The 2012 "Election" thread

[JackRiddler]

Shakespeare.

[...]

Congratulations on picking apart comments from an anonymous forum post.

[...]

Shakespeare

Just cutting it down to the content, at least once decoded.

though I never claimed I did.

Of course you did. You made direct statements about what you see as reality.

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[Iamwhomiam]

While it's been an interesting interchange, it's irrelevant. Honestly. Just like talking about what you'd do if you had won Powerball when you hadn't.

Jack didn't call you smug, Belligerent one. Please don't be upset because he responded in an unexpected manner, after all, you asked, didn't you?

We all have limited knowledge based upon mis or disinformation when we vote. And we have our own life experience about how the politics of each party's leadership has affected us. And our own moral code.

[Belligerent Savant]

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though I never claimed I did.

Of course you did. You made direct statements about what you see as reality.

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I prefaced almost all of my prior comments as opinions. I don't see them as a firm "reality" so much as a plausible reality that seems increasingly likely in light of events which have transpired over the past 12-15 yrs or so. The details are sure to be off/inaccurate, but the gist of it is there.

Perhaps in writing I may come off as an absolutist, but I'm far from it. Too much remains unknown to us.

That said, the one thing I can say with certainty is that our next President has already been chosen. The squirrel that hangs out in my yard told me so.

[Belligerent Savant]

Jack didn't call you smug, Belligerent one. Please don't be upset because he responded in an unexpected manner, after all, you asked, didn't you?

Not upset at all -- flattered, actually. At least as flattered as one can be by words on a screen typed by a fellow human reading the same message board.

We all have limited knowledge based upon mis or disinformation when we vote. And we have our own life experience about how the politics of each party's leadership has affected us. And our own moral code.

Indeed, IAWIA.

[compared2what?]

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No person and no class is entirely invisible. Who is this higher level? Who are the members, where and how do they execute decisions? What makes them "higher" rather than "one of various groups and factions within an extreme concentration of power, wealth and prestige"?

--- F'd if I know. I'm merely theorizing;

Asserting a covert, unnamed, invisible and formless power that would have had as much control over Gore as it did Bush isn't theorizing. A theory has some basis in reason or fact. So what are you basing that on? How would Iraq have gone down under Gore, as you figure it?

[Belligerent Savant]

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No person and no class is entirely invisible. Who is this higher level? Who are the members, where and how do they execute decisions? What makes them "higher" rather than "one of various groups and factions within an extreme concentration of power, wealth and prestige"?

--- F'd if I know. I'm merely theorizing;

Asserting a covert, unnamed, invisible and formless power that would have had as much control over Gore as it did Bush isn't theorizing. A theory has some basis in reason or fact. So what are you basing that on? How would Iraq have gone down under Gore, as you figure it?

I'm basing it on a theory that there aren't 2 separate power factions controlling each party, but various powerful interests that may be at odds at times but operate in concert to achieve certain ends; that if Gore had been elected there may have been some deviation as to how events would have transpired but the end goal[s] would not have been nearly as dissimilar as some may believe.

Out of curiosity, given your query I decided to perform the burdensome task of a quick google search on this topic and came across a few [primarily mainstream] pieces referencing this very subject, without even needing to go down the deep rabbit hole of shadowy figures behind curtains. Disseminate as you deem fit; I was not aware of these pieces until just moments ago, so I do not necessarily subscribe to their overall content.

http://theglitteringeye.com/?p=3343

There’s a host of reasons I believe that President Gore would have been just as likely to invade Iraq as President Bush. They include the idea of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction was the prevailing wisdom on both sides of the aisle prior to 9/11 and prior to the Bush presidency and that the idea of a Saddam Hussein armed with weapons of mass destruction became intolerable after 9/11; that any president capable of being elected would have wanted to hold on to the job and that would have required some sort of action beyond removing the Taliban from Afghanistan (or even finding Osama Bin Laden; that the troops we had stationed in Saudi Arabia were there to contain Saddam Hussein and represented a form of exposure that was seen as too great subsequent to 9/11; and any number of other reasons.

The argument against it, I think, is that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld functioned as inside salesmen on the idea of invading Iraq and a Gore Administration wouldn’t have had analogues.

Note, by the way, that I’m not saying that either Republicans or Democrats have acted as they have for the last seven years purely out of political considerations. I don’t believe that, either. But I do believe that conviction in the benignity of your fellow partisans has a way of coloring one’s interpretation of the facts.

But I’m interested in your opinions and your arguments. What do you think?

I don’t interpret Al Gore’s September 2002 speech as a rejection of the idea of invading Iraq but as a rejection of an invasion of Iraq by the Bush Administration. I think he actually makes a fairly compelling case for why the Gore Admininstration would have invaded Iraq (he just thinks they’d have done a better job).

Here's the Sept 2002 speech referenced above:
http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/gore/gore092302sp.html

And here's another article about Gore, had he been elected --
http://www.salon.com/2011/08/30/gore_president_iraq/

The story of how Bush bought into this is well-known. His instinct after 9/11 was to think big and aggressively, and his inner circle was littered with neocons and other hawks who’d been waiting for just the right opening to push for an invasion of Iraq. This, supposedly, would not have been the case in a Gore White House.

But look a little closer and you’ll realize that President Gore would have been hearing the same pleas. His own vice president would have been Joe Lieberman, perhaps the most hawkish Democrat in Washington on Middle East issues. Marty Peretz, his old friend and confidante, would have had Gore’s ear and filled it with arguments for going into Iraq. Loud, influential, non-conservative media voices — like Tom Friedman and Peter Beinart — would have amplified these calls on the outside. Republicans would have been screaming for an invasion, and the public would have been on their side. Clinton could barely hold them all back in the ‘90s; after 9/11, would Gore have stood a chance?

Here it’s worth remembering Gore’s own history. In the 1980s, he made his name as a senator and presidential candidate by positioning himself as one of his party’s foremost hawks. One of the reasons, in fact, that Clinton put him on the Democratic ticket in 1992 was Gore’s vote for the Gulf War, which most Democrats had opposed. You could argue that Gore was a changed man by 2001 and 2002, and that he saw the world in a fundamentally different way, and maybe that’s true.

But it should be noted that when he announced his opposition to Bush’s war push in the fall of ’02, Gore endorsed the basic goal of removing Hussein and securing his (supposed) WMD stockpiles. What he objected to was more the go-it-alone nature of Bush’s approach. In other words, you could also argue that Gore, still stung by the 2000 election outcome, may have been motivated in some way by his desire to stage a big, principled fight with Bush — and that a different result in ’00 might have produced a different, more hawkish response from Gore, one that would have led to … an invasion of Iraq.

Or we can give Gore the benefit of the doubt and say that he would have delivered the same speech opposing a war with Iraq even if he had been president — and that he would have resisted overwhelming pressure from Republicans, the media, the general public, and even some members of his administration. Would the country’s war fever have eventually died down until Americans gratefully concluded that Gore had been right all along? Sure, it’s possible. But it seems more likely that the same taunts that haunted Bush throughout the ’90s — “He should have finished the job!” — would have then dogged Gore, and that the political consequences would have been profound. Maybe Gore would have pushed through some new type of sanctions, or a few more rounds of weapons inspections. Hussein would have just thumbed his nose at all of this, and every time he did, the chorus in America would have grown louder: Why is President Gore letting this tyrant push us around — especially when it could lead to another 9/11?!

If the 1991 Gulf War is what shook America’s Vietnam syndrome, then the occupation of Iraq is what shook the hubris that followed the Gulf War — and made Gore and Clinton and George H.W. Bush look prophetic. But without the Iraq war, Gore’s wisdom probably would have gone unappreciated for years to come. If anything, it would have been a serious political liability — the sort of thing that his Republican opponent in 2004 (John McCain? Bush again, anointed by a GOP still furious over the “stolen” election of 2000?) would have been well-positioned to exploit.

Obviously, it’s impossible to know what would have happened if Gore had been president on 9/11. But here’s guessing that, one way or another, America would have gotten the invasion of Iraq that it had been itching for since 1991.

Of course it's all speculations, based on varying interpretations of the inner-workings of our power structures.

[compared2what?]

I'm basing it on a theory that there aren't 2 separate power factions controlling each party, but various powerful interests that may be at odds at times but operate in concert to achieve certain ends; that if Gore had been elected there may have been some deviation as to how events would have transpired but the end goal[s] would not have been nearly as dissimilar as some may believe.

I understand that's the theory on which your theory is based. My question was: What is the basis for it?

WRT the Gore stuff -- Maybe. I think the weapons of mass destruction argument is pretty weak, though. There wasn't any consensus about what they had. Far the fuck from it. The other stuff basically boils down to whether Lieberman would have had that kind of clout or not, imo. Peretz, Beinart and Friedman are apparatchiks when they're at the height of their powers on a good day.

Plus, hello, Halliburton.

But it's endlessly debatable. So never mind, except for the part where I thank you for posing the interesting question. Thanks!

[JackRiddler]

Gore did vote for the authorization to use military force in Iraq in 1990, along with a handful of other Democrats. I find it very hard to believe he would have led the same charge to invade Iraq in 2003, had he first presided over 9/11 (which again, I doubt would have gone ahead without the Bush regime in charge and hewing to omerta at all the key positions). 9/11 would not have been treated as a big bonus and enabler for the president, like it was for Bush. The corporate media and right wing would have seen to that. In the real history, half the Democrats in the Senate voted for the Iraq war resolution of 2003, but the lead-up for years and the initiative at the time was all neo-con and Bush mob. Clinton didn't pull the trigger on it. Gore as president would have continued the sanctions and periodic bombings, doubtless. The other factor is, it was always obvious what a disaster would come of such an invasion, and that the imagined gains in American influence would sooner or later be neutralized. It took some true believers (and Halliburton enrichers) to think otherwise.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Gore did vote for the authorization to use military force in Iraq in 1990, along with a handful of other Democrats. I find it very hard to believe he would have led the same charge to invade Iraq in 2003, had he first presided over 9/11 (which again, I doubt would have gone ahead without the Bush regime in charge and hewing to omerta at all the key positions). 9/11 would not have been treated as a big bonus and enabler for the president, like it was for Bush. The corporate media and right wing would have seen to that. In the real history, half the Democrats in the Senate voted for the Iraq war resolution of 2003, but the lead-up for years and the initiative at the time was all neo-con and Bush mob. Clinton didn't pull the trigger on it. Gore as president would have continued the sanctions and periodic bombings, doubtless. The other factor is, it was always obvious what a disaster would come of such an invasion, and that the imagined gains in American influence would sooner or later be neutralized. It took some true believers (and Halliburton enrichers) to think otherwise.

[Belligerent Savant]

I understand that's the theory on which your theory is based. My question was: What is the basis for it?

It's a concept ensnared within a premise surrounded by a theory of mine, clearly non-scientific, but based on observations and armchair analysis over the past 15 or so years. If we are to assume there are indeed select groups with vast influence and power [and even overtly we have witnessed steady concentration of power/knowledge control dispersed among fewer hands], using 9/11 as an example, I'd think such a world-changing event would require those select few to operate in concert in order to pull it off effectively . Cooperation among various factions -- both overt and covert -- was required to accomplish such a feat, and clearly the planning/carrying out of post-9/11 policies/agendas would have been difficult to push through if not said factions cooperated in some fashion or another.

At any rate, I'm belaboring the topic, and the ambiguity only continues... time to cut myself off

But it's endlessly debatable. So never mind, except for the part where I thank you for posing the interesting question. Thanks!

...endless indeed. Glad I managed to inspire at least some measure of rumination...

JackRiddler:Gore did vote for the authorization to use military force in Iraq in 1990, along with a handful of other Democrats. I find it very hard to believe he would have led the same charge to invade Iraq in 2003, had he first presided over 9/11 (which again, I doubt would have gone ahead without the Bush regime in charge and hewing to omerta at all the key positions). 9/11 would not have been treated as a big bonus and enabler for the president, like it was for Bush. The corporate media and right wing would have seen to that. In the real history, half the Democrats in the Senate voted for the Iraq war resolution of 2003, but the lead-up for years and the initiative at the time was all neo-con and Bush mob. Clinton didn't pull the trigger on it. Gore as president would have continued the sanctions and periodic bombings, doubtless. The other factor is, it was always obvious what a disaster would come of such an invasion, and that the imagined gains in American influence would sooner or later be neutralized. It took some true believers (and Halliburton enrichers) to think otherwise.

All valid points, Jack. Certainly plausible.
Though I always saw Gore as more than a bit malleable, and we can never discount the brazen opportunism of one Joe Lieberman, who would certainly have passed along whatever whispers he was receiving in his ear from those on the 'Right'. But of course it's difficult to overlook the role of big man Cheney and his Halliburton -- surely that wouldn't be a factor in a Gore White House..... and perhaps that's part of the reason he wasn't "selected" for Prez..

In any event, it was a somewhat amusing diversion, but we must return now to 2012 and the looming spectacle this is just around the bend..

[barracuda]

[Col. Quisp]

Thanks - those photos are enough to give me nightmares. I was just about to head to sleepyville. Scary!! I mean, he looks like a demon from hell.

[barracuda]

[Laodicean]

[JackRiddler]

We all agree that "Big Bird" means "the inner cities," right? Just checking.