WI: 9/11 One Year Early?

(NOTE: Despite the name similarities, this is not a spin-off of the early atom bomb thread)

Now, I know this scenario is implausible, but just play along. What if al-Qaeda had managed to pull of the hijackings and destruction caused in OTL almost the same as in OTL, but on September 11, 2000. First, how would the Clinton administration react? How would this affect the presidential race? What else would end up differently?
 
I think this would either swing the vote in favor of Bush and the Republicans, or it would make the race even more close, those voting for Gore would say Gore has been in the position long enough to know what to do, while Bush supporters would say that his stance for stronger national security would make him better. Needless to say, National security would become center isssue for the candidates, which would give the Republicans the advantage.
 
Bush would be prepared to be a wartime president, so he may not screw up as bad. He'd focus on the war from day one, and he'd have more time to get the job done, if there is no Iraq and the economy holds, He could be considered a great president.
 
There would be a "rally 'round the flag" effect like there was OTL, and I think this would help Gore more than it would help Bush, particularly if Clinton starts the military operation against the Taliban during October, before the election. Yes, there would be questions about the administration's actions, was everything done to prevent the attacks and all that, but I think it'd (for the time being, anyway) be drowned out by the patriotic fervor. It'd be seen as Clinton's Pearl Harbour moment.

Gore wins, not by a wide margin but wide enough (wins Florida, New Hampshire, maybe Tennessee and a few other states too). On January 20th 2001 he takes over the War on Terror from Clinton. What happens after that is anyone's guess, though I'd think he'd concentrate on Afghanistan and not gun after Iraq unless Saddam does something incredibly dumb.
 
I would think all of the third parties that got a lot of support in 2000 would lose all of it. This would probably put Gore over the top if all those Nader voters shifted to him because of the coming war.
 
Exactly. I know everyone always talks about Florida (and New Hampshire, to a lesser extent), but Nader cost Gore in other states too. He put Democrat states into play that ordinarily wouldn't have been in play, thereby forcing Gore into spending money and time in those states instead of states like Florida, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Ohio etc. With a 2000 9/11, I also think that Nader's support evaporates.
 
Clinton would reap the same popularity boost that Bush did OTL. This would benefit Gore in the election much more than it would Bush who had no foreign policy experience to speak of. Gore will win and then the war in Afghanistan will not be run by the neo-con hardliners and would probably instead look like a great big special ops mission. The Taliban might not even be taken out, or maybe it would have been taken out without handing the country over to the warlords of the northern alliance. There's a chance we wouldn't have gone to Afghanistan at all. After all, AQ was supposed to be an international organization and all of the hijackers were arabs.
 
My guess is that there will be an initial poll bump for Clinton in a rally around the President reaction. But two months later, as Clinton reacts as he always did to every other terrorist attack on his watch, by dilly dallying and treating it as a law enforcement issue, discontent and anger would set in and Bush wins in a walk on a promise to hammer the terrorists. Bush begins his Presidency as a war leader on day one, with the invasion of Afghanistan happening in the Spring of 2001.
 
I think Clinton would of fought a totally different war. First and foremost Clinton was not a oil man from Texas. So there would have been no attack on Iraq to steal their oil resource and sale them to American oil companies. But there would have been a more massive attack on the Afghanistan and the Tliban hiding al-Qaeda.






I believe things would had gone better under Clinton, him being a draft dodger from the Vietnam war. I don't believe he would of stuck around trying to rebuild Afghanistan. He would attacked and gotten out leaving behind drones and air strikes to kill off the top Tliban and Al-Qaeda leaders. It would of save us billions and billions in tax payer dollars.
 
I think Clinton would of fought a totally different war. First and foremost Clinton was not a oil man from Texas. So there would have been no attack on Iraq to steal their oil resource and sale them to American oil companies. But there would have been a more massive attack on the Afghanistan and the Tliban hiding al-Qaeda.






I believe things would had gone better under Clinton, him being a draft dodger from the Vietnam war. I don't believe he would of stuck around trying to rebuild Afghanistan. He would attacked and gotten out leaving behind drones and air strikes to kill off the top Tliban and Al-Qaeda leaders. It would of save us billions and billions in tax payer dollars.

The idea that Iraq was about oil is a silly myth. If America wanted Iraqi oil, Saddam was more than willing to sell. The oil for food scandal proved that.

Clinton might have lobbed some cruise missiles at Afghanistan. There would have been no effect, except to recruit more terrorists and cause more attacks on American soil.
 
The idea that Iraq was about oil is a silly myth. If America wanted Iraqi oil, Saddam was more than willing to sell. The oil for food scandal proved that.

Clinton might have lobbed some cruise missiles at Afghanistan. There would have been no effect, except to recruit more terrorists and cause more attacks on American soil.

You have to be joking if you believe Oil played no role in the Iraq war! I mean come on, put down that republican coffee mug for a second and think clearly.


The fact were clear that Iraq was going to start to sale it's oil for Euro's only, no more dollar standard. After 12 years of sanctions some oil hunger nation was going to break the sanctions, it was only a matter of time. Just think of the oil needs of Red China, you think they were just going to sit on there hands and let another year go by without cheap Iraqi oil?


In November 2000, Iraq began selling its oil in euros. Iraq's oil for food account at the UN was also in euros and Iraq later converted its $10 billion reserve fund at the UN to euros. Several other oil producing countries have also agreed to sell oil in euros-Iran, Libya, Venezuela, Russia, Indonesia, and Malaysia (soon to join this group). In July 2003, China announced that it would switch part of its dollar reserves into the world's emerging "reserve currency" (the euro).”


Iraq would not have sold us one drop of oil, they would have sold it to the Chinese and Europeans we would have been last on the list after the 12 years of hell we had put them though.


I can not believe after 8 years of Bush lying, self serving and out right treason in the white house people still believe his just misunderstood. Come on man!
 
You have to be joking if you believe Oil played no role in the Iraq war! I mean come on, put down that republican coffee mug for a second and think clearly.


The fact were clear that Iraq was going to start to sale it's oil for Euro's only, no more dollar standard. After 12 years of sanctions some oil hunger nation was going to break the sanctions, it was only a matter of time. Just think of the oil needs of Red China, you think they were just going to sit on there hands and let another year go by without cheap Iraqi oil?


In November 2000, Iraq began selling its oil in euros. Iraq's oil for food account at the UN was also in euros and Iraq later converted its $10 billion reserve fund at the UN to euros. Several other oil producing countries have also agreed to sell oil in euros-Iran, Libya, Venezuela, Russia, Indonesia, and Malaysia (soon to join this group). In July 2003, China announced that it would switch part of its dollar reserves into the world's emerging "reserve currency" (the euro).”


Iraq would not have sold us one drop of oil, they would have sold it to the Chinese and Europeans we would have been last on the list after the 12 years of hell we had put them though.


I can not believe after 8 years of Bush lying, self serving and out right treason in the white house people still believe his just misunderstood. Come on man!

Don't you just love conspiracy theories? To have one, you don't even need little details like actual evidence...
 
It's interesting how these types of threads always end up with the political leanings of each poster clearly evident...

Assuming Bill Clinton read all of his briefings, its possible 9/11 might have come off with less damage but lets assume the attack came off the same as in OTL.

Bill Clinton is a far better speaker than Bush. Assuming the GOP does not assume an attitude that only seeks to take down the Clinton administration for political gain in the upcoming election, the nation would have come together. Bill Clinton would have done just as Bush did in rallying the country around a common enemy and being the more effective communicator, would have presented Al Gore ample opportunity to show he's qualified to be a leader in a time of crisis.

I do think it interesting to see how a VP Joe Lieberman circa 2001 would
function is a Gore administration for he's a different man then the controversial man he is today.
 
Whether Gore would've won is debatable. OTOH he was experienced, OTOH he would be tainted by association with an administration which failed to prevent the attack. One thing is for sure, George W Bush would NOT have became President.

What America needed in TTL was a foreign policy leader. During the 2000 election everybody knew Bush was not the brightest bulb when it came to that. There was quite a - what we would now call Sarah Palin moment when he was asked what is the name of the new leader of Pakistan and he said "General something". The public openly questioned whether he was dumb. Condi Rice went on TV and said the POTUS didn't need to be well informed as he would make decisions with the help of advisors.

In the end it all blew over because in the 90s everything was looking up. America was in its unilateral moment, an unrivaled global hyperpower. It was assumed foreign affairs would be smooth sailing. Bush was elected because he seemed like an honest slow talking guy folks would like to have a beer with. After 8 years of Slick Willy his lack of understanding on international issues seemed no handicap.

Had America been involved in a war in Afghanistan the Republicans would have gone with a foreign policy hawk. The most obvious candidate would be John Mccain. Considering Al Gore was then not well known for his global warming stance, and was deemed a boring intellectual with no chemistry with the every man, I think Mccain would have walked all over him.
 
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Hecatee

Donor
An earlier 9/11/01 also has consequences in Afghanistan itself : Ahmad Shah Massoud might well still be alive (OTL assassinated on 9/9/01) to provide the US led coalition with a strong and legitimate ally in the country, a national hero who's been fighting soviets, talibans and warlords for years and kept his own holdings safe and sound ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud ).

This would be much better than Karzai's corrupt and inept governement, would allow the US to deploy much less forces on the ground and lead to a more stable country leading the US to turn their gaze toward the Pakistani mess.
 
An earlier 9/11/01 also has consequences in Afghanistan itself : Ahmad Shah Massoud might well still be alive (OTL assassinated on 9/9/01) to provide the US led coalition with a strong and legitimate ally in the country, a national hero who's been fighting soviets, talibans and warlords for years and kept his own holdings safe and sound ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud ).

This would be much better than Karzai's corrupt and inept governement, would allow the US to deploy much less forces on the ground and lead to a more stable country leading the US to turn their gaze toward the Pakistani mess.

The reason Karzai was chosen was because they needed a Pashtun face for the Northern Alliance if they were to have any hope of legitimacy(of course they picked Karzai knowing he was an utterly corrupt western stooge). Massoud was not Pashtun and a Massoud presidency would have caused more intense "Taliban" problems from day one.

Don't you just love conspiracy theories? To have one, you don't even need little details like actual evidence...

Well, when the stated reasons are obviously a sick joke, what does that leave us with? I'd love to know why we went to war in Iraq, but Dick Cheyney isn't going to go on Fox News and tell us the real reason, so all we have left is speculation.

The threat to the Petrodollar that a big shift into the Euro as a currency for oil transactions posed seems to me to fit rather well with what happened. It explains the Europeans' opposition to the war, and its timing. Do I have direct evidence? No. For all I know Dubya might just have been really pissed that Sadd'm tried to off his pappy, but the idea that it was the result of an honest mistake about weapons of mass destruction or the desire to bring freedom to Iraq is far crazier and more far-fetched than the idea that there were economic/political motivations that made sense to the people at the top.

Or do you think Germany invaded Poland in 1939 because of the deplorable Polish terrorist attack on Sender Gleiwitz?
 
"Or do you think Germany invaded Poland in 1939 because of the deplorable Polish terrorist attack on Sender Gleiwitz?"
So Bush is Hitler?
 
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