WI: No 9/11?

Pakistan would be more stable as the taliban wouldn't of fled there.

I disagree with you there. Pakistan will still be a basket case due to tensions with India. Without the attacks Musharraf never jumps to the US camp and both sides continue to fund further tensions in Kashmir, possibly even going to war.
 

King Thomas

Banned
Bush loses the election. No war in Afganistan and Iraq. No US torture pics to shock and disgust the world. Gitmo Bay is just a US Naval Base.Europe and the USA for the most part get on fine. (you can tell I dislike Bush lol)
 
The Iraq invasion definitely still happens.
In fact, the timing wouldn't even change much.
Remember, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush certainly took advantage of unscrupulous party hacks who were willing to tart up a connection, but the actual argument pre-war was:

(1) Iraq has just acquired a large stock of yellowcake Uranium from Niger and is months away from a successful fission bomb test.
(2) Saddam "tried to kill my dad."
(3) Even pro-peace American politicians agreed that Saddam Hussein was one of the most dangerous, villanous leaders in the world. (That consenus was what the Saddam character in the South Park movie was parodying -- even Saddam got the reference!)
(4) sotto vocce: This is going to really confuse and splinter the Democrats!

All this applies without 9/11.
 
Absent the September 11 atrocity Democrats would not be intimidated into supporting the illegal war of aggression against Iraq.

Absent that outrage I think that Enron would be a bigger story than in OTL.

I think that the Republicans would have had a big reverse in the mid term elections.

I believe that either GW Bush would be heavily defeated, or he would not run or he might just have lost renomination- probably to McCain.
 
Enron becomes the largest story of the early 21st Century, and, combined with a terrible economy, puts the Democrats in control of Congress four years earlier than IOTL. Bush probably tries a good number of theatrics regarding Iraq, but I doubt Speaker Gephardt and Majority Leader Daschle, absent something like September 11th occurring, allow it to go terribly far.

In 2004, Bush is trounced by a moderate to liberal Democrat campaigning against the weak economy. Without 9/11, I can see Al Gore running, but he's by no means assured the nomination. There's always Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John Kerry, et al. that might have a shot at it. Either way, the Democrats increase their majorities in the Congress and take back the White House four years earlier than IOTL. The next four years, up until 2009, are anyone's guess, though I get the feeling that Enron being the huge scandal of the early 21st Century might be enough to get some re-regulation of the banking industry through Congress.

Pop culture changes would also be quite interesting. Bill Maher never gets fired from ABC, leading to the continuation of 'Politically Incorrect', while depriving HBO of 'Real Time'. '24' is probably never produced, or if it is, it's nowhere near as popular. Terror thrillers aren't as popular, and less are produced.
 
No 9/11 = no Iraq. There is simply not the public will there to occupy the country, which as much as I hate to say it, was in large part a product of the anti-foreign/Muslim /scary terrorist backlash that 9/11 provided and Bush stirred up very well afterward. I agree that Enron becomes a bigger deal, and I think a UN humanitarian intervention in Darfur becomes much more likely. The 2000's would probably end up looking a bit like the 90's, with small wars(Balkans/Darfur) and the economy playing a bigger role in the 2004 election.
 
Tony Blair retires as one of the most popular Prime Ministers the UK has ever had after winning another huge victory in 2005.
 
No invasion of Iraq? I beg to differ. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer and many others in the administration were dead set on removing Saddam. There was no way we'd have made it through the first Bush term without invading Iraq. 9/11 made it easier, but after the 2000 election it was inevitable.
 

Nikephoros

Banned
No invasion of Iraq? I beg to differ. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer and many others in the administration were dead set on removing Saddam. There was no way we'd have made it through the first Bush term without invading Iraq. 9/11 made it easier, but after the 2000 election it was inevitable.

Except how is it sold. No 9/11 means there is no way that the American public supports an invasion.
 
Ok, I see the point that you're making about the scary Muslim/terrorist ties to the justification for invading Iraq in OTL. I still think there would have been some way for the Project for the New American Century folks to have accomplished their stated goal vis-a-vis Iraq. (Saddam's gotta go was pretty much their only foreign policy when they came into office.) The catalyst might have been one of any number of things, but the most likely source (IMO) would be a terror attack along the lines of the bombing of the USS Cole, or the embassy bombings in Africa. Prove that Saddam has "ties" to terrorist organizations and his head goes on the chopping block.
 
I think much less police dramas would be
produced, and TV shows in general would be much less manichaestic than they have been
OTL.
 
Please do remember that, pre-9/11, the United States had already fought against Saddam's Iraq 3 times:
  • a proxy war under Reagan
  • a ground invasion under G.H. Bush
  • an extended bombing campaign under Clinton
If G.W. Bush ITTL can pull off the same stunt of stringing along Congress with false evidence of WMDs, then a 4th war with Iraq is inevitable. That doesn't make it wise, moral, or in any other way justified. It's just that foreign policy is the one area where the U.S. Constitution gives the President all of the power, and invading Iraq was G.W. Bush's number one foreign policy goal for years before 9/11.
 
Please do remember that, pre-9/11, the United States had already fought against Saddam's Iraq 3 times:
  • a proxy war under Reagan
  • a ground invasion under G.H. Bush
  • an extended bombing campaign under Clinton
If G.W. Bush ITTL can pull off the same stunt of stringing along Congress with false evidence of WMDs, then a 4th war with Iraq is inevitable. That doesn't make it wise, moral, or in any other way justified. It's just that foreign policy is the one area where the U.S. Constitution gives the President all of the power, and invading Iraq was G.W. Bush's number one foreign policy goal for years before 9/11.
Well, it doesn't hurt that Hussein Kamil (Saddam's son-in-law, who defected in 1995) told the US, UK, UN and CNN that Iraq destroyed its WMD after he defected. Clinton still claimed Iraq had WMD- and nobody went after him on it. (Even in the recent Clinton Tapes book, he told the guy taping him that he hoped Kamil's execution (after returning to Iraq) that he hoped Kamil's death would encourage other nations to maintain the Iraq sanctions. Further, back in 2004, Clinton told Time magazine that he defended Bush against "the left" on Iraq and viewed the Iraq War as the right thing to do.)

I differ with you on the last bit, though. The Constitution states that CONGRESS has the power to run wars, declare war, etc.
 
The Iraq invasion definitely still happens.
In fact, the timing wouldn't even change much.
Remember, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush certainly took advantage of unscrupulous party hacks who were willing to tart up a connection, but the actual argument pre-war was:

(1) Iraq has just acquired a large stock of yellowcake Uranium from Niger and is months away from a successful fission bomb test.
(2) Saddam "tried to kill my dad."
(3) Even pro-peace American politicians agreed that Saddam Hussein was one of the most dangerous, villanous leaders in the world. (That consenus was what the Saddam character in the South Park movie was parodying -- even Saddam got the reference!)
(4) sotto vocce: This is going to really confuse and splinter the Democrats!

All this applies without 9/11.

The yellowcake uranium report (the "Italian letter") was a deliberate hoax and would likely be butterflied away is there was no 9/11 attack. Hence, no 9/11 might mean no attack as in OTL. Against Iraq, I would see a continuation of air raids in response to violations of the no-fly zone.
 
I'm not certain that Gulf War 2 would have happened without 9/11.

George Bush's approval ratings just prior to 9/11 were 29%. That's pretty low for a first term president who was only 1.5 years into their term.

Similar military rumbings (remember the Chinese spy plane thing?) and Bush's response hadn't helped his approval and there's no reason to believe that the public would have supported a war.

For a current example, look at Iran. For all intents and purposes from the outside it looks like Iran is developing a nuclear bomb (and they prolly are). However, no one is talking of invasion because the public wouldn't accept it.

BTW a previous post suggested Reagan had a proxy war again Iraq. If you are referring to the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 the US supported Iraq against Iran in this conflict.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Iraq_War for more info.
 
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