REMEMBER The Cole!!!!

What If President Clinton had Used The Attack on The USS Cole, In The Saame Way That President Bush Used The 9/11 Attacks, as a Casus Beli to Attack Al Qaeda Strongholds World-Wiide, Specifically in Taliban Controlled Afghanistan ...

In a Similar Fashion to What Allegedly Happened to The USS Maine, an Attack Upon an American Warshiip, in a Potentially Belligerent Port, Is an Internationally Recognized Reason for Going to War wiith The Offending Party ...

Clinton-Insiiders, Suuch as National Scurity Advisor Sandy Berger, Have Siince Noted The Clinton Administration Could've Handed a War to The Bush Administration, as Soon as they Walked in The Door, But Refrained for Reasons of Decorum; So, The Question is, What if The Bush Administration had Been Wiilling to Accept a War, The Way Lincoln's Was, Or, Would it Have Required a Gore Wiin The Month Before The Attack, a President Who Almost Certainly Would've Accepted it?

:mad:
 
you'd probably need a big personality change in Clinton for something like this to happen. The only times he launched military strikes in different parts of the world was to draw attention away from his own personal issues (his affairs with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky, as well as Whitewater). When U.S. troops were attacked in Mogadishu, his first response was "get them outta there!" It was situations like this one that led Osama Bin-Laden to view the U.S. military as a paper tiger, rather than just it's Commander-in-chief.
 
you'd probably need a big personality change in Clinton for something like this to happen. The only times he launched military strikes in different parts of the world was to draw attention away from his own personal issues (his affairs with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky, as well as Whitewater). When U.S. troops were attacked in Mogadishu, his first response was "get them outta there!" It was situations like this one that led Osama Bin-Laden to view the U.S. military as a paper tiger, rather than just it's Commander-in-chief.
Probably True ...

However, The Administration's Views Changed as Thiings Went on, And Sandy Berger in Particular, Considered Middle-Eastern Terrorism to Be The Nation's Primary Concern ...

Most Importantly, Having Troops Attacked in Lawless Areas of Somalia, is a Far Cry Indeed, from an Attack Upon a US Flag Warshiip, in a Neutral Port; It Should Have, And Indeed WOULD Have, Been Actionable, If it Had Happened at Anytiime Other than a Federal Election Cycle, Makes you Wonder, If they Specifically Planned it That Way!

:D
 
What If President Clinton had Used The Attack on The USS Cole, In The Saame Way That President Bush Used The 9/11 Attacks, as a Casus Beli to Attack Al Qaeda Strongholds World-Wiide, Specifically in Taliban Controlled Afghanistan ...

I've seen interviews with Clinton about the Cole and he did view the bombing of the Cole as a just cause for dismantling the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He didn't act on the opportunity though because he coudn't get the basing rights in the Mid East that he needed and his senior commanders told him that it would logistically very difficult to run such an operation exclusively from the United States, but he wanted to do it though.
 
The non-intervensionist opposition would have been much stronger. It was something happening on the other side of the globe and it would never have happened if the ship wasn't there. And not just in the US but in the rest of the world.
 
The non-intervensionist opposition would have been much stronger. It was something happening on the other side of the globe and it would never have happened if the ship wasn't there. And not just in the US but in the rest of the world.
Personally, I Thiink That Would Be a Good Thiing ...

The Kiind of Electoral, BLANK Check, Proviided By 9/11, Should Only Be Giiven to Those Presidents, Liike Washington, Lincoln, and The Roosevelts, Who Have Proven themselves Worthy of it; Unliike Presidents Such as, LBJ, Nixon, and Now Bush, Who Obviiously Aren't ...

Furthermore, If The USS Cole Had Been Attacked a Year Earlier, Especially If The Democrats Had had a Better Showing in The '98 Congressional Elections, I Thiink Clinton Would've Implemented Many of The Provisions of The OTL Patriot Act, Regardless of The Poliitical Consequences!

:eek:
 
The Taliban gets ripped to shreds a couple years before they got bombed into burnt hamburger in 2001. Certainly people would have been on the lookout for Al-Queda, which may or may not have been enough to dodge 9/11. For basing rights to smack down Afghanistan, why didn't they just ask for help from India? They already hate Pakistan so Muslim problems are a non-issue, and God knows they wouldn't mind seeing the Taliban get busted up.
 
For basing rights to smack down Afghanistan, why didn't they just ask for help from India?

Because India doesn't have a border with Afghanistan. You'd have to fly across Pakistan, China, or Iran, and none of those are going to let US forces do it without something like 9/11. Uzbekistan or Tajikstan might let the US have bases, particularly if given bribes; however, Russia under Putin regards everywhere the Soviet Union ever went to as Russian-controlled territory and will moan.
 
I've seen interviews with Clinton about the Cole and he did view the bombing of the Cole as a just cause for dismantling the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He didn't act on the opportunity though because he coudn't get the basing rights in the Mid East that he needed and his senior commanders told him that it would logistically very difficult to run such an operation exclusively from the United States, but he wanted to do it though.

By this time Clinton had simply lost the faith of the US military.

From day one he was busy cutting the military budgets for his "peace dividend". You don't make friends in Washington by cutting military budgets and then ordering the troops to go and die for you and your agenda. You don't make friends with the troops that way either.

His intervention in Bosnia bogged down because the Air Force "said" that they couldn't support helicopter gunships that were needed there.

Can anyone say Somalia? :eek:
 

Ian the Admin

Administrator
Donor
The Taliban gets ripped to shreds a couple years before they got bombed into burnt hamburger in 2001. Certainly people would have been on the lookout for Al-Queda, which may or may not have been enough to dodge 9/11. For basing rights to smack down Afghanistan, why didn't they just ask for help from India? They already hate Pakistan so Muslim problems are a non-issue, and God knows they wouldn't mind seeing the Taliban get busted up.

You sure have a lot of enthusiasm for people being "busted up". Of course, warfare isn't WWF RAW, and bloodthirsty enthusiasm for people being turned into "burnt hamburger" is a bit... unseemly.
 
It would be interesting if the Cole had actually sunk in the waters off of Aden. The ship was very near sinking after the attack. Public outcry will be harder to ignore, so I suppose that Clinton might attempt some saber-rattling policies before his term is out, though I highly doubt he will execute an attack. And this is if the Cole had foundered. The people who planned the raid, to their credit, were spot on in the area of timing--one president going out, one soon to come in--meaning reprisals will be limited, unless Clinton is forced to, say with a majority Republican Senate (I think in OTL that the Democrats took back the Senate in '98--but I'm not sure).
 
The people who planned the raid, to their credit, were spot on in the area of timing--one president going out, one soon to come in--meaning reprisals will be limited,

IMO that is incorrect, because the whole point of terrorism is to provoke reprisals, the reprisals generate more hatred, the hatred generates more terrorists, the terrorists commit more outrages, the outrages provoke reprisals...
 

Ian the Admin

Administrator
Donor
IMO that is incorrect, because the whole point of terrorism is to provoke reprisals, the reprisals generate more hatred, the hatred generates more terrorists, the terrorists commit more outrages, the outrages provoke reprisals...

"Reprisals" are indeed counterproductive - unless they have the effect of catching a lot of terrorists. Afghanistan, for example, actually involved catching a lot of Al Qaeda terrorists and the chance to catch more. It was just blown because the Bush administration had Other Priorities. Problem is that something like the Afghan operation, to work properly, really requires the undivided attention of one administration for at least a year to implement and manage the important parts (and more than that to sell it, short of a 9/11 style event), and a couple of years of them or a followup administration still considering it a high priority not to blow the momentum.

Clinton did ramp up conventional antiterrorism efforts against Al Qaeda, but military ground operations take so long to sell and plan that Clinton wouldn't even have time to sell anything to the public by the time Bush was in office. Cole was attacked in October 12 2000, just over three months before Bush would officially enter office.

Remember, even with 9/11, a national mandate for instant action, and a huge level of cooperation from every country in sight, it basically took Bush a month to get even CIA special ops teams really at work on the ground and for aerial bombing to start, two months for the non-Pashtun areas to fall to the Northern Alliance, three months to take Tora Bora, and five months before the last major overt Al Qaeda stronghold at Shah-i-kot was taken in an operation involving thousands of US ground troops.
 
"Reprisals" are indeed counterproductive - unless they have the effect of catching a lot of terrorists. Afghanistan, for example, actually involved catching a lot of Al Qaeda terrorists and the chance to catch more.

Well, I appreciate what you are saying, however, I believe reprisals are counter-productive even if they catch a lot of terrorists. For example, the British caught a huge number of Fenians including the whole leadership, after the 1916 rising, did that stop the Irish Republicans? The execution of the leaders created huge sympathy for the Republican cause and new volunteers and leaders appeared in greater numbers.

In my view, the only workable response to terrorism is to try and ‘drain the swamp’ through:
  • Treatment of the terrorists as criminals.
  • Maintaining your position on the moral high ground, so no internment, executions (judicial or extrajudicial), torture, reprisals, etc.
  • A propaganda/education campaign.
  • Jobs and money for the people who are likely to join the terrorists.
  • Intelligence penetration of the terrorist organisation to disrupt it
  • Police work against the perpetrators of atrocities.
  • Give them their more reasonable demands (if any).
  • Hang on like grim death for decades.

Personally, I feel that the USA fell into the trap that Osama Bin Laden set them after 9/11, in Afghanistan and even more so in Iraq. What did he want - the radicalisation of the Arab world and an unstoppable guerrilla war against the "Crusaders and Zionists". What has he got?
 
Bump ...

I've been Thinking about Fleshing out this What If into a More Proper Timeline, But with a COMPLETE Butterfly as The Requisite POD ...

What do you Guys Think, Good Idea or Bad Idea?

:D
 
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