Post 9/11 counterfactuals

The following is a set of musings over the various possibilities following 9/11. Nothing was edited, it is very roughly typed, the question raised is from me, the first part is Justin Herzog's response, the second response is my response to him. I'll try to keep this readable.



Question Presented:
Many have spoken about how unjust the iraq invasion was, how bush lied etc... hypo: would the war in afghanistan have been drastically different (worse? Better?) had we not invaded iraq simultaneously?


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Justin:

Somewhat. I have said, and will say again, that a ground-force level action would have taken place in AFG given a Gore presidency+911.

Interestingly, the CIA under clinton's retained director had a plan of its own for the AFG gig, that was being pursued in the first few weeks, that emphasized heavily on pinning & capturing the al queada elements.

concurrently, the rumsfeld DOD pushed its own plan to get to Kabul fast and 'finish things up.' There was a frontline episode that had a bit of research suggesting that the drums of war were already beating for Iraq in 2001, ie that cheney/rumsfeld/'daddy issues' had already concluded that WTC gave an adequate excuse to invade Iraq even in 2001. That the pretenses could be invented later.

As you know, troops, especially specops units, were pulled from AFG prematurely in 2K2 in prep for iraq; we invaded in april 2003. That means that we were in AFG for less than a year at full commitment, probably never.


(worse? Better?) had we not invaded iraq simultaneously?


Unequivocally, better. Not invading a country so close to arabia would have meant that AQ would have had less recruiting/popularity opps...which is good geopolitcially. Recently, a Taliban commander came out saying 'Ive never seen any AQ up in here, if you can find them I'd like to talk to them/have them on my team.'

This was of course not the case in Iraq. It's a country that's quite close to the center of AQ popularity (discontents in Syria, Saud, and the Gulf).

A second point of 'chemical' equilibria is also at play. without a bullshit invasion, the Coalition in AFG (which has always had a significant NATO component...) would have had more troops from allies, as they wouldn't be putting their homes at the same level of risk at home.

Sympathy/rally power was SUPER strong in 2001-2003 behind the US. Imagine it untarnished, imagine the level of help.

Not to be ignored, the full level of development $ that went into iraq could have gone into AFG & the neighboring central asian countries.

Further, the bullshit invasion of Iraq being absent would have diffused the general mideast situation, alleviating pressure on the Israel/Palestine axis, which is one of the reasons sympathy with more extreme elements, ie, the intensity of the Palestine conflict is directly proportional to the sympathy (not neccesssarily support) of terrorists.

Further, without an Iraq invasion we might have Not Alienated Syria/Iran (TM). in 2001 the mullahs in iran were smelling the progressive wind in the mideast. The videos of iranian youth tagging walls in tehran with 'Metallica et al' were all too common and celebrated images. With the Iraq invasion, the promise of becoming a regional/minor power simply by opposing America became a valid, and more ego-stroking FP strat to pursue/more popular domestically.


some interesting preliminary musings.


In all, the geopolitical equilibria were really dicked. invading a backwater in Central Asia=Whatever/SUPER excuse/justification, no loss of political capital.

Invading the fulcrum of civilizaition/dicking up the middle east further than it was==introducing volaitility to the beaker.

Invasions, in a world without war, are a mark of a domestic political desire. Intelligence and covert warfare, coming from the hegemon, can and does fulflill all reasonable security objectives.

fin for now.




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Matthew:

- Iraq untouched
I think the major focus of the difference in the counter-factual is that as we have seen Iran using our invasion to further its political goals, Saddam would have similarly built a larger political base / sympathy with estranged elements of neighboring countries. Thus, money/men/supplies would have flowed into Iraq to counter American invasion of AFG with no check or balance.

- Gore+9/11
This part of the counter factual forks into two ways each with two sub forks
1) Gore invades AFG Only
1a) Gore invades AFG with as much or more power as Bush did
1b) Gore invades AFG with less power than Bush did

2) Gore invades AFG and Iraq
2a) Gore invades AFG and Iraq with as much or more power as bush did
2b) Gore invades AFG and Iraq with less power


Each "b" could also encompass only a war of subterfuge without a waging of a boots-on-the-ground war.

I think in both "a" scenarios one could reasonably see that the tactics would have been notably different and arguably better.

But the point of this entire exercise is that in the 1) counter factual, we are looking at a vastly different Mideast political milieu with a vastly different mindset. Iran and Iraq are long time enemies... this leads to 2 possible counter-factuals

1) Iran, Iraq non-aggression pact OR mutual defense treaty
2) Iran, Iraq hostilities

Counter-intuitively, I think each of these two are equally possible because there are so many variables; enemies recognizing that a much more dangerous enemy is around the corner can lead to a plethora of odd outcomes; also keep in mind I do not believe that Iran, Iraq neutrality would have been likely. I can not fathom how that would have worked; the political situation would not have allowed it to lead to neutrality with the US in AFG.

EITHER of these two cases... could have led to a very very dangerous situation for our exposure in AFG... And this leads to the source of my initial musings. An Iraq-led Mideast alliance against the US invasion of Islam. The conclusion I draw from this is that no matter how repugnant Bush's invasion of Iraq was, no matter how much lying he did, no matter how much it tarnished our image... his invasion of Iraq probably caused a great deal more good than harm.