Lets assume bush did not respond to 9/11 and did not invade Iraq?

Annie M

Saddam would still be making thousands of lives hell and terrorists would probably have blown up a few more places if no-one had taken any action.

Richard W

The terrorists would have become emboldened, as would have Sadaam and the Taliban.
We would have had nuclear terrosist attacks by now.

In case you missed it, the Islamic Extremists have said we must ALL convert to Islam or die.
Bush is smart enough to fight them there instead of here.

no_life_louis

I've often thought about that. There's a distinct possibility that we'd be better off without this war. I think the world is a much more dangerous place now. This war has solidified the terrorist movement. It has grown to proportions nobody could have imagined. What has happened is, Muslim men in all countries are turning against the United States. Osama's a very clever man. His plan worked. Before this war he was a small operation. Now? Who knows? A million man army? Even women are blowing themselves up. I know every American would be better off financially if this war never happened. Look at what's ahead of us. This war can't be won in the next 10 or 20 years. It wont happen. We may leave Iraq but Iran's next. It's going to get bloody. We chose the wrong option in our response to the tradegy of 911. Our lives will never be the same.

smack

... if bush and the american administration had taken advantage of the almost universal world sympathy instead of deciding to kill everybody, we could be enjoying a great time of cooperation and peace i think and work in conjunction with these muslim countries to root out bad elements instead of using it for an excuse to invade and take them over like they were all responsible ... immediately after 911 there were 1million iranians in the streets burning candles and praying for the US in support ... all bush and friends could think of to do was bomb everbody and take over their oil ... these are the morons that run the show ... god help us all ...

Munster

The US would have lost all credibility with world governments and the American people would have been outraged. Bush would never have been re-elected. He would have been tossed aside for lack of backbone.
The American people at the time demanded action.
It's just too bad that most have such short memories and weak stomachs.

Richard H

The world would without question be a safer place. There was never any evidence that Iraq harboured terrorists, in fact the evidence suggested that Saddam despised religious extremists, why did USA/ UK invade? Only two people can answer that.
I am not some loony lefty either!
We should have invaded Afghanistan, we should also have finished the job before committing our troops to other arenas, causing further problems.
Both Blair and Bush are not military tacticians, it appears they have waged their own wars believing they are, they've completely f**cked it up as a result.

Phillip

I don't believe the world would have done anything except for more UN security resolutions and more sanctions.

kitty fresh & hissin' crew

I think that more attacks would have occured and that his critics would continue their rantings- only from the opposite side of the fence.

jojo

if he had spent more time on bin laden whilst he was in afghanistan al queda would have been mortally wounded. Funding for terrorist cells would have been interuppted earlier and muslims in the UK would not feel they were being attacked personally, We would have more support for Blair in the UK and Bush in USA.

Come the next General Election Cameron would not have stood much of a chance of winning and we almost definitely would not have a tory government in a few years.

idracab101

The only thing I can calculate differently is the history books. Why? When we were in grade school we read about presidents making decisions during their presidencies. Emancipation, Boston Tea Party, Civics, Law and Constitutionalism and most importantly decisions on war all the way down to Generals and popular LT's and militia's and sergeants. You name the war, or conflict, you can name some pretty popular people that had served in those wars and done amazing things. Fast FWD 80 years form now and do you see my point? Were all dead, and our great grandchildren are reading about President Bush. He does not, nor does any president want to be written about to being portrayed as an indecisive coward. Immediate reaction, immediate retaliation. Yeah, there probably could have been a better political answer to the nine one one attacks, but at that moment didn't we ALL say to ourselves (when we found out what was actually going on) that it was time for someone to pay? America is strong and always has been and always will be.

justagrandma

The response to 9/11 was to find Bin Ladin in Afghanistan. That was proper. The world was with us on that one. The idea that Iraq is or was any part of a 9/11 response hasn't ever been linked.
So many reasons have been given for the invasion, that it does make your head spin, but even if it was just bad intelligence, we went in to rid the world of Saddam, or give them democracy, or because some guy had lunch (maybe, maybe not) with someone else in April. Its always risky to look in hindsight at what would be happening now, but I would assume, Saddam would be killing his own, as his own are now killing each other. The terrorists would have found another reason for hating the west, they aren't good guys you know. Possibly the US wouldn't be in the position of having lost the moral high ground, and we could have engendered more of a group effort in what is going to become a global religious war. We may have blown it there, so many countries are out of sorts with us that its easier to hate us than the Muslim extremists burning their cities.

tweetybird92457

I don't understand why he would invade Iraq since Bush was always informed that Iraq had neither WMD or was involved in 9/11.

And now he has admitted that Iraq never had WMD and was never involved with what happend on 9/11.

I am not anti Bush or anti Blair, I don't believe a country has a right to invade another country under false pretenses or lies.

Scratch-N-Sniff

I wouldn't be spending long "vacations" away from my wife in the desert ducking bullets.

trucker

their mindset is like our mindset used to be in napoleonic times, when we used to enjoy a scrap and generals were like pop stars, we have lost that mindset.The muslims are hell bent on a holy war, but they are assuming that they are the holy ones, and they will win, its impossable for bush not to have retaliated. What makes the muslims feel thet are rightous is the immoral standards of the west, and we brag about our immorality, this enflames the muslims who see themselves as moraly superior,their way is to force us to be as moraly clean as they think they are, by using satanic methods of force, We feel we are superior to them because we have freedom of choice, they have forced us into war, the outcome will be that we will chastise each outher, because of our suffering we will eventualy regain our morals in day to day living they will be defeated causing them to realise that force was the wrong way, Bush has been chosen to defend our faith and the west, if bush attacks the evil things of western life in his own land, and britain in theirs, this will increase
his power in gods eyes, and justifie the u.s. even more and strengthen his arm even more, Bush wants us to be moraly correct by our own choice, muslims want us to be moraly correct by force.God will not accept followers who are forced to be followers with a gun to their back.Freedom must be defended at all cost.

The Word

Imagine Los Angeles uninhabital for the next 100yrs Imagine our economy in ruins. Imagine fifty dollars for a box of cookies, Imagine. These people are not going to stop. Unless we stop them.

sam

we would be our marry selves and half of our military fam &friends would STILL be alive

draciron

9-11 only sped up the invasion of Iraq. It did not cause it nor did it change the fact that the US and Iraq were going to war.

Cause of the war in Iraq.

Before the first Gulf war Isreal blew up a breeder reactor in Iraq. It was there so that Iraq could obtain nuclear weapons. A goal Sadam openly admited.

Sadam first invaded Kuwait which destabilized oil in the region, caused all of our allies in the region to ask us to remove them and galvenized the US into action against a very hostile and warlike nation.

In the war against Iran, Iraq used Kurdish children as machine gun fodder just as Iran did. Normally unarmed they were forced to run into certain death. The tactic being to run the enemy out of ammo then send reguler troops in to kill the enemy machine gunners. In this same war Iraq used poison gas. It's first use of a WMD.

Sadam was a wannabe Hitler. His regime was notoriously brutal. While he might be just south of a million Iraqis killed it was not much lower than a million. We entered the Balkens for a mere tens of thousands of murdered. Why did we wait so long to end Sadam's murder spree?

Sadam after the first Gulf war again used poison gas. This time against Iraqis. The first Gulf war imposed restrictions against Iraq having WMDs. Sadam flouted these restrictions more and more each year. Inspectors were given a shell game and almost openly made to wait while Iraqis moved what they were not supposed to see somewhere else. Finally Sadam refused to even let the inspectors into key sights. With his proven track record of using WMDs the world could ill afford to allow Sadam to continue to develop them.

Finally Iraq took a very aggresive stance with the US. Iraq fired on US warplanes on a reguler basis towards the end. Iraqi aircraft routinely violated no fly zones. Sadam openly dared the US and the world to do somehting about it.

Finally America and I suspect many Britons felt the first Gulf war was stopped too soon. That the job was incomplete. Bush I am certain felt an obligation to finish what his father started. There is a great deal of personal animosity between Bush and Sadam. More so the Saudis hated Sadam and wanted him gone. Bush and the Saudis were closely allied at this time.

So in short even if 9-11 never happened war with Iraq was inevitable.

As for what would have happened if we had not invaded Iraq.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a token. Before invading Iraq terrorists and the Taliban just moved into Pakistan to wait out American patience. The Arab world mostly cheered upon learning about 9-11. Palistinian organizations in particuler had open celibrations over 9-11. The Arab world was emboldened and plans for even bigger attacks were openly discussed.

Most of the world thought the US and UK was bluffing when we threatened to invade Iraq unless Sadam allowed full access to UN inspectors. Sadam laughed in our face. We had no choice but to invade. Had we not then the West would have seen a huge wave of terrorism. We would have been considered impotent, weak and a soft target. Arabs would have felt they had impunity in Arab lands. Sadam would have continued and probably obtained within a few years at least one nuclear weapon. Sadam would have used it too.

Back in the US if Bush had not invaded Iraq he probably would have been yanked out of the Whitehouse. People were angry. Enraged over 9-11. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq did a great deal to smooth people's rage. We were doing something. We were fighting back. That Iraq had little to do with terrorism was not even considered. Though the really important issue, that is of terrorists gain nuclear weapons and other WMDs from Iraq was a serious concern.

Economically we'd been devestated. The war with Iraq has done several benificial things for the US economy. When 9-11 happened the outsource flood which started under Clinton was reaching staggering proportions. The dot.com boom which saved Clinton's bacon economically was crashed. People were getting laid off all over the place. Jobs were becoming scarce and economic depression was a near certainty.

The war with Iraq first opened up huge Government coffers. Suddenly tens of thousand so of jobs opened up as National Guard and support personal went to Iraq. Jobs as contract workers trippled most people's wages. Much of it since it was overseas work was tax free. So the net effect was to quadruple the wages of tens of thousands of Americans. Reporters, contractors directly hired by the Iraqi Gov, security consultants and bodyguards. The flood of jobs was a mini-economic boom and forstalled the economic collapse which outsourcing had produced.

So without the war in Iraq you had the seeds for a very turbulent US. Even if 9-11 hadn't happened militias, racist organizations, anti-Gov organizations were rising rapidly. The American sense of nation was at probably the lowest ebb since the Cival war. Poltitically the parties were polorizing and independent parties were on the verge of making major gains. Terrorists were growing more and more brazen and the US was becoming thier favorite target. So even without 9-11 we were not having a good time. Gore's poor acceptance of losing the race had created a great deal of political tension in the nation.

Then came 9-11. Thousands of Americans died in a single day. We were beyond enraged by this act. Had the President stood by I think he would have literally been lynched on the front lawn. Americans were talking about and forming groups to go over to the Mid East and kill terrorists on their own. Many were more than talk. They were dead serious. If not Iraq another nation needed to be invaded for the security of the US internal and external. To prevent US private citizen armies from taking revenge against both local and forign Arabs. It was also necessary to unite the US in a common purpose as the anger would have torn us apart had we not done something substantial. Nobody considered invading Afghanistan as substantial. After invading Iraq suddenly Arab nations took us serious. Many of them expelled and even arrested terrorists. Funding was exposed and we were able to stop many terrorist acts around the world simply by removing the money to accomplish them. Since the invasion of Iraq terrorism has been almost exclusively home grown. The reason being that the terrorist organizations do not have the funding to carry on external acts. The invasion of Iraq was crucial in this. Though Iraq could have easily been Pakistan, Syria, Sudan or any of the other nations which were openly supporting terrorists. Sadam just jumped up and said invade me. Made our choice easy.

I would say that the invasion of Iraq has saved 10 lives for every one it has cost. World wide that is. The UK, France, Italy, Isreal, they are not safe from terrorism no matter what they do. They are the West. They are the enemies of the Arabs for no other reason that they are the West. A threat to them culturally and an object of jealousy economically. The London train bombings are just a short taste of the terrorism that would have befallen the UK had the funding not been cut off. Thousands more Americans and Europeans would have died. 9-11 would have been repeated by now. Instead locals are trained. Explosives hard to obtain. The insurgency in Iraq has drained off many of those who'd been active terrorists in the West otherwise. Kept them busy and actually killing fellow arabs. Attacks have been localized. Almost all taking place in Arab nations since 9-11. The attacks on Spain and UK being the only sucessfull major ops outside of Muslim lands since.

Think about it. Until we responded and responded with force attacks on the West had become increasingly violent and frequent. The lack of response was critical in gaining funding and in the feelings Arab nations had that it was safe to harbour terrorists. Those were erased by the invasion of Iraq. The so called terrorists recruited in Iraq are localized. They are losing more than they can recruit. They have finally stepped back from suicide bombs mostly I suspect because they've run short on willing martyrs.

While militarily the current stratigiy in Iraq is an abysmal failure. The US is notoriously bad at fighting guerillas. It's effect on terrorism has been profound. I personally feel we overstayed. We should have left after Sadam was captured. Maybe after the elections started pulling out. We could have left then and left with honor. We are now trapped. We cannot afford to be run out of Iraq. Nor is what we doing very constructive. It will eventually become counter productive if we keep it up. I personally feel we should devide up Iraq. 3 countries. Let the Turks whine. If they want it differently let THEM go stabilize Iraq. It's not like we are faced with a seculer Turkey anymore. The fanatics have gained power and they will turn on us no matter what we do.

Simon D

Two separate questions.

If Bush had not responded to 9/11.
Then it is possible that the Taliban would still control Afghanistan. Which would be a bad thing. But Bin Laden would be dead or captured. The outrage and grief felt by the world was real, co-ordinated effort would have meant the end of Bin Laden, and Al Queda would be marginalised with their leaders dead. This was an attack on all civilisation not just America. The world would not have let it pass. Bush alienated the good feeling he could have used with his arrogant policies.

If Bush did not invade Iraq.
Then the world would still be focused on Afghanistan, the moderate Muslims would support us, and terrorism in general would be targeted more effectively. The world would be a better place.

pensterx

Just one point. What has iraq got to do with 9/11. 9/11 was committed by terrorists under Osama Bin Laden who was ideologically opposed to Saddam Husseins regime due to the secular nature of Iraq.

I think you have been listening to your President's lies again. There has been no proven connection between Bin Laden and Saddam or Iraq and no connection between Iraq and 9/11.

After the first Iraq George Bush senior stated that Iraq was contained militarily and could not produce any weapons. Even when George junior was in power the Republican govt stated that iraq was no threat. Then suddenly after 9/11 they target Iraq as being developers of chemical weapons and nukes (when the don't even have a reactor). How stupid you Yanks were for believing this BS.

nikkor13

No one would have done anything. If Algore was president he'd probably try to sue somebody. A lot of handwringing. And we'd have lost San Francisco by now to a nuke smuggled in on a container ship. They almost did it anyway in Bush's first term. Bush's people barely caught it in time. Intercepted the phone traffic. Algore would not have. Dems are against tapping phones. So, goodbye SF. Not sure if going into Iraq was a good idea anyway, and I'm a big Bush fan. I question whether the whole country is worth one American life. These people kill each other for sport. Shiites and Sunnis hate each other way more than they do Americans. Why try to get in between them? Stand back and let them slaughter each other. It's what they're born to do. That's what they're religion teaches. Kill, kill, and keep killing. It's impossible to stop. Rather than invade after 9-11, I would have bombed them back to the Stone Age. And tell Iran, "You're next". But trying to rebuild the lives of whacko Arabs is not worth the death of one American soldier.

goonern014

watch this and wake up please the facts are all there you just gotta look at them watch the docu/film in the link. please.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-6495462761605341661&q=martial+law
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-82095917705734983&q=bohemian+grove

Bryan

I support the war in Iraq in general because in the end I believe it will be the right thing for the Iraqi people. However, I do not believe the United States was under an imminent threat from Iraq or Saddam Hussein. Therefore, an invasion was not absolutely necessary. The Bush administration was over reaching in it's goals and now we do have a mess in Iraq. The country is on the brink of civil war. Do not misread this because I do not believe that we can abandon Iraq and it's people. In the case of responding to 911 and the invasion of Afghanistan, this was wholly proper and should have been prosecuted fully and with all the administration's attentions.

If Mr. Bush had not responded to 911 then we would have been attacked again by now. To fail to respond would have been viewed as weakness by the terrorists and would have emboldened their actions. Whether you agree with Iraq or not, one fact cannot be denied. Their are vast amounts of terrorist resources, both in money and manpower tied up there and this is less for them to use against other targets in the world. So by extension, the war in Iraq has indeed made us safer. There are only two ways to handle terrorism, meet the challenge in a strong resolute fashion, or stick our heads in the sand and wait for the next attack. We have seen both approaches used and frankly the former is more preferable than the latter.

bootycreord

i would imagine the Kurds would have been poisoned with gas by chemical ali. What kind of people would we be if we let this happen. Yes we would have saved lives and money but the fact is we all have a consience and i still have visions of that village where everyone was gassed.

dances with unicorns

Had Bush chosen not to attack Iraq, 3,000+ soldiers would presumably still be alive, and billions of dollars could have been spent on security measures here at home that might actually have HELPED.

skylolo

Bush did the right thing .The worst thing you can do now is cut and run.Do you think theese people will leave us alone when we have pulled out ?Make no misake !Even those people who are for us will turn against us .We have no choice but to stay on and fight .I think they will be turning up on our door steps if we pull -out.

Mike

Well I don't think the situation in Iraq would have changed, the UN would still be complaining about weapons inspectors not being given enough access and the Iraq government would still be ignoring sanctions and smuggling oil.

As for the situation in America, I have no doubt that people would be complaining about president Bush doing nothing to fight terrorism and generally blaming him for all the worlds problems.

Mark G

There is a small possibility that long term we would have invade Afghanistan. I think that the US was gearing up for a second invasion of Iraq before 9/11 so assume that that may have still gone ahead, although I doubt that it would have got UK backing.

I think that the world would have been a safer place if the US had turned the other cheek. I don't thank that North Korea would have made a weapons test nor do I think the situation in Iran would have developed. Saying that without the war in terror it is unlikely that Bush would have had a second term in office, in which case I suspect that the US might have been trying to do something about global warming.

JD417

we'd be up poo creak with no toilet paper.... cause whilst bush is a oil hungry war munger, the united nations would have done nothing.

Guineapig

On the 9th September 2001, the benchmark for terrorist atrocities was moved beyond all civilised reasoning.

Sadly, the reason for the ongoing activity of Islamic based terrorism now, is probably twofold:
1. The 'Israeli Factor'. Clearly, a solution, which is acceptable to the Middle East countries, would be a step in the right direction.
2. The message of Holy War coming from fundamentalist Muslims who want an Islamic world.

The reasons for the World Trade Centre atrocity and the aspirations of fundamentalist Muslims were never going to be solved by invading Iraq or 'sorting out' Afghanistan.

We have an organisation called the United Nations, which was created to prevent such events and foster communication between peoples of the World.

If Osama Bin Laden once worked for the CIA/FBI then he can communicate well enough in English. Dialogue should have been opened with him and his followers to find out the reason for the atrocities in New York - it seems to me that has not yet been established.

As for the fundamentalist Muslims aiming for an Islamic World - well one has to ask why? What can Islam bring to the World that would improve the lot of the World's people? Can Islam see off hunger and poverty, poor human rights, pending environmental disaster etc etc? If so, then we need to know how!

If Bush had not responded to 9/11 nothing would have been any different, except that the different tribes and religious sects in Afghanistan would be killing each other instead of the occupying â€˜peace keepingâ€™ forces of other nations, and Saddam Hussein would still be ruling Iraq with an iron hand of fear and the killing would have been restricted to his activities, instead of religious sects killing each other and fundamentalist terrorists from outside adding their own brand of killings.

However, our World leaders lack the logic and perception to clearly take an impartial view of situations from all angles and both sides - and whilst this continues they will never learn from history.

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