Imagining a post-Sept. 11 world with Gore as president
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By Thomas Schaller*
The Examiner
Oct 13, 2006 4:00 AM
examiner.com
WASHINGTON - John Lennon would have turned 66 this week. So perhaps it’s worth pausing to “imagine” a world in which the Palm Beach butterfly ballot didn’t exist and Al Gore and a cabinet of Democrats were in office today, five years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Imagine that National Security Adviser Jamie Rubin, just a few months before the attacks, had ignored “system blinking red” warnings and dismissed as mere “historical analysis” a memo stating not merely the intent but the method and possible targets by which al-Qaida might attack. Imagine that the day before the attacks, President Gore asked Congress to cut $600 million from the counter-terrorism budget.
Imagine that within hours of the hijackings and before so much as a cursory investigation into who masterminded them, Secretary of Defense Wesley Clark suggested that the United States bomb targets in Iraq. Imagine that Gore gave Osama bin Laden, the man we eventually determined to be behind the attacks, several weeks of lead time before sending too few troops into Afghanistan to find him.
Imagine that Gore used thundering speeches in 2002 to shift the nation’s focus from Afghanistan to the supposed gathering danger of Iraq without so much as reading — nor even asking for —a national intelligence estimate of the state of Iraq’s weaponry. Imagine that when Gore finally sat down, on Dec. 22, for a briefing from CIA Director George Tenet, he grumbled that the war “couldn’t be sold to Joe Public” based on the accumulated intelligence.
Imagine that, three weeks later, Gore gave Secretary Clark the green light to start amassing troops in the Persian Gulf anyway.
Imagine that Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke regaled the United Nations and the American public a month later with wild assertions based on weak (and, in one case, forged) evidence about the progress of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. Imagine that we then invaded Iraq, despite this manufactured case for war.
Imagine Gore landing in a jet on an aircraft carrier that was a mere helicopter’s ride from the San Diego coastline so he could give a televised speech in front a “Mission Accomplished” banner. Imagine that, when criticized for grandstanding in front of the White House-approved banner, Gore’s team blamed Navy personnel for placing it there.
Imagine that Clark and his team never bothered to draw up a post-war Iraq policy that would enable our “coalition” — comprised 90 percent of American troops and treasury IOU’s — to have the resources sufficient to secure Iraq’s borders, protect its pipelines and other infrastructure, establish civilian order, and plan for the country’s political or economic transitions. Imagine Clark later explaining that the lack of proper body and vehicle armor for our troops, who were (and still are) being killed daily by improvised explosive devices, is a problem of “physics.”
Imagine Gore refusing to fire Clark, despite the secretary’s repeated failures and blame-shifting.
Fast forward to 2006, and imagine that a re-elected Gore — if you can even imagine that — decides to disband the unit charged with capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, who still remains at-large five long years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Imagine Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (rather than Republican Bill Frist) saying we ought to give up the forgotten Afghanistan war as unwinnable.
Imagine that today, more American troops and contractors had already been killed in Iraq than were murdered on Sept. 11, 2001.
If all this seems beyond imagination, now try imagining this: Folks like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh championing Gore as a bold leader, while chastising anyone who might challenge the president’s judgment as an unpatriotic cut-and-runner.
Rest in peace, Mr. Lennon.
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*Thomas F. Schaller is associate political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South.” |
