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   Washingtons budget hawks want to decimate the federal workforce to shrink the deficit. It will have the opposite effect.
 Last year there wasn�t a single fatal airline accident in the developed world. So why is the U.S. health care system still accidently killing hundreds of thousands? The answer is a lack of transparency.
 Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
 There arent nearly enough counterterrorism experts to instruct all of Americas police. So we got these guys instead.
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August 15, 2006
By: PARALLEL WORLDS....New York magazine asks, What if 9/11 never happened? Props where they're due: Andrew Sullivan's breezy, bloggy, occasionally self-mocking parallel universe construction is by far the highlight of the package. (Which is not a high bar. Most of the entries are so dull they make you long for the gray, bubbly grandeur that is dishwater.) On the other hand, Matt Yglesias's parallel universe is pretty good too. Why didn't New York ask him to contribute? At least he used to live there. —Kevin Drum 4:19 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (63)
Comments
If Al Gore, the real winner of the 2000 election, would have been in the White House, it would not have happened. Posted by: The Conservative Deflator on August 15, 2006 at 4:24 PM | PERMALINKMatt's is entertaining but problematic for the reason his commenters point out -- a GOP Congress would never have given President Gore the means to wage that kind of war against Afghanistan over what would've sounded like a truly fantastical foiled plot. Posted by: Aaron S. Veenstra on August 15, 2006 at 4:26 PM | PERMALINKAaron: Remember, it's a parallel universe, not a real one! Posted by: Kevin Drum on August 15, 2006 at 4:31 PM | PERMALINKI really liked the Brian K. Vaughn/Tony Harris contribution. A simple idea, elegantly presented. Posted by: Rob Staeger on August 15, 2006 at 4:32 PM | PERMALINKVery amusing, but without 9/11 or an attack on American soil, there would not have been any removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan by any administration. Though it is possible we would have seen a rematch of the 2000 election, barring a deep recession, Bush would have likely been reelected anyway. The big difference would have likely been no invasion of Iraq, just continuous harrassment of Hussein with bombs and missile barrages. I do think, however, the GOPs gains in the Senate in 2002 and 2004 would not have occurred absent 9/11. The Senate might be in Democratic control today without it. Posted by: Yancey Ward on August 15, 2006 at 4:33 PM | PERMALINKNew York magazine asks, What if 9/11 never happened? Sorry, Kevin, because I am a conservative, I refuse to answer that question. Conservatives are REALITY BASED, not IMAGINATION BASED. It is a fact of reality that 9/11 happened four years ago. 9/11 changed everything. We must construct a foreign and domestic policy based on that reality, not based on the imaginations of New York Magazine liberals of a world where 9/11 did not happen. Of course, I wouldn't expect Ned Lamont Democrats like Matthew Yglesias or yourself to understand reality based analysis. Posted by: Al on August 15, 2006 at 4:38 PM | PERMALINKA more interesting question might be what would the world be like if Al Gore had won Florida that first night and prevailed in the recounts. Unlike Conservative Deflator, I think 9/11 occurs anyway, but might be known by a different date. Then how would events have unfolded? Posted by: Yancey Ward on August 15, 2006 at 4:38 PM | PERMALINKI haven't seen the one that gets to the essential point. Without 9/11, we would have invaded Iraq anyway. 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, it was merely used as a powerful pretext. We wouldn't have had as much bipartisan support (thank goodness), and the coalition of the willing would have been somewhat smaller. We might have gone in a bit closer to the 2004 election cycle; I suspect that would have been Rove's timing. WMDs and Terrorism would have still been the pretext. Mushroom clouds would still have been named. Evidence would still have appeared out of nowhere, the case would have still been slam dunk, and Iraq still wouldn't have had any. And we still would have tortured people in Abu Ghraib, Bush would still keep as many secrets as possible, and he'd still be spying on American citizens. 2004? Still would have been wartime, but without as much time for things to go badly. Posted by: Fides on August 15, 2006 at 4:39 PM | PERMALINKWe must construct a foreign and domestic policy based on that reality, . . . Why don't they then? What's stopping them from doing this? Fear of liberal whining? Really? Is that it? Looks like you elected the yellow-brigade of the neocon faction. A true neocon would ignore liberal whining once they had their hands this solidly on the reigns of power. Posted by: Osama_Been_Forgotten on August 15, 2006 at 4:42 PM | PERMALINKDid you and I read the same Sullivan piece? He's arguing that invading Iraq was still the right thing to do- in his alternate world, Gore is president and focuses on nation building in Afghanistan and catching Osama, and the reward is a chemical and dirty bomb attack. Sullivan still believes that, sure, Bush is an idiot, but he's still made us safer than those wimpy Democrats would have. What a moron. Posted by: SP on August 15, 2006 at 4:43 PM | PERMALINKAI's "reality-based"?! ...ha-HA-hA-Ha! I remember Dubya who said "Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. " Without 9/11, we would have invaded Iraq anyway. Sadly, yes. Clinton was the one who started making noise about "regime change". Iraq was about more than just George W's hard-on. It is still a bogus war. But there's more going on than Bush. Posted by: Osama_Been_Forgotten on August 15, 2006 at 4:48 PM | PERMALINK"If Al Gore, the real winner of the 2000 election, would have been in the White House, it would not have happened." Absolutely! Al Qaeda would not have attacked their sympathizers. Exactly the reason why we should be electing Democrats, we will be safer. Posted by: Freedom Fighter on August 15, 2006 at 4:49 PM | PERMALINKFides, I don't agree. Without 9/11 there would have been no public support for a ground invasion, and no international support whatsoever. Posted by: Yancey Ward on August 15, 2006 at 4:50 PM | PERMALINKVery amusing, but without 9/11 or an attack on American soil, there would not have been any removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan by any administration. Posted by: Yancey Ward And this would have matter to anyone other than the Afghanis for what reason? Afghanistan has been what it is now to greater or lesser degrees for, what, three- four-hundred years.They make great rugs and, apparently, grow great poppies. Otherwise . . . Posted by: JeffII on August 15, 2006 at 4:56 PM | PERMALINKYancey, I think it would have been harder. But there would have been a pretext, whether it was the Madrid train bombings or some other attack. With the level of attention paid to Terrorism by the Bush administration before 9/11, something else would have gotten through - whatever it was, would have been used to it's fullest. Posted by: Fides on August 15, 2006 at 5:00 PM | PERMALINKJeffII, It wouldn't matter. It probably, as you point out, doesn't matter now, or in the long run. It is just amusing the one of the parallel scenarios supposes it happens anyway. Without 9/11, there is absolutely no reason to believe it would have. Posted by: Yancey Ward on August 15, 2006 at 5:03 PM | PERMALINKIf 9/11 had not happened, the Bush administration would have had to invent it. Instead of ignoring all the warnings they received throughout 2001 and deliberately allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen. Fides, Yes, if another terrorist attack perpetrated by Al Quaida had gotten through sometime between 01/01 and present, then yes, the Iraq war would likely have occurred, but the impetus would have had to be an attack on American soil that takes hundreds of lives, but it is exactly this type of attack we are supposing would not have occurred. Posted by: Yancey Ward on August 15, 2006 at 5:07 PM | PERMALINKWTF? Aug 11 - Sullivan is driving you crazy, making cheap shots at the Democrats. Today he writes a great piece? And Iraq's still a great idea? How is this a great example of recognizing the reality of the conservative opposition? Sullivan is still one of the great excuse makers for his deluded - and vicious - support for the current regime. Whatever - I guess wimpy liberals, just are wimpy liberals. Sigh. Posted by: Samuel Knight on August 15, 2006 at 5:09 PM | PERMALINKAnd now I'm really wondering what the heck you were thinking Kevin. What I read was yet another string of stupid cheap shots at all Sully's favorite targets, Michael Moore et al. And a completely implausible fantasy world where - WMDs are real!!! Where Democrats fail to stop dozens of coordinated terroirst attacks!!! Where the "War on Terrorism" and garbage conflators like "Islamo-facism" are still relevant - despite the fact that 9-11 supposedly didn't happen. I just don't get it. Kevin, you really, truly, thought that Sully's tripe was good? Posted by: Samuel Knight on August 15, 2006 at 5:17 PM | PERMALINKAnd now I'm really wondering what the heck you were thinking Kevin.
Boy, I hope you're right Keith G. Because the Aug 11 Casablanca routine - I'm shocked! shocked! that Andrew Sullivan doesn't make any sense - was more than a mite weird. And now this. But maybe his taste in "humor" is different than mine. Somehow thousands of people killed in dozens of cities didn't strike my funny bone. Please Kevin, come back from the Dark Side!! Posted by: Samuel Knight on August 15, 2006 at 5:49 PM | PERMALINKJust prior to the London terror arrests, the liberal Atlantic Monthly, in a monumental faux pas, published a piece wherein the well-known pundit opined that the US should declare the war on terror over and declare the US the winner. Denials on the part of leftists that 9/11 ever happened are old hat. Now lefties who call in to C-span actually give voice to their belief that the London plot was cooked up by Bush, Blair and Israel. I had become accustomed to the proclivity of leftist intellectuals to consider the US the axis of evil but now even the proletariat talks that way- trickle down paranoia. And a testimonial to the lack of quality of public education in the good old USA. Posted by: mh on August 15, 2006 at 5:51 PM | PERMALINKI think that a lot of people are missing the point of the Sullivan piece. Are there WMDs? Yes, but if you note carefully, they didn't come from Iraq; the UN proved that Iraq didn't have any. Was there a massive al Qaeda attack with a Democrat in charge? Yes, there was, but it came after a Democratic President had already started to attack Afghanistan to deal with the problem. Contra SP, we did not invade Iraq. Was there a massive terrorist attack anyway? Yes, and Sullivan does believe that not attacking Afghanistan was a problem, but he proceeds to give credit to Gore for finally being able to do so, even against a Republican controlled Congress (which is the real villian of the piece), and Bush is portrayed as doing absolutely nothing to safeguard the country. I really think what we are seeing here is Sullivan's admission that his initial reaction to blast the Democrats after 9/11 was wrong, and that he's sorry about it. Sure, it's be nicer if he would actually come out and say that, but I think that this meant as something of a mea culpa. Posted by: J. Michael Neal on August 15, 2006 at 5:53 PM | PERMALINKAl, what about those of us who never had a "pre-9/11" mentality? What about those of us who understand long before then that a large-scale terrorist attack was possible on American soil? What about those of us who understood already that bin Laden was a bigger threat than the Lewinsky BJ? The truth of the matter is that the only way that the world changed on 9/11 was that the real world outside of American borders caught up with America. All over the world (India, Israel, the UK, France, Spain, Peru, Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Phillipines, Mozambique, Thailand, Cambodia, Egypt, Nepal, the DRC, and Somolia just to name a few) terrorism is simply part of life that has to be dealt with. 9/11 just showed us how sheltered we had been from this reality. Our foreign policy for decades had simply been based on the false premise that we were safe in the US from terrorism and could do things like support the House of Saud without consequence. Those of us who understood this didn't need 9/11, as horrific as it was, to jolt us into reality. 9/11 just a wake-up call that a world existed outside American borders. Your little, probably suburban, pseudo-reality was shaken that day. You haven't stopped wetting your pants since then. That is no one's fault but your own. Posted by: Reality Man on August 15, 2006 at 5:55 PM | PERMALINKKeith G., From Sully Hmmm From Al-bot Did you know that if John Kerry is elected, hes gonna round up all yer guns and bibles? Reality Man wrote: ... what about those of us who never had a "pre-9/11" mentality? What about those of us who understand long before then that a large-scale terrorist attack was possible on American soil? Oh, you mean like all the outgoing members of the Clinton administration who warned their incoming successors in the Bush administration that terrorism, and specifically Al Qaeda, was the biggest threat facing the USA, and who were deliberately ignored by the Bush people? You mean like Richard Clarke, who tried in vain for months all throughout 2001 to get Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney and other principals of the Bush administration to take the threat of a major Al Qaeda strike on US soil seriously, and was ignored? You mean like the subordinate of Bush's Attorney General John Ashcroft who tried to warn him about the danger of Al Qaeda attacks in the USA and was told by Ashcroft that he didn't want to be briefed on terrorism any more? You mean like the CIA analyst who personally briefed Bush in the summer of 2001 about the CIA's assessment that a major Al Qaeda attack on US soil was imminent, and was told by Bush "OK, you've covered your ass, now get out of here"? You mean like the CIA analysts who wrote the August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US", which Bush also ignored? In a "parallel reality", the legitimately elected President of the United States, Al Gore, would have heeded all these warnings, put the relevant agencies of the federal government on high alert, met daily with the agency heads for status reports on what they'd been able to find -- exactly as was done when the Clinton administration had warnings about the "Millennium Plot" in 1999. And then, just as happened with the Millennium Plot, when FBI field agents began sending in reports about suspicious people learning to fly commercial airplanes, reports that actually said in so many words "this guy seems like someone who would fly a plane into the World Trade Center", instead of those reports being ignored as they were by the Bush administration, the Gore administration would have immediately recognized what they meant, and taken appropriate action, and the 9/11 plot would have been shut down. Posted by: SecularAnimist on August 15, 2006 at 6:20 PM | PERMALINKI have to agree with Yancey. Without 9/11 or something similarly horrific it would have been difficult if not impossible for a Bush administration to push through an invasion of Iraq -- at least, an invasion that involved ground troops and occupation. They wouldn't have been able to scare and panic the American populace into compliance the way they were able to with 9/11. Posted by: Stefan on August 15, 2006 at 6:36 PM | PERMALINK What if 9/11 never happened? Without 9/11 or something similarly horrific it would have been difficult if not impossible for a Bush administration to push through an invasion of Iraq -- at least, an invasion that involved ground troops and occupation. There are literally an infinite number of pretexes that the GWB admin could have drummed up or fully orchestrated to coax the nation to goto war with Iraq, and I am confident that in the absense of 9/11, they would have done so. Wasn't GWB speculating with Blair about sending a plane with false UN markings over Iraq to goad Saddam? Posted by: Disputo on August 15, 2006 at 6:43 PM | PERMALINKI have to agree with Yancey. Without 9/11 or something similarly horrific it would have been difficult if not impossible for a Bush administration to push through an invasion of Iraq -- at least, an invasion that involved ground troops and occupation. They wouldn't have been able to scare and panic the American populace into compliance the way they were able to with 9/11. Without a doubt. Cheney and Wolfowitz (is he in jail yet?) probably would have tried to talk up the threat, but they wouldn't have been able to get any traction for anything more than the continued enforcement of the No Fly Zones, even with the Rethugs in congress. Posted by: JeffII on August 15, 2006 at 6:46 PM | PERMALINKI just wonder what would cause more damage. The Real World, where 9/11 happened? Or the alternate Reality, where Gore thwarts 9/11 using "traditional police work, and simple awareness" - and then, through hard work and tough diplomacy with Pakistan and Afghanistan, gets them to hand over bin Laden (as the Taliban suggested on the eve of the invasion), causing all conservatives' heads to explode with the force of 1000 imaginary Saddam-Hussein-nukes. Posted by: Osama_Been_Forgotten on August 15, 2006 at 6:53 PM | PERMALINKodd, so in this alternate reality, Sullivan doesn't accuse the left of being a fifth column? Somehow, I doubt it. Posted by: Dan on August 15, 2006 at 6:59 PM | PERMALINKIf 9/11 hadn't happened, would there still have been anthrax letters? Posted by: Irony Man on August 15, 2006 at 6:59 PM | PERMALINKThis is the best one from the comment section of Josh Marshal's TPMCafe site by a reader named theCoach I think it goes like this. George W. Bush freed from the demands of the Presidency is able to pursue his passions. Really more of an energy man, than the oil-only man he is labeled, George comes up with the first workable cold fusion reactors rapidly improving the quality of life for everyone on the planet. George then goes to work on a pony machine. Everyone is wrong. 9/11 happened because of the US's unswerving support of Israel. Period. The end. The attacks in Madrid and London were a result of their support for the US's war in Iraq. As long as the US is perceived by Muslim countries to support Israel's illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, they will be targets for terror. Posted by: Michael Buchanan on August 15, 2006 at 7:01 PM | PERMALINKFor an engagingly vehement response to Sullivan's contribution, See August Pollak a.k.a. Xoverboard's musings , which begin If you've ever wondered what Andrew Sullivan thought would have happened if the 9/11 attacks never occured, here you go. Oh, and kill yourself.and continue in similarly unrestrained fashion. Posted by: Warren Terra on August 15, 2006 at 7:17 PM | PERMALINK Everyone is wrong. 9/11 happened because of the US's unswerving support of Israel. Period. The end. Students frequently have this same problem - not reading the question carefully enough, they end up answering a different question. The issue is not why the 9/11 attacks happened, though America's uniformly uncritical support for Israel surely figured into al Qaeda' motives. Rather, the question was imaging a world where the attacks had not happened. Posted by: JeffII on August 15, 2006 at 7:18 PM | PERMALINKYes fine. But why ask such a stupid question in the first place? Here's my stupid answer to a stupid question. If 9/11 had never happened, I wouldn't have had to hear the words nine and eleven about a bazillion times a day. The rest would probably be pretty much the same. Posted by: Michael Buchanan on August 15, 2006 at 7:24 PM | PERMALINKThe most recent foiled plot has resulted in a bunch of stupid crap, too. Should we suppose how the world would be different if they had succeeded? Posted by: Michael Buchanan on August 15, 2006 at 7:27 PM | PERMALINKDon't you remember? What people were consumed with then was the shark attacks on the Florida coast. And before that, it was mountain lion attacks in Florida. We'd simply have moved through the animal kingdom: the wolves in Yellowstone! rabid raccoons! snapping turtles! and (for old times' sake) Africanized honeybees! These would all have been blamed on "the Democrat Party" and its puppetmasters in the environmental lobby. If you weren't in favor of a military action against the lions and tigers and bears, you'd have been label "objectively pro-predator" by the likes of Andrew Sullivan. What if 9/11 never happened? There are literally an infinite number of pretexes that the GWB admin could have drummed up or fully orchestrated to coax the nation to goto war with Iraq, and I am confident that in the absense of 9/11, they would have done so. There are an infinite number of pretexts they could have thought up, yes. But, given their legendary impompetence, there probably weren't that many, if any, pretexts they could have successfully implemented. And, in the absence of the sense of national outrage, shock and horror that 9/11 caused, it would have been far more difficult for them to sell such a pretext. 9/11 was a gift that fell into their laps precisely because they didn't have to do anything -- in fact, their criminal incompetence worked to their advantage because it made the attack possible. Posted by: Stefan on August 15, 2006 at 7:57 PM | PERMALINKerr, make that mountain lion attacks in California. Posted by: keith on August 15, 2006 at 8:00 PM | PERMALINKA couple of things about Sullivan's piece: Without a cooperative Pakistan, not only could we not support troops in East Pakistan, we couldn't deploy or sustain anything like 300,000 troops in Afghanistan. Also, our containment strategy in Iraq could do nothing to help the marsh Arabs. The Kurds were protected by terrain, as well as our assistance. Unless we were willing to bomb the bejesus out of Saddam's army, the rest of Iraq could never break out of his grip so easily. Posted by: Trashhauler on August 15, 2006 at 8:10 PM | PERMALINKnot only could we not support troops in East Pakistan What does Bangladesh have to do with anything? have to agree with Yancey. Without 9/11 or something similarly horrific it would have been difficult if not impossible for a Bush administration to push through an invasion of Iraq -- at least, an invasion that involved ground troops and occupation. They wouldn't have been able to scare and panic the American populace into compliance the way they were able to with 9/11. Posted by: Stefan on August 15, 2006 at 6:36 PM We also know that the signatories to the Project for a New American Century felt that way about the prospects of selling the war. Posted by: Dismayed Liberal on August 15, 2006 at 8:24 PM | PERMALINKhave to agree with Yancey. Without 9/11 or something similarly horrific it would have been difficult if not impossible for a Bush administration to push through an invasion of Iraq -- at least, an invasion that involved ground troops and occupation. They wouldn't have been able to scare and panic the American populace into compliance the way they were able to with 9/11. Posted by: Stefan on August 15, 2006 at 6:36 PM We also know that the signatories to the Project for a New American Century felt that way about the prospects of selling the war. Posted by: Dismayed Liberal on August 15, 2006 at 8:25 PM | PERMALINKLordy! Against my better judgement, I clicked thru to Mr Breezy, Bloggy, Selfdeprecation. I think Kevin must have a man-crush on Sully. Sure Sully is ugly, but we've never seen Kevin, have we? Maybe Kevin doesn't look like Harrison Ford after all. And then there's the cat thing. Posted by: jussumbody on August 15, 2006 at 8:53 PM | PERMALINK"'not only could we not support troops in East Pakistan' What does Bangladesh have to do with anything?" You need a new world atlas, disputo. :) Posted by: Trashhauler on August 15, 2006 at 11:51 PM | PERMALINKI suppose it might have made a difference how 9/11 didn't happen. If it hadn't happened because some cop overheard one of the hijackers in a bar and alerted authorities al Qaeda would have retained the infrastructure it had built up during the Clinton administration and tried again. Then again, if Clinton had had bin Laden killed after the African bombings in 1998 or the Cole in 2000 the organization might have dissolved into factional infighting. And Democrats might have shed their image as people who don't take America's security seriously. Posted by: Zathras on August 16, 2006 at 1:21 AM | PERMALINK
chickengeorge bush would have sold the pig farm in '04 and moved backed to Connecticut. Posted by: merlallen on August 16, 2006 at 7:50 AM | PERMALINKAll of the parallel universe comments I've read have only talked about 9/11 and foreign policy. I keep thinking about the HUGE surplus of money our government would have. Without all the tax cuts, individual states wouldn't be bankrupt (or close to it). That would mean more money to pay better wages, more scholarships, lower tuition, better infrastructure, etc., etc. Corporations would have been paying more taxes and had more regulations to protect the environment. New jobs would have been created in the alternative fuel/solar heating fields. Jobs that wouldn't be outsourced. The minimum wage would have been raised. Creating a universal heath care system which mimics what Congress has would have been implemented. Medicare would be able to find the lowest cost drugs, etc. We would have felt an immense National Pride over how well we handled the Katrina flooding. We would be seen as saints overseas for humanitarian aid and cooperation with other countries to help erradicate terrorist threats. Clinton may have been appointed as Secretary of State or the Ambassador of the UN. We would enjoy INTELLIGENT debates about EVERYTHING because intelligent people would have positions of power. And, of course, we would have our 'lock box' and a healthier environment. And, I've only scratched the surface. Posted by: Mr. Pink on August 16, 2006 at 9:17 AM | PERMALINKGosh, I hate to say this but, MH was absolutely right. The Atlantic Monthly's piece was unbelievably stupid - a great intellectual piece on how to proceed utterly ruined because it rested on an idiotic premise. We can't just declare victory on the war on terror for whole host of reasons. I'm about to cancel my Atlantic subscription, because when they moved to DC they drank the DC stupid Koolaid. And Michael Neal, I don't think we missed the point of Sully's "piece". Yes, he shifted where the WMDs were - but they were still there. Yes, he sorta of made Gore look good, but still managed to let him have thousands of people die on his watch. And, Sully has simply never admitted to a string of intellectual idiocies, from the Bell Curve, to savaging Gore for years, to the Iraq War. He's a dishonest, faux intellectual shill and I remain befuddled why the heck Kevin wastes his attention on him. Posted by: Samuel Knight on August 16, 2006 at 9:28 AM | PERMALINKif Clinton had had bin Laden killed after the African bombings in 1998 or the Cole in 2000 the organization might have dissolved into factional infighting. And Democrats might have shed their image as people who don't take America's security seriously. That image of the Democrats wasn't bestowed on them by their actions or inactions, it was bestowed on them by Republicans and their complicit (witting or otherwise) friends in the media. The Repubs certainly have no interest in making that image go away, and so even if Bin Laden had been killed, they'd have kept up the whole "wag the dog" talk, regardless of actual outcomes. The bin Laden killing would have been depicted by the Repubs as just small potatoes and token effort in the greater scheme of things. Posted by: Irony Man on August 16, 2006 at 9:53 AM | PERMALINKI submit that there's a better question that should have been asked: "What if Al Gore had won in 2000 and 9/11 happened?" The odds are that 9/11 would have occurred regardless of who was in the White House; however, the domestic, political response would have been radically different. First, the right-wing echo chamber would have launched the attack machine to tar the Gore administration for failing to prevent the attack. There would have been no calls for unity or comity ... no 9/11 commission as it was constituted ... no bipartisan call to identify legislative gaps. Rather, there would have been rampant cries for impeachment from the right. Every decision made since Gore assumed office would have been second-guessed, including the decision to respond militarily against Afghanistan, which Gore would have made. The right-wing would have claimed that Gore should have attacked Iraq, using all of the now-discredited claims about Iraq's WMD capabilities and relationship to Al Qaeda. The question is whether Gore would have been forced by this political barrage to attack Iraq with the results we currently see and been decimated in the 2004 election or instead resisted and been decimated in the 2004 election by the right-wing's propaganda machine that would have painted him a "typical, lefty coward." Another interesting thought-piece would be what would the right-wing have done if Kerry had been elected in 2004 and the world looked like it does today (mired in Iraq, impotent in the Israeli-Hezbollah fiasco, gas prices through the roof, etc.). How long would it have taken for the right-wing to have destroyed him politically? Maybe the lesson for the left is to practice a little less peace, love, and understanding with our friends across the aisle. Posted by: timmy on August 16, 2006 at 10:24 AM | PERMALINKtimmy wrote: The odds are that 9/11 would have occurred regardless of who was in the White House ... I very strongly disagree. The well-documented record of the spring and summer of 2001 shows that the Bush administration was warned, urgently, multiple times, by multiple sources, that a major Al Qaeda attack inside the US, involving hijacked airplanes, was imminent. The Bush administration ignored all the warnings and did NOTHING. Whether this was through almost unimaginably grotesque negligence and stupidity, or whether they deliberately chose to allow the attack (the scale of which they may have underestimated) to occur so they could use it to political advantage, primarily to justify their long-planned war against Iraq, cannot be proved at this point. However, any normal administration would have heeded the warnings, and put airline security, the FBI and other relevanat agencies on high alert -- exactly as the Clinton administration did in 1999 when they were alerted to the planned "Millennium" terrorist attacks -- and the 9/11 attacks almost certainly would have been thwarted. We will never know whether Al Gore's team would have stopped 9-11. But we do know that would have tried. Bush's team didn't even try. And it's pretty pathetic that the Democrats were so utterly lame as that they never dared to maek that a political issue. Because you know that if the rolls had been reversed, it sure would have been. As far as all those myths Clinton's failures to take out" Al Queda, etc. Judging by the maxim, "Write what you know," Andrew Sullivan is far more in contact with personal fantasy than reality. Hi, very interesting site. I really like it. 
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