It's just too bad about Justice O'Connor publicly declaring that Al Gore could not be allowed to win the election--before the Court handed Bush the presidency. I was a good boy about the Bush s/election until Moore reminded me of that particular debacle which was only a blip on the radar at the time. For me, "stealing an election" means something different than the typical Crossfire fodder.

    :m:,
    Tiassa

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  9. SuperFudd Registered Senior Member

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    I believe Bush's victory over Gore rates up there with our victory over Japan at Midway as proof that God is on our side.

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  10. zanket Human Valued Senior Member

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    While I agree with Weisse Bora that Bush rightfully won the 2000 election, I disagree that Gore would not have attacked the Taliban. Highly unlikely since he’d be kissing his career goodbye. Anybody who’s smart enough to win the popular vote in a presidential election is not going to make so blatant a mistake. Clinton’s action against bin Laden compared to Bush’s is apples & oranges because 9/11 intervened.

    It is naïve to think that liberal means pansy. I think Gore would have been more focused on improving the nation, and the recession would be milder as a result. His general optimism and superior intelligence compared to Bush’s “cowboys & Indians” thinking would have had a huge net positive effect on the world. I doubt North Korea would be making waves now, for example; I blame that on Bush putting them on an Axis of Evil list. Same with Iran. I doubt Gore would have done anything new about Hussein, for the simple reason that he’s not worth the expenditure. There are many better investments even in terms of human rights.

    I’d have said that “Gore would have been no more dignified than Bush regarding Israeli atrocities in the West Bank” except Tiassa just beat me to it.
     
  11. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    4,467
    Heck, gore would have apologized that we are the most free country in the world.
     
  12. Vortexx Skull & Bones Spokesman Registered Senior Member

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    Gore would have pushed for environmental friendly airplanes powered by solar energy, so that they don't cause such a messy kerosine explosion when crashed into building....

    Also he would personally launch a full scale cyberwar from behind his laptop: Hack the website of Al-Quaida and leave pictures of females without burka's (muhahaha, that will TEACH them!)
     
  13. Mr. G reality.sys Valued Senior Member

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    5,191
    You're right..er, left. You're correct. It's the other way around.

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    An Independent's perspective: the right does what should be done for the wrong reasons because the left won't do what should be done for the right reasons.
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    "G" is for generalize?

    An interesting point, except let's take a look at Baghdad, for instance.

    Why did we not go all the way to Baghdad last time?

    What does the Bush Doctrine change?

    Liberals just aren't up to rewriting the rules to justify themselves every time. Finding better ways takes longer, and constitutents are impatient. That's why we need better education in this country. If people would (stop) being so stupid about who they elect, things would get better faster. But they need to be smart enough to realize that dualisms are not the only way to look at the situation.

    Ask yourself why a third-party vote is considered "wasted".

    However, I will point out that if something isn't done for the "right reasons", then that something should not be done.

    But in many, if not most cases, if a liberal fails to do what "should be done" according to conservatives, it is because the liberal is smart enough to know that what "should be done" may not be something the liberal is allowed to do. Are we not a nation of laws? That's what the Bush Doctrine changes. We didn't go to Baghdad because it violated a policy principle of nobility; we're only supposed to use our military in our immediate defense. It's why people protested Desert Storm in the first place. The Bush Doctrine, in announcing the imperium, throws out the old principle. This is not your daddy's Bush administration, so to speak. But Bush has declared the imperium because it's the only way we can go to Baghdad in his mind. Unfortunately for all, he's quite wrong about that. But it never occurred to him to do it the smart way. It should have been easy enough to create circumstances warranting an invasion, if that's where his heart has truly been set. But Rumsfeld, who has been working on how to hit Hussein since the Pentagon was burning, hasn't been able to set it up for George. So instead of doing it the harder, more appropriate way, Dubya just wants to rewrite the rules and wonder why everybody's hesitating to support the new Emperor Palpatine.

    Again, I know the generalizations work well for you, Mr. G. But if you pay more attention to the detail, I think you'll find the world much more complex than neanderthal politik. Try looking for once at the factors influencing the outcome instead of pouting over the outcome and looking for people to blame.

    :m:,
    Tiassa

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    Edit: Ten hours later, a single sentence smacks me in the face as I scroll up and down through a couple of posts. I've added the word "stop" to a sentence so that it makes sense.
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2003
  15. LionHearted Registered Senior Member

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    105
    I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be getting ready to invade Iraq right now.
     

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