Was Iraq inevitable, regardless of whether it was a D or R in the White House? Or, would he have resisted and doubled down in Afghanistan?
Was Iraq inevitable, regardless of whether it was a D or R in the White House? Or, would he have resisted and doubled down in Afghanistan?
I honestly don't know, Iraq actually seems contingent compared to usual dominance of material conditions of history.
I think on the one hand they were bound to do some action in Iraq. The Neocons were still slavering over the idea of invading Iran and Iraq was a good base for that and proof-of-concept. The other thing about it was that Iraq was getting off the petro-dollar and was trading its oil for Euros - much derided by economists at the time as a choice, but petrodollar recycling meant that if they tolerated Iraq, Iran, even later Venezuela and Libya to start trading oil in other currencies than dollars that would mean the end of the primary basis of America's reserve currency status and the cheap credit that comes from that.
I'm not even sure 9/11 still happens with Gore instead of Bush. Bush seemed more hooked into the deep state and I think there was wide spread knowledge that a terror attack on America organized by previous CIA agent Osama was in the works. These things have a heft and momentum on their own, but Presidents do have some latitude to change things they just choose not to as the sort of people coughed up after law school, business and politics get morphed into perfect cats paws for what Capital wants to achieve anyway.
Wasn't Clinton advised during his admin about al-Qaida and the potential for an attack on American soil?
I think he shot some cruise missiles into Pakistan (?) in response
I feel pretty sure Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq, except for the petrodollar thing. It's definitely weird how we don't really care about countries like Libya or Iraq, and then when they try and challenge the petrodollar they just happen to get invaded. I would not rule out the possibility that if any oil-producing country tries to do it, even someone like Bernie would be forced by capital + CIA to do some sort of action against it.