Time passes, fresh trauma causes older trauma to fade.A book I recently read was setting the tone at the start of a chapter, reminding me of something that had faded from memory, what with so much fresh trauma.
This is what I read...
"Front page articles covered campaigning by George W. Bush and Al Gore for the presidential election coming in November 2000.
Some readers worried about more prosaic announcements. The average price of gasoline had leaped to $1.64 per gallon. In other financial news, President Clinton announced that the government's anticipated budget surplus would exceed projections by almost $2 trillion over the next decade-a cornucopia of cash that would make social programs achievable. GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush said the estimates validated his claim that there would be plenty of room in the federal budget for his ambitious plans to cut taxes and still have money for other priorities."
We got George W. Bush as president, with Al Gore having received a couple million more votes than Bush. Clinton had fixed the chronic budget deficit problem. With surpluses in the $trillions projected.
I don't think it made any difference who'd become president as to the horror that happened on 9/11/2001. I do think Al Gore would have led America in a direction different than Bush did, post 9/11.
A couple days ago I saw a legless Vet riding an electric wheel chair device. Were his legs lost in Iraq? Or was it Afghanistan?
I'm pretty much 100% sure had Al Gore become president America would not have started its first pre-emptive war. A wiser president likely would have simply beefed up America's presence in Kuwait and waited out Saddam and his intransigence over Iraq's alleged, now known not to have existed, weapons of mass destruction.
How many billions of dollars have been lost in Iraq? How many lives?
As for Afghanistan, once Al Qaeda had been identified as the 9/11 perps, with their training camps being in Afghanistan, if I had been the president I would have launched a massive attack on the Al Qaeda camps as soon as possible. From the air. No ground troops. No takeover of Afghanistan.
How many billions of dollars have been lost in Afghanistan? How many lives?
What would Al Gore have done differently I can't help but wonder? Would he have put a different perspective on the barbaric, primitive attack than had Bush? Would a President Gore have led the battle against terrorism differently? With a guiding principal being not letting the terrorists cause America to over react in fear and anger.
The Al Qaeda attacks killed almost 3,000 on 9/11. More than that number of Americans have died in the 2 unnecessary wars since 9/11. How many soldiers have been seriously injured? The number is in the thousands.
I believe the War on Terror was basically won on 9/11 when The People onboard Flight 93 fought back and caused the plane to crash in Pennsylvania, rather than its target in Washington, D.C.
Since 9/11 there have been other instances where The People have thwarted a terrorist.
I think what we go through to get on a plane now is ridiculous. We've let the threat of terrorists alter our freedom, way too much. There has to be less intrusive ways to determine if a person poses a threat.
Had Al Gore become President, instead of George W., would we now be seeing those Clinton surpluses, rather than the humongous deficits? Would there have been a financial meltdown? Would the world economy have plummeted to the worst recession since the Great Depression?
I don't know.
What I do know is seeing that legless Veteran yesterday made me cranky.
Hearing CNN or Fox or whatever cable news I had the TV on, trumpeting that, after the break, the story of a soldier who lost all his limbs. I turned off the TV. I don't know which of the unnecessary wars the soldiers limbs were lost in. But, I do know, that this did not need to happen to that soldier, and would not have, had America not been misled by someone who I really think never should have been President of the United States.
A travesty we are still trying to recover from.
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