[This piece original to myblog.jphogan.org 7/19/2011]
In memory of Jimmy Stewart, who died that day in 1997, that July 2, 1997 I was near Washington DC on second day of my road trip in my new used 1988 Dodge B 250 Cargo van thinking towards Los Angeles, and Robert Mitchum who had died just the day before:
And, also in memory of all those that died on 9/11/01 as a result of the attacks on the United States of America:
There is no tippy toeing around some basic facts about the history of The United States of America just of the past twenty plus years. There is much we have been discouraged from considering since 9/11/01 and so much that wasn’t simply of wisdoms of President George W. Bush’s efforts to help our nation heal and stay together.
President Al Gore would not have just been able to “lasso the moon” after 9/11/01 attacks on America - he would have likely gone massively to war against all of Afghanistan and likely accidentally some against Pakistan as well. He would have been at home with war photographs and likely found the Afghan Conflicts quite picturesque what with his time as a Vietnam Conflict war zone photojournalist, so it seems.
We have President Obama of the Democrats defensiveness that they would have run the response to 9/11 very differently and heavy from the start in Afghanistan. We therefore have that President Al Gore would have soon been in Afghanistan with major presence and commitment maybe larger than what President Bush dedicated to Iraq - to Iraq as still of roots about Al Qaeda motivations.
We have some actual political history since 9/11 that shows quite that as politicians go it was Senator Hillary Clinton who benefited more than any other of America’s politicians, politically speaking, due to crisis of GROUND ZERO being her GROUND ZERO and to the (needed?) extreme make-over of former First Lady Hillary Clinton into an untouchable international sympathetic figure with near super power to defy our most established seniority system - our Senate’s seniority system.
Really there is no way to soft shoe around so much that has been left undiscussed for so long while a blaming all about directed at those maybe more innocent. This still may be a stretch, some, but may be spot on and not just cynical - the Clintons did after 9/11 stop claiming “smartest in the room” status and instead lead with more a: we just did what the American people told us to do - so it is Americans’ fault, not ours, like. It was near idiotic with a regular “blue states said do this…” and “red states said do that…” grandiose over simplifying by Clintons, with a gross abuse of Bush’s generosity in the interests to see America heal as quickly as possible.
Did President Obama just execute long delayed Democrat Party strategies that would have been President Al Gore’s soon after 9/11 and such that it would be a logical conclusion that President Gore would have also accidently widened the area of conflict also to being at war, some to much with Pakistan?
Much less talked about is how President Bush found that he and his parties dissatisfaction about Saddam Hussein not yet having been fully prosecuted had suddenly and unexpectedly become far more complicated because of attacks on America on 9/11. President Bush may not have been as dissatisfied with The United States for not having yet brought Saddam Hussein to adequate justice for his invasion of Kuwait, at least, as Osama bin Laden likely was - and was since his founding of Al Qaeda specifically with designs to see that Saddam Hussein was treated accordingly for his invasion of a sovereign neighbor.
Again it is still quite remarkable that for all these years it has been little discussed that Senator Hillary Clinton did politically benefit the most from 9/11 as American Politicians go. She not only got out from nearly all oppression a junior Senator was expected to be subject to under our famed seniority system there, but she also got the complete and international make-over as suddenly as a sympathetic figure ready to be President, as a political untouchable of sorts.
I didn’t make it to Los Angeles as expected with such road trip to be first step to moving to Hollywood - I turned around after a couple weeks in New Orleans due to delays from needing a rebuilt engine installation. I did decide then about that moving nearer to all fifty states would be better and so was to my move to Washington DC in early 1998.
But, you know, today is a day to talk about responsible budgeting, right? Today therefore is a day to talk about how dangerous the Clintons’ surplus of their removing spending commitments about near a trillion of available revenue actually was. President Al Gore would have just as soon found out such too though with most of unpaid wars and reversals of Clintons’ surpluses being for him only about Pakistan and Afghanistan as a new Vietnam - an “it is Vietnam all over again” even.
That he would have been providing the pictures and the wars as a former war photographer and photo journalist may have quickly become a concern, but that is hard to say for sure. President Gore would have been again a Gore covering war gore, though unavoidably. Senator Hillary Clinton might then only have taken second to President Gore as Politician that gained the most politically speaking due to crisis of 9/11/01 attacks on America that Clintons’ surpluses may have facilitated with their gross and rash unfunding/underfunding to a surplus, excessive without a doubt, near a trillion.
What we can say with confidence now seeing how the Democrats meant to likely have managed Al Qaeda from day one seems to be that Afghanistan and Pakistan would have been near as expensive today as Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Pakistan have been. We at least would have had all the same stories about a President having to go to war without our armed forces having sufficient vehicle armor and body armor, and much more maybe as a political discussion about “irresponsible” and “dangerous” Clintons’ surpluses.
Now the Clintons did move quickly and broadly to stop asserting they were like the “smartest in the room” and did so move to a full blaming of 9/11 on the American people - on people who they had simply let spread their ignorance about global affairs, unlearned about such, with acceptance by Clintons as their “executive” decisions - of a simple lie that they had just done what the American people had told them to do and so without using any of their smarts bragged about earlier as “qualifications” for such offices.
Gosh, we missed all this just because Al Gore wasn’t actually elected President, well maybe not all of it. The Clintons’ surplus likely would have been a real political problem for a President Gore too, and more so with he a former war photo journalist now trying to provide the pictures and the “conflicts.” We likely wouldn’t be now suggesting Bush had no real reason to suddenly and decisively contradict the Clintons’ recent intelligence issued to justify PEACE DIVIDENDS before their time, and so much else of their irresponsible unfunding and underfunding with their removal of liberal spending, near a full trillion, while funds were readily available and not necessarily of times with justifications for deficit spending.
And so now how about “Mr. Gore Goes To Afghanistan” as a treatment of what currently ails our general budgeting? How about Saddam Hussein and the real Arab Spring that must have been of intelligence quieted to de-emphasized by Clintons’ White House just to justify their PEACE DIVIDENDS?
Did the Clintons together use the CIA to lie about PEACE in their times?
And, what the heck would President Al Gore have done about problems still festering with Saddam Hussein not adequately prosecuted for so many known and maybe unknown, as yet, war crimes and crimes against his people and their humanity? And what about the origins of Al Qaeda as described as first organized to offer a way to bring Saddam Hussein to sufficient justice?
Oh, yeh and what about Iran today if we hadn’t gotten around to prosecuting Saddam Hussein? “Justice for Saddam Hussein” was quite the rally cry that most raised the insurgency we now call Al Qaeda, right? Oh, yeh: Wouldn’t Iraq now be in a nuclear power and arms race with Iran if President George Bush hadn’t moved to the albeit late prosecution of Saddam Hussien?