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Alternate History General Discussion

I mean, there's a substantial difference between the idea that sooner or late the United States was going to go to war with a regime it utterly loathed and knew from experience it could smash into paste and the idea that the 2003 Iraq War was inevitably going to happen.
Yeah I think the chances of no Iraq War by 2021 are basically nil and by 2011 are pretty low. That doesn't mean the OTL one.
 
Firing Cruise Missiles and launching some F-117 strikes isn't the same thing as invading. Much less invading when we're already involved in another war.

I buy the idea that the Afghanistan War was almost certain to happen once the planes hit the towers. Set aside whether they were going to happen if Gore was in the Oval Office. The country was reeling, politicians as much as anyone else, and the pressure for dramatic military action beyond a few cruise missile strikes was intense. And, of course, the Taliban refused to hand over Osama and I don't think that would change regardless of who was President.

Iraq? I simply don't believe that without the neoconservative cadre of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al that any administration would have as much internal pressure to put troops in Mesopotamia. It was not a war driven from Langley or the Pentagon.

I should note that even though I support the "probably inevitable no matter what" side of the Iraq War debate for actual history, I would, if anything, encourage an AH story where the divergence causes it to be butterflied away. Obviously, if it's something like "And Gore brings about world peace and creates an eco-utopia in less than four years", I'd gladly criticize it for being wish fulfillment. But alternate history should mean changed history.

The points covered in these posts all fall within the broad outline of what I've come to picture for a Gore Presidency, at least early on: 9/11 still happens, some sort of subsequent military action in Afghanistan (though regime change might well be iffier) and no 2003 Iraq invasion but possibly some other event(s) leading to Saddam's fall before OTL's Arab Spring. Far from a utopia, obviously, but interesting to speculate on regarding its (better) differences from OTL, politically/socially/economic/militarily and yes, environmentally; anybody want to pitch in further on such?

Going back to my original question, how would things have had to change (in Florida or on a larger scale) for Gore to be the winner?

I came across an "Ehhh" timeline a while back that touched on this (link's dead, but the title's "Worst Case Scenario", by J.T. Tate,), with the opening section "One Justice Missing" starting from the POD that Rehnquist falls and breaks a hip/gets a concussion in January of 2000, and resigns, whereupon Clinton picks Breyer to be Chief Justice and Florida Justice Barbara Pariente for the empty SC seat. As a result, the SC declines to intervene in December, Gore's team disqualifies enough Bush votes, and Bush concedes. It's after the TL's 9/11 that things get bizarre, IMO: Gore gets the Taliban to give up bin Laden in exchange for recognition, and bin Laden is caught in October 2001 and goes to the Hague; while the U.S. is (mostly) celebrating over this, Taliban-backed radicals overthrow Musharraf and Muhammad Omar ends up leading a merged Afghanistan-Pakistan; other radicals take over in Saudi Arabia and impose oil embargos on all Western nations; India and Pakistan go nuclear on each other; a whole lot of other global instability breaks out; and a second U.S. civil war happens in 2003 after hotly-disputed Congressional elections and impeachment attempts against Gore and VP Hillary Clinton (picked for the post after Lieberman dies in a plane crash during the campaign). Very...out there, as I see it, so I'm curious about more realistic takes, building on the "different Florida events" idea.
 
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The points covered in these posts all fall within the broad outline of what I've come to picture for a Gore Presidency, at least early on: 9/11 still happens, some sort of subsequent military action in Afghanistan (though regime change might well be iffier) and no 2003 Iraq invasion but possibly some other event(s) leading to Saddam's fall before OTL's Arab Spring.
From a narrative perspective I might go for 9/11 not happening, but Iraq breaks into a civil war sometime later than '04 and the US intervenes with troops. But that's more because I think a Gore presidency with an Iraq War but no Afghan War would be an interesting subversion of expectations.
 
Also, note the 2000 Democratic platform said "In Iraq, we are committed to working with our international partners to keep Saddam Hussein boxed in, and we will work to see him out of power. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have stood up to Saddam Hussein time and time again. As President, Al Gore will not hesitate to use America's military might against Iraq when and where it is necessary."

I think there'd be a major elephant in the room - Gore was Clinton's VP. He'd been a major part (at least in theory) of the administration. There would be a strong suggestion that Gore should have known about OBL and certainly should have done something about him, which would probably make him a LOT more hawkish on both Afghanistan (on the grounds Clinton did nothing effective about it) and Iraq (on the grounds Clinton leaving Saddam in power encouraged OBL). Not a particularly fair observation, but the Republicans would be sure to make use of it.

Chris
 
I think there'd be a major elephant in the room - Gore was Clinton's VP. He'd been a major part (at least in theory) of the administration. There would be a strong suggestion that Gore should have known about OBL and certainly should have done something about him, which would probably make him a LOT more hawkish on both Afghanistan (on the grounds Clinton did nothing effective about it) and Iraq (on the grounds Clinton leaving Saddam in power encouraged OBL). Not a particularly fair observation, but the Republicans would be sure to make use of it.

Chris
That's an interesting point, I don't recall that being brought up in these discussions before.
 
From a narrative perspective I might go for 9/11 not happening, but Iraq breaks into a civil war sometime later than '04 and the US intervenes with troops. But that's more because I think a Gore presidency with an Iraq War but no Afghan War would be an interesting subversion of expectations.

It actually makes sense to have 9/11 be butterflied (for whatever reason), while having an Iraqi-sponsored terror group (since Saddam did fund them) successfully cause a massive casualty incident in the US. Another "Gore was Clinton's VP" point that Frank Harvey argues (and like all interpretations, this is subjective) is that the increasingly believing his own propaganda Saddam would think that because Clinton didn't do anything more than airstrikes, Gore wouldn't do anything more than airstrikes either.

Given 9/11 is a full year away from any POD at absolute minimum, and what we know about the Bush administration's mishandling of the intelligence leading up to it, there's pretty ample scope for it being butterflied tbh. I don't really understand why it's this totally fixed event with just about everybody in AH.

There was an American football TL "The Dawg Pound Dynasty" that partially butterflied 9/11 in a kind of tasteless "for want of a nail" way in that one of the planes had football players who did what football players too often do on (causing a big, embarrassing incident through lack of self control, in this case over whether they could sit in first class or not), and thus was unable to take off in time. Another one collided in midair with another plane, and only the Pentagon one got through.
 
Given 9/11 is a full year away from any POD at absolute minimum, and what we know about the Bush administration's mishandling of the intelligence leading up to it, there's pretty ample scope for it being butterflied tbh. I don't really understand why it's this totally fixed event with just about everybody in AH.

There is, IIRC, considerable evidence the plan was being put together for years - the plans were laid, the defences were tested, the pilots were trained, (etc, etc). It may not come out the same way, but OBL will probably still try it barring a major change ordered by the Gore Administration.
 
It actually makes sense to have 9/11 be butterflied (for whatever reason), while having an Iraqi-sponsored terror group (since Saddam did fund them) successfully cause a massive casualty incident in the US. Another "Gore was Clinton's VP" point that Frank Harvey argues (and like all interpretations, this is subjective) is that the increasingly believing his own propaganda Saddam would think that because Clinton didn't do anything more than airstrikes, Gore wouldn't do anything more than airstrikes either.

I don't know who Frank Harvey is (I assume he's an academic) but he's arguing on post-1900 level on this one. Someone on the other page suggested he was a Marxist but this to me feels like a neo-con inhaling their own fumes.

Clinton launched a serious bombing campaign for non-compliance with the inspection regime, which I'd say was a fairly severe response given what was at stake. And was seen as a fairly strong response at the time. There's a world away from that response to 'Oh, he'd only launch a few airstrikes for a 9/11'. He also flattened the Iraqi intelligence services HQ for an attempt on the life of George H. W. Bush while he was in Kuwait in 1993.

Saddam also had first-hand experience of seriously underestimating a US response in that little thing called the Gulf War. So there's three prior incidents where Saddam had full prior experience of what the level of US response would be, one of which at least was an underestimation. As other posters have pointed out the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998 (Passed under Clinton) made it official legal policy of the United States that it should seek the overthrow of Saddam. In short he would have been totally aware of how delicately-poised his situation was by 2000. The idea he would have seriously thought he could get away with a 9/11 analogue with just a few airstrikes is frankly very glib and is just 'Saddam was a madman'-level stuff.

I think practically all governments in the Middle East support and/or have supported terror groups to some degree btw. Saddam certainly gave Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas and some very unpleasant people a haven over the years, but going from that to actually instigating a 9/11 analogue on American soil is an enormous jump.
 
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Harvey is (at least not openly) neither a Marxist nor a super-neocon. The thrust of his Explaining The Iraq War is more...

  1. Gore and his circle were more hawkish at the time than they claimed later.
  2. Sadam was not deterred by his 1991 defeat the way a totally rational actor would be.
He's really aimed at countering what he considered a self serving "if it was only us and not those evil neocons" narrative that emerged later.

My opinions about the inevitably of the war apply Harvey's thinking but go farther (and yes, controversially so). My implication that Saddam would have been around a mega attack probably went too far and was more for a narrative. That said, I will say that an Iraq War is more likely post 1991 than an Afghan one, and that post-1991 Iraq was a ticking time bomb no matter what.
 
Gore was a hawk, he was well-known as such under Clinton (He was also that other type of hawk, a deficit hawk, and in the 1990s was in some respects politically to the right of Clinton) but as I've said before on this board, the fact that as a hawk Gore ended up opposing Iraq says more about how far-out Iraq was as a foreign policy adventure than it does about Gore.

'The other side would have made exactly the same fuck-up we did' is itself self-serving btw, and has consequently been popular with supporters of the Iraq War for a very long time. As I said on the last page, Gore opposed it at the time and the guy who would have been his national security advisor opposed it at the time, and lots of other Democratic FP policymakers opposed it at the time, and it's really very hard to get past that. It's also totally legitimate to say that the levels of obsession in Republican foreign policy/national security circles with ousting Saddam weren't matched by their Democratic counterparts. They were literally talking about going after Iraq while the Pentagon and ground zero were still smoking.
 
The big problem with the Iraq War, from the POV of the UK, US, Australia, Spain et al, is surely less that it happened at all but that it happened on flimsy reasons (though the Chilcott Inquiry shows Blair genuinely believed there were WMDs and AFAIK this is true of Bush & Co too) rather than Saddam doing something.
 
Here's a big sports equivalent of Rice and Salt: If soccer/football was never invented (and if no similar "kick a ball around" sport became similarly popular), how would the world of sports look? Would there be a similarly large international game?

(Even in the US, soccer is a ubiquitous youth sport and fans at least know about the big English/European teams).
 
I don't think there would be an equivalent international game, kick-the-ball-around is a game where all you need is a ball and some other players - anyone can play it, everyone knows how it goes, any random kid can imagine they can be a professional player, a poorer country/team can in theory* play the richer one at it and win because it's all kicking a ball. The more complicated you get, the more barriers you get thrown up. Cricket's the only massive international sport close to football's level I can think of that isn't kick-a-ball and it can't crack the territory where baseball is dug in**, while America has steadily seen soccer come in*** despite American football remain a cultural power and I assume this is partly down to the former being easier & cheaper to do.

* And that theory's where the hope and dreams that drive fans come from

** IIRC both sports used to be played but baseball won

*** Which makes the King Of The Hill episode laughing "ha ha soccer's a wimpy sport where Everyone's A Winner and the Texans don't like it" and the Simpsons one where all the Americans go "this is boring nothing is happening" very funny, they lost the long game
 
Agree with Charles on the low barrier being key to football's success.

But I think he underestimates Basketball which is the second most widespread ball sport. It's comfortably the second sport of huge areas of the world despite the grip of football and would do better in a world without it.

Playing football is easier, you can play on either grass or concrete and a hoop is specialist kit but it's not massively easier as the commonness of street basketball proves.
 
Oh bugger, I forgot about basketball

Also of note is that basketball was specifically designed to be an indoor sport to play in the winter, so there'd be a niche even with football (whatever kind).

The other major worldwide indoor sport, and the only professionally viable in the US until WWII was boxing, which is also intuitive (punch the guy. You can't kick) but had a lot of rightful baggage in it from the get go.
 
If I had a nickel for every time a well-respected TL in Before 1900 in The Other Place had Florida becoming a British colony and semi-accidentally drifting into abolitionism, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Maybe the British keep it after the Revolution and settle the former slaves - the ones who took service with the British - on the land. The black population becomes much bigger and it is suddenly harder to keep the local slaves in bondage ...

Chris
 
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