Replies

Fantastic. Thanks for posting a Golden Oldie tonight! On another thread, I posted the following when someone argued that re-electing Bush 41 in 1992 might not have changed the path which brought us 9/11

>>>But the question of intrigue is would the approach to protecting against terrorism been any different up to and until the event of Sept. 11, 2001 with another President in place? My opinion is I doubt it would have changed drastically..... I think it took the event to shake the changes that are being implemented.<<<

I wish to disagree slightly with this assessment. I think the seminal event that told al Q'aeda that they could get away with hitting the US hard and not being attacked back was the Blackhawk Down embarrassment in Mogadishu. Now, if Bush were President, two things would have been true:

1)The soldiers would have gotten more back up.
2)Even if such an embarrassment occured, we would not have pulled out of Somalia with our tails between our legs.

The feeling amongst Bin Laden and others was that the US was soft and could be hit hard. They wouldn't respond in a way that would end the terror networks for good. That perception of our country would have been different had we fought harder in Somalia after the Mogadishu incident. I think George H.W. Bush would have been more aggressive in this manner than Clinton was which could have changed the whole atmosphere in the world of the terrorists.

Like you write, though, it is just speculation.