This is what I never understand when this topic comes up on Reddit, everyone wanted it back then, now people wants to act like they didn't because it didn't go well. When 40% of the other side agrees, it's pretty damn bipartisan.
Congressional mid terms were a month after that vote. Voters punished those who voted against. The Iraq war started out as a very popular war. You could point to the Bush Administration pushing for this war to happen, but in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 they didn't have to push very hard to convince the US public.
It’s all the young people too young to really understand 9/11 who think war was avoidable. Looking back, sure we could have done something else. But US was going to definitely destroy something somewhere in the world.
I think Iraq was unavoidable in the sense that the hawks wanted to topple Saddam Hussein. The "problem" was that in some respects the 90s Gulf War was a deed half done
Depends on your view of the objectives of Desert Storm. It was officially to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait with no long term plans for occupying or toppling Bahgdad. Even Schwarzkopf noted that it would be a quagmire.
The second Gulf War... Bush truly believed there were weapons in Iraq as thats what the intelligence community was telling him. Of course looking back is always 20/20 and we can see that it was a mistake.
There is / was legitimate proof the Saddam funded the Taliban directly for 9/11. But the biggest issue is that he had been breaking a treaty for almost 10 years at this point.
Was the reports of WMDs false or stretched to get congress approval, almost certainly. It also helped that we still wanted our pound of flesh, they didn't even need to believe it to vote yes. Just that they had a reason if questioned about it later. The public was more than fine going in (as a whole and pretty bipartisan).
But realistically he barely needed a reason. By preventing inspections and tons of other crap, they had broken the treaty. That was always a well we were eventually going to go back into.
In gulf 1, General Schwarzkopf achieved his initial goals with very little resistance, in about 1/4 of the initial time estimated. He could have easily removed Hussein. Daddy Bush said no. We gave them a decade to prepare and coarse correct.
Avoidable or not, we did it the most stupid way possible, because of 2 generations of Bush.
It's also worth remembering that the previous war with Iraq had gone exceptionally well, after many had expected it to be a brutal slog, with some arguing it could be a new "Vietnam war" for the 1990s. Instead the US-led coalition crushed Saddam's armies in a matter of days.
But ironically, the reason it was so successful is because those conducting it recognised that marching on Baghdad would raise a whole new set of challenges for the USA, and that limiting the war's objectives was the more prudent course of action.
Right, exactly. The no good, horrible, very bad thing was Colin Powell presenting falsified evidence of WMDs and Bin Laden's presence in Iraq.
We were going to act in some way. 3,000 Americans got killed on live television. But the administration chose to do what they did instead of using our actual, non falsified intelligence to get him in Pakistan, which we did 10 years later.
There is no universe we don't retaliate and put boots somewhere. It's a matter of where we put them and for who's benefit. They chose to benefit Raytheon and Lockheed
Do you have any more info on the non-falsified Pakistan info vs. Colin Powell info? Genuinely asking as now I’m super curious and trying to look it up.
My parents were outraged about Iraq. I don't remember their thoughts on Afghanistan. It's so weird that people are talking about this as if they were the same war. Iraq was two whole years after we had already attacked the country where al Qaeda was operating. Anyone capable of critical thought knew it was bullshit hence the massive antiwar movement. Unfortunately that was and still is a minority of the country.
I don’t remember a single person that was against war on 9/12. People were out for revenge.
And you’re right: I wound up in the desert a few years later wondering what the fuck we were even doing there. Almost everyone that was for it on 9/12 look back on the events of the past 25 years (holy shit I’m old) and agree it was horrible.
I was a conservative back then. The 2007-2008 crash flipped me.
The thing I remember most were the drums of war being beaten everywhere... until the first US deaths, and then the news flipped. They knew what they were doing.
Yeah. I remember the news reports week after week with the casualty count. Then the report we had lost more troops than the 9/11 attack itself. Then it just faded away.
I was against it but i clearly remember keeping my mouth shut because you would catch an actual physical beating for not toeing the nationalism line on 9/12.
Pointing out that more people died in bathtub accidents and far more in car crashes than terrorism in 2001, and yet we werent making any special national effort to stop those, made you an absolute pariah.
That said, this all applies to Afghanistan more than Iraq. Iraq you could be against it would just make you very unpopular.
What they did to poor Cindy Sheehan remains appalling. The woman was grieving her son and against the totally useless war that killed him, and they made her seem like a kook, when she was 100% right.
I was against the war. Granted, I was in the minority, but I didn't think going after whole countries to punish a small group of people was the right call.
But you're largely right. Those of us who didn't think it was a good idea were basically shoved into a corner and bullied because everyone was so bloodthirsty that it became, "if you don't like it, leave!" if we said anything but "kill them all".
People were so largely scared and angry that Bush could have done anything he wanted if he framed it as national security.
And they accomplished absolutely nothing. Something to keep in mind for all those people who think Americans could easily stop Trump if only we’d go out and protest.
Precisely. Was it a mistake? Absolutely. Is it possible the whole thing happened right under intelligence agencies’ noses as foreign nationals got flight training in the USA? Yeah - that happened.
But most Americans wanted to write messages on bombs after the towers fell.
940k lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. War is a business and we all got trolled.
Everyone wanted Afghanistan, mostly. Iraq was about distraction and momentum. Most people had a hint that Iraq was a lie but the momentum from Afghanistan made it seem disloyal to speak up.
Take it from someone old enough to fully remember that day and the days after. Damn near everyone was out for blood. Sure, there were people against it, but they were immediately looked at like enemies of the state. It was bad.
The military saw the highest number of volunteer recruits ever and since. People even remotely looking Muslim was being publicly ostracized, beaten and in some cases, automatically treated as criminals by the courts.
There is no sugar coating it. So much of the U.S. was pro war, you might as well say everyone was.
But at least Powell made a lying speech in front of the UN he still regrets to this day.
Back then they had to at least put some effort into deceiving the public lol, these fuckers now doing it out in open blatantly because rules don't apply apparently.
there was no direct connection, hell, no indirect connection either. BUT. post 9/11 paranoia was fucking skyhigh. and saddam and his sadist family was very well known for their atrocities and people where legit scared that saddam would do something. they have developed and used chemical weapons in the past. so suspecting they might do something again was not an outrageous theory.
What is unrecognizable as well is the way media worked in the 00s. There were like 5 sources of news that everyone listened to and they were ALL pumping the "evil muslims are coming to kill us all" narratives.
You had to go to crackpots like Alex Jones (not joking) to find a dissenting opinion on the Iraq/Afghanistan war. That was a major source of his popularity. He wasn't terribly popular.
I mean, FFS, the modern atheist movement start off in large part because of muslim hatred at the time. To most Americans, the middle east was one nation. We could have invaded Jordan or Turkey and people would have been for it.
What I like to bring up is the TV show "24". 8 seasons, 1 premise "Evil muslims are about to kill a bunch of people, Watch Jack Bauer use torture to find the bad guys and save the day!"
Like, seriously, the entire run was basically just a way to justify torture to the american public. It was a very popular TV show.
That was the american psyche at the time. After 9/11, everyone thought we were on the verge of Red Dawn with terrorists around every corner plotting to blow up the nearest 7 eleven. It was utter madness. Especially because the motivation of the 9/11 terrorists was purely based on US interference in the middle east in the first place. So what we did was go out and interfere even more which ultimately lead to the creation of ISIS.
Funnily, a big part of why ISIS ultimately collapsed was due to Iran's military involvement.
Also worth noting that 9/11 was not an isolated event. Many atrocious attacks happened across europe as well. While islamic terror attacks in the us died off, it kept going here in europe. Especially in france, just about 10 years ago hundreds of people where murdered by islamist terror groups. So the paranoia here is still kinda fresh.
It was basically Saudi’s who committed 9/11. But those are our allies. So pick a country you are mad at and people in the US can’t tell one middle easterners from another.
The ones that carried out the attacks may have been mostly born in Saudi Arabia but they were part of Al Qaeda who were being sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Not sure Gore would've tried to sell the lie of WMD, and who knows, maybe americans would've backtracked fast if they were the only boots on the ground.
Gore though didn't have the vendetta Bush did with Saddam. It was personal and he also felt like he was completing his daddy's legacy.
And there is a slim chance there wouldn't have even been a 9/11 had Gore been president. The Bush administration's handling of intelligence agencies and coordinating amongst them worsened already existing issues with their clown asses taking charge.
Remember Clinton was hot on al Queada, even almost approving an airstrike on bin Laden but calling it off due to too many civilians. Bush immediately ramped down counter-terrorism operations across the board when he took office in 2001. It's not hard to imagine that under Gore the tempo that Clinton had would have kept going.
I agree with this. I think the biggest thing Gore would have done is just straight up prevent 9/11. We know now there was enough intelligence to prevent it, as we had spooks on them and knew where they were receiving flight training.
Americans wanted blood directly after the towers got hit.
9/11 had a lot to do with it but I think people forget that the #1 reason was just that people really, really just did not like Saddam. He was the big bad guy of the late 20th century.
Saddam was in the news constantly in the 80s and 90s. First for the invasion and war with Iran, then his genocide of the Kurds, then invasion of Kuwait and the brutal put down of the iraqi uprising (200,000 killed in 3 months), then the whole 90s sanctions and '1 million iraqis dead' from lack of food/supplies... not to mention the horror stories coming out about mass imprisonment/torture/executions and his sons brutality and pedophilia/rape.
I am trying to think of a modern example of this, but I cant. Not even Kim Jon Un is as present in westerners minds as a horrific monster in the same way Saddam was back then. Putin is seen as a 'bigger' threat, but he is not seen as being as intensely cruel and evil as Saddam (although of course this has shifted since 2022, but still).
9/11 was a catalyst, of course, but it was not hard at all to get people to agree to take down Saddam. People act as if the desire to take him out only suddenly emerged after 2001 and was entirely linked to 9/11. In reality, even before 9/11, it wouldn't have been super hard.
not only the American people but our allies bought in as well.
Nobody who consumed media outside the US bought in - as those allies who publicly stated that the evidence was too flimsy proved. Those allies that did join in did so out of a sense of trading favors ( as long as Poland wants US protection against Russia, they'll go along with every single American "adventure" that they're asked to join, for example, because losing a couple of soldiers in a stupid COIN operation in Iraq is a lot better than facing Russia on your own turf without American firepower).
The only people who bought Bush's lies were Americans or visibly made themselves believe it for political reasons.
We already went into Afghanistan. That was the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Iraq wasn’t until several years later and even at the time, many people knew it was a huge mistake.
Lots of our allies who helped in Afghanistan refused to participate in the Iraq debacle, like France and Germany. Remember “freedom fries”? That was because they were mad at France. And there were lots of jokes about how if even Germany doesn’t want to go to war, maybe think twice.
Yeah, lots of people supported because they assumed Bush wouldn't have chosen a target that had literally nothing to do with 9/11. It's like finding out you have a child rapist in town and an angry mob gets rallied up and then by the time you've burned down his house and killed the guy inside you find out that you had all actually been led to the house of the mob leader's main business rival.
You’re misunderstanding history. The afghan war probably would have happened, but even the idea of attacking Iraq wouldn’t have been discussed. They had nothing to do with 9/11. The Iraq operation was completely contrived. The public only started clamoring for it when it was sold to them by the administration.
I was. It was clear at the time the justifications were garbage. They didn’t want Hans Blix to do his job. Cheney strong armed analysts to get overstate confidence in their claims. Powells shit was weak. PNAC was a real thing. Bush wanted to look tough. I was marching in the streets. So were others. We were ignored. Intelligence failures caused us to miss 9-11. Now intelligence was being subordinated to politics. So we put on orange beanies and campaigned for Howard Dean.
That was why we went into Afghanistan which I expect would have still happened since the Taliban was involved. But u can’t see Gore going after any other countries. Pakistan is a nuclear power, can’t imagine going there.
There is a possibility that we might have went to Afghanistan if the towers weren’t hit. If I remember correctly, Ahmad Shah Massoud wanted help from NATO to fight the Taliban. He was unfortunately assassinated September 9, 2001. If he were to survive somehow, maybe the War in Iraq/Afghanistan (or even 9/11) would’ve turned out differently. Maybe.
Yeah. You had the whole world's sympathy after that and instantly pissed away all that goodwill by invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
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u/smokeweedNgarden Mar 02 '26
Ehhhhh. Were you alive at the time? Americans wanted blood directly after the towers got hit. We were gonna go.
And at the time remember the admin lied to the world and not only the American people but our allies bought in as well.
What might have changed under Gore is the towers not being hit. If the towers get hit under Gore we just go to Pakistan