Starbuck1975
Lifer
- Jan 6, 2005
- 14,698
- 1,909
- 126
yllus
Elite Member & Lifer
- Aug 20, 2000
- 20,577
- 432
- 126
I think I agree most with this. According to both retired general G. Norman Schwarzkopf's and retired general Jamer Horner's autobiographies, it was Cheney that was pushing hard to go into Iraq in '91 - it was then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell's job to "handle" him. Without his overly hawkish presence and others who echoed that sentiment I imagine another Iraqi invasion would never have occurred.
CADsortaGUY
Lifer
The whole idea of speculating about what if gore... doesn't matter as it's nothing more than speculation with 7 years of hindsight to distort things. I guess I just don't see the point.
- Mar 20, 2000
- 102,402
- 8,574
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wow i think he gained all the weight that clinton lost
9/11 still would have happened. probably would have started a bombing campaign and eventually troops on the ground in afghanistan. not sure if we'd have 'gotten' bin laden yet (iraq, being flat, is better suited to our northern-european plains focused military than afghanistan, not to mention that bin laden and folks know the ground much better). probably wouldn't be in iraq but might be on the border. iran we'd probably be fighting a proxy war with in afghanistan (assuming ahmenidejad would have been elected, which is likely). we'd be part of the EU's cap and trade deal and getting the raw end of it (as the EU can lower its overall emissions by fixing eastern europe, where we have no such easy solution)
- Aug 22, 2001
- 32,049
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Al Gore has probably thought many times since 2000, "damn! I dodged a serious bullet!" Life has been very good to him the last few years, being POTUS would not have treated him nearly so well.
In case no one ahs brought it up, SNL did have Al do a skit where he was POTUS, it was fairly funny too. I won't comment on the "what if?" though, Marvel might sue me.
In case no one ahs brought it up, SNL did have Al do a skit where he was POTUS, it was fairly funny too. I won't comment on the "what if?" though, Marvel might sue me.
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
- Jun 27, 2005
- 6,010
- 1
- 76
No combat experience:
Madison / War of 1812
Lincoln / Civil War
Wilson / WW1
F. Roosevelt / WW2
Combat experience:
T. Roosevelt (Spanish-American War) / Philippine War
Truman (WW1) / Korean War
Kennedy (WW2) / Viet Nam
G. H. Bush (WW2) / Gulf War 1
Based on this I do not think there is any real correlation between a President's combat experience and his willingness to go to war.
9/11 would have happened in some shape or form - and will happen again, most likely as domestic terrorism (McVeigh, Rudolph, DC Sniper, antrax . . . whatever)
I think with Gore we would have had smaller tax cuts, a balanced budget, a social security *Lock Box*, really Clear Skies, a coherent national energy policy and alot of dead MFs (i.e., Taliban/AQ) in Afghanistan.
We wouldn't have nearly doubled the national debt - that's for sure!
I think with Gore we would have had smaller tax cuts, a balanced budget, a social security *Lock Box*, really Clear Skies, a coherent national energy policy and alot of dead MFs (i.e., Taliban/AQ) in Afghanistan.
We wouldn't have nearly doubled the national debt - that's for sure!
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
- Jun 27, 2005
- 6,010
- 1
- 76
Eh, it's debatable. The south fired the first shots, but Lincoln previously rejected diplomatic measures and called for militias to retake seized forts after Sumter was lost with no casualties.
And Kennedy didn't start Viet Nam, he prevented it while in office. While the number of 'advisors' increase, he fought hard against his own advisors and especially the military to not send any combat troops. He had a plan to withdraw from Viet Nam after re-election in 1964.
In fact, Eisenhower deserves more blame than Kennedy, for the whole support of continued French colonization of Viet Nam (the US was paying up to 90% of the French war costs), blocking elections because we didn't like the man who would win and push for independence, and other measures.
LBJ deserves the responsibility for the combat war.
In fact, Eisenhower deserves more blame than Kennedy, for the whole support of continued French colonization of Viet Nam (the US was paying up to 90% of the French war costs), blocking elections because we didn't like the man who would win and push for independence, and other measures.
LBJ deserves the responsibility for the combat war.
Hayabusa Rider
Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
- Jan 26, 2000
- 50,879
- 4,268
- 126
There was virtually no chance of the present Iranian government existing. It was after the axis speech and the invasion of Iraq that things turned south in a really bad way. If you recall the election rules were changed after that so only those approved by the radicals obtained office, with the radical clerics displacing the more moderate ones (yes they had them).
ProfJohn
Lifer
- Jul 28, 2006
- 18,161
- 7
- 0
Craig that is a myth, and we had a long thread of mine in which that was discussed.
From the JFK library itself a speech given in September of 1963
?In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the Communists... But I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake.... [The United States] made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate?we may not like it?in the defense of Asia.?
And then we have this RFK quote
"The President felt that he had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam....If you lost Vietnam, I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall."
Craig, can you show ANY evidence of JFK's "secret" plan to withdraw after the election?
And why was JFK making all these pro-war statements, but secretly planning to end the war after the election? If he thought the war was wrong why wait till after the election?
You are telling me that he was going to let this war that he wanted to end continue for an entire year? To what end?
BTW I am not going to respond unless you provide some type of PROOF that JFK was planning to end the war post election. And don?t make your proof some 1970s era speech given after the war had fallen from favor.
Well, we could have elected Nader Prez' in 2000 and had no 911, 'cause he would have had the cockpit doors reinforced.
John, you are the master of using a single quote on a topic to claim you 'proved' something, and ignoring the mounds of other evidence to the contrary.
I've written at some length on this previously, and to save my time, I'll be blunt that your post is a piece of the most superficial hackery, lacking any context or completeness.
Actual historians and scholars have investigated the topic, and uncovered clear evidence on the situation to the contrary.
I could explain the issue in some detail but feel it's a waste of time, you don't show any interest in the facts generally.
But I'll say a few words for the readers. JFK had a style that was to 'preserve his options'. He tended to wait until the later times possible to commit to a decision. So we can't say for sure that he would not have eventually decided to go to a larger war in Viet Nam 100%; we're limited to perhaps 98%.
Why don't you read just one of the many important books on the topic, JFK and Vietnam by John Newfield, so you have a bit of an idea what the hell you're talking about, and then post. Other important books for their documentation of evidence from the contemporaries include "One Brief Shining Momemt" by Pulitzer-prize winning historian William Manchester, who quotes Mike Mansfield, the Senate majority leader and one of JFK's closest allies - someone JFK sent to Viet nam to get the 'real story' on what to do - as coming back and telling JFK that the only sensible option was to get out, and JFK responding that he planned to do that, but had to wait until after the 1964 election to avoid giving the republicans a big issue to attack him on. (That's the answer to your question, 'why wait' - withdrawal was a very unpopular thing at the time. Yes, you can criticize him for that if you like, but it is what it is. For your partisan issue, you can't compare it to Nixon's reported traitorous sabotage of LBJ's peace negotiations in 1968 to help him win the presidency).
Having said that, another factor was likely his desire to delay committing to his policy to see how well the war could go in the meantime. Like everyone else, he did not know for sure how the war would go, and was trying to figure that out (hence sending Mansfield), keeping his options open - and thus Robert Kennedy's quote that he would like to win in Viet Nam if he could, *with the limited efforts of materials and advisers* as JFK clarified.
Another is "In Retrospect" by JFK's secretary of defense Robert McNamara, who also concluded from his interactions with Kennedy that he would have withdrawn.
If you understood much at all about the times politically, you would understand that Kennedy was dancing a tightrope between a culture that was pretty militarist at the height of the cold war, and his efforts for peace. He won by running as a 'cold warrior', calling for arms spending and to 'pay any price, bear any burden' for the war for freedom, but in his policies repeatedly took the dovish route, often against his own advisors, and learned to fight for peace in the cold war (a book of speeches was called 'The Strategy of Peace').
If you have any interest in actually understanding Kennedy and be bothered to read one magazine article, try this recent article in Time magazine.
While Kennedy was talking the cold warrior talk that was needed politically, he was also laying the groundwork for withdrawal - you need look no further than the part of the quote you did not see fit to bold because it contradicts your position, but also the *withdrawal* of the first thousand troops in a symbolic message, especially to the military, in October, 1963.
If you want to see what Kennedy was about as the leader for peace in a time of the cold war, read his own amazing speech at American University in June, 1963.
So, John, do us and yourself a favor and stop with the ideologically-driven phony claims and the out of context quote to 'prove' it, and try the actual history for once.
ProfJohn,
don't bother arguing with the stupid, they always bring you down to their level.
This is now another "is is" argument. I guess the new excuse is "well they thought this but did this" is all they need to justify having no exact position but instead going with the equivalent of whatever the polls need...
revisionist.. JFK got us in it, almost got us into a Nuclear war, botched other Cuba operations... but he had nice hair. I think that last part is all that is required of the left who have the attention span of nats but even lack that much brainpower.
don't bother arguing with the stupid, they always bring you down to their level.
This is now another "is is" argument. I guess the new excuse is "well they thought this but did this" is all they need to justify having no exact position but instead going with the equivalent of whatever the polls need...
revisionist.. JFK got us in it, almost got us into a Nuclear war, botched other Cuba operations... but he had nice hair. I think that last part is all that is required of the left who have the attention span of nats but even lack that much brainpower.
AnitaPeterson
Diamond Member
- Apr 24, 2001
- 6,021
- 547
- 126
Although 9/11 would have, probably, still taken place (after all, the monkey currently in the White House hadn't even shown his true colours yet at that time), I believe the Iraq invasion would have never taken place.
HOWEVER...
A Gore presidency would have been accompanied by the Lieberman vice-presidency...
Remember Lieberman? the crybaby who pushed so many times for bans on video games, the idiot who wanted to destroy id Software for making "Doom", the moron wailing about violence and so forth, and actively lobbying for stronger DRM, copyright and draconic legal measures against people suspected of "pirating"...
I don't know if this nightmare would have been a better prospect in the long run... The Liebermans of this world should follow Jack Valenti to the grave, as soon as possible.
HOWEVER...
A Gore presidency would have been accompanied by the Lieberman vice-presidency...
Remember Lieberman? the crybaby who pushed so many times for bans on video games, the idiot who wanted to destroy id Software for making "Doom", the moron wailing about violence and so forth, and actively lobbying for stronger DRM, copyright and draconic legal measures against people suspected of "pirating"...
I don't know if this nightmare would have been a better prospect in the long run... The Liebermans of this world should follow Jack Valenti to the grave, as soon as possible.
The ignorance there is embarrassing for the poster as usual.
JFK did not get us in Viet Nam, Eisenhower did - refusing their request for us to help them be free of colonization by siding with the French, paying for up to 90% of the French war costs, the whole interference in their affairs by creating a phony country called 'South Vietnam' to begin with in 1954 for which we could put our guy in charge and set up the war of North Korea 'invading' them (akin to the USSR declaring the southern US a new country, naming a leader, and saying the northern US 'invaded' the south), preventing elections, etc.
JFK worked to disentangle us - see the mess he cleaned up in Laos by ending Eisenhower's policies to only side with right-wing puppets and ignore independent, moderate leaders.
He did also greatly increase the number of non-combat 'advisers' to try to help the South Vietnam nation he inherited be viable, tried to get the brutal Diem regime to reform.
But JFK was under huge pressure from his own advisers and the military to send troops to Viet Nam. He refused, year after year, as they continued to put the plans in front of him.
You want to take the simplistic pot shots you can't back up on other topics - yes, he made mistakes with Cuba, as he again inherited the problem from Eisenhower who had shunned Castro's attempts to get along and driven him to the USSR for an ally, the real origin of the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK made mistakes; the CIA was also doing its own thing. It's somewhat hard to determine now just how much the CIA was doing was really rogue, versus that being 'plausible deniability' that the Kennedys had ordered those operations to end, but at least some of it was. Remember that these were rough, dangerous times as the President was quoted saying he'd like to 'cut the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them in the wind', when the President believed that we were not that far from a military coup against him by a right-wing Joint Chiefs that barely concealed their insubordination.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, his own advisers were nearly unanimous, and the military was unanimous, in recommending air strikes and invasion of Cuba, as I recall.
While I think JFK can be faulted for defending the indefensible, a double standard for us to publically demand the right to missiles on the USSR's border in Turkey while denying the same to the USSR in Cuba, he did a damn good job in that crisis at averting war, a war which the republicans almost certainly would have had (and which we later realized would have been nuclear, as the Russians in Cuba had operational tactical nukes and the freedom to use them without Moscow's permission on any invading forces).
Not everyone realizes now that at the time, the US public ranked Cuba as our #1 foreign policy problem - Kennedy needed to do something. His government did - however much with or without his permission, with Robert Kennedy heading up the covert 'Operation Mongoose' but shutting down other operations - organize terrorism in Cuba, and the CIA did work with the mafia to try to assassinate Castro.
But Kennedy was also pursuing other plans on Cuba that were not completed, including peace overtures through private channels.
Your 'nice hair' comment is the sort of ignorant hackery that should shame you into apologizing to the readers.
Kennedy had a mastery of foreign policy, imperfect as it was, that I'd put up against any president since FDR - and also important, an agenda that was relatively 'benevolent'.
His efforts to do things like end the US support for European colonization of third world nations was excellent in ending something very wrong.
He did the opposite of the current president - he increased the US's popularity in the world greatly by making the US stand for a lot better principles than it has recently.
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
- 126
Says who? So called "written accounts?" Give me a break. It's what historians WANT us to believe. There's no solid proof whatsoever. Us in P&N have doubts on issues with better evidence.
(Yes Im playing devil's advocate. But still a valid point)
- Mar 20, 2000
- 102,402
- 8,574
- 126
a centrist former president, a reformist critic of the guardian council, and a proper reformist candidate were in the 7 candidates running for the office (and amongst the top 4 vote getters on the first ballot). seems like it was a hard-line populist vs. a group of more liberal candidates. and when the liberal candidate who got through the first ballot was someone who had been president already (associated with the business class and allegedly corrupt), the populist won out. seems to me that very little of that election had to do with foreign policy, and had very much to do with internal iranian politics. so, i don't think the facts bear out your assertion.
and call me a cynic but i don't think what the US did or said would have changed khamenei's actions, even if the facts did bear out your assertion
ProfJohn
Lifer
- Jul 28, 2006
- 18,161
- 7
- 0
Let me get this straight Craig....
JFK was lying to the American people about the Vietnam war? He talked about staying in Nam to make people happy, but he real plan was to withdraw?
I guess that makes him no different that current Democrats who will do and say anything to get elected. Sad to think that the Democrat hero was nothing more than a liar.
JFK was lying to the American people about the Vietnam war? He talked about staying in Nam to make people happy, but he real plan was to withdraw?
I guess that makes him no different that current Democrats who will do and say anything to get elected. Sad to think that the Democrat hero was nothing more than a liar.
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