An Honest to Goodness Question..Do you think if Barack Obama were President on 9-11

[LaydeeBug]

the country would have rallied behind him, as *we* rallied behind Bush when it really happened?

Do you think we would have seen anything *EVEN* remotely close to how we were united?

If this belongs in the 9-11 forum, fine, but I think it speaks volumes as to what is, and what is not the problem in America today.

[lolly]

1. No.

They would have impeached him for it. They would not have hesitated to publicly claim that he was in collusion with the Taliban.

[gkhouston]

2. Most of the country, yes. But Obama wouldn't have ignored the warnings about bin Laden,

so 9-11 might not have happened in the first place.

What we wouldn't be hearing is the MSM implying for years that it would be unpatriotic not to rally behind the President.

[Webster Green]

3. The rethugs would start impeachment hearings the next day.

Just like they will probably do when the president is re-elected.

[LaydeeBug]

8. ain't that the damn truth, plain and simple nt

[malaise]

44. Ding ding we have a winner

[CountAllVotes]

4. 9/11 would have never happened

if Barack Obama was president ... or dare I say Al Gore?

[LaydeeBug]

10. you know what I mean...*ANY* democrat...they would have been blaming them before the sun set. nt

[Art_from_Ark]

18. And if it had happened on Al Gore's watch,

and he had been too engrossed in listening to a children's story in a 2nd grade classroom to even respond to the message "America's under attack", he would have been dragged through the coals in all sorts of committee hearings and then impeached.

[valerief]

52. Gore is not part of PNAC. Would never have happened. nt

[Art_from_Ark]

53. I know

I was just noting that Gore would have been grilled incessantly and unmercifully if such an event had happened under his watch, especially if he had shown the sort of behavior that bu$h did.

[Tigress DEM]

23. 9/11 would not have taken place - crucial information was ignored.

lie after lie http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1002&pid=1316809

[CTyankee]

45. Exactly! I am convinced that if Al Gore had won as he should have the whole

anti-terrorism apparatus that Bill Clinton had built would have stopped this plot in its tracks before Sept. 11th. Clinton had tried to tell Bush after he was elected that his #1 enemy was Al Quaida, not a foreign nation, but Bush didn't listen.

[CountAllVotes]

48. Exactly and then some ...

I won't bother to post what my other thoughts are re: this whole nightmare.

[CountAllVotes]

58. Maybe a "plot" would not have happened

If, and that is a huge if, we had our President, Mr. Al Gore in the office that he fully won!

It was revenge against the BFFE no doubt IMO.

[Kalidurga]

5. I would have rallied behind him...

unless he said it was our fault. I really hate that meme, that because a government does something the civilians of the country deserve to die. Anyway, I think he would have handled the situation better than Bush and we might not have even had to send troops into Afghanistan. I don't know about the rest of the country. I think that the response would have been similar. But, he might lose popularity if he didn't declare war on terrorists ie go to war with Afghanistan. It's really hard to say, they are very different people.

[jberryhill]

6. Absolutely not

[cynatnite]

7. If it did happen, they'd set the blame on his shoulders every day of his life. n/t

[catbyte]

9. With Obama's attention to al Qaeda, I don't think 9/11 would have happened

I think they might have thwarted it. They wouldn't have ignored Clinton's security team the way Bush did.

[LaydeeBug]

12. Ok, I understand that, but barring the warning/s, so you think republicans would have rallied? nt

[cherokeeprogressive]

11. When that day was over, I think the country would have united behind an old flat tire...

IF that tire were the only thing available.

How things would have gone under President Obama's supervision is unknowable; but I think it's a given that after the horrific events of that day the Citizens of the United States would have united exactly the way they did, and they would have done so under any other circumstances.

[LaydeeBug]

14. I am not sure about that. I seem to recall Clinton being blamed for the 1st attempt

but I was pretty young back then, so I'd have to do some digging.

[madamesilverspurs]

13. I hate your question.

But I hate more the ugliness of the national conversation that compels the asking.

-

[LaydeeBug]

19. I hate it too, but I really don't think it's *us*, I *really* think it's them, and that's sad. nt

[elleng]

15. More likely wouldn't have happened but

if it had, President Obama would have SO engaged We the People and the world that he'd be honored among the 5 best presidents.

And, of course, no Iraq war.

[CTyankee]

47. My pet theory is that bin Laden knew that with Bush our defenses were down

because the "heat was off" when Clinton left office.

[B Calm]

16. Bush failed this country and we were attacked.

If Obama had failed on 9-11 we would have never heard the end of it.

[hugo_from_TN]

17. Yes - no doubt.

[LaydeeBug]

20. that's awesome, because I hope it's true.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

21. If a Democrat had been President there would have been no unity

The Reds would have crucified him in 2004 while making a secret deal with the Taliban.

If Obama had been President, he probably would have been assassinated.

[Skip Intro]

22. Maybe. Like for a day or two. 9*11 was huge. Scary moment. Shocking.

So I could see a rally around the president effect. But, if it happened at all, it would be fleeting. Repubs would scream negligence at any Dem holding the office. Obama would be no different.

[longship]

24. A pointless contrafactus.

What if Charlie Brown was President on 9/11. Would Lucy still jerk the football away at the last moment?

Both these deserve the same consideration.

[Drunken Irishman]

27. Charlie Brown is not real. The point of this post is legitimate...

There is a group of America who has always convinced themselves that Obama is illegitimate and that hate has driven to ugly divisiveness. Even in '01, not even a full year after many liberals and Democrats felt Bush stole the election, the entire country, liberals included, rallied around him - as his approval pushed 90% nationally.

I do not see the same thing happening to Obama because of varying reasons. It's a legitimate question, even if you don't think it is.

[longship]

29. You might as well speculate 9/11 with Harry Potter as President.

Neither Obama nor Potter were president in 2001.

I will stand by my post that your OP is a senseless contrafactus. What does such a excursion into possibilities accomplish?

What if Einstein lived in ancient Greece? Would he have been forced to drink hemlock?

Yet another pointless countrafactus.

[Drunken Irishman]

33. You keep comparing Obama to fictional characters...

So, do you think Pres. Obama is fictional like Harry Potter and Charlie Brown?

You're getting hung up on the question and not the overall point. It's a statement on how much Obama is hated by a great deal of this country. You can continue comparing him to fictional characters, but for the rest of us ... the point is apt and powerful.

[longship]

36. No! It is you who puts Obama into a contrafactus.

Obama was not president in 2001. Not was Charlie Brown, nor was Harry Potter. All are equally fiction. My preference of fictional 2001 presidents is Lisabeth Salander. At least we'd be rid of men who hate women. But I demure.

Of course, everybody realizes that these excursions are useless and senseless.

Myself, other than Salander, I'd like to see Bugs Bunny as president in 2001. At least we might not only have avoided 9/11, but we'd also have a lot of good humor to go with it.

Just goes to show that contrafactus is a useless exercise. Read Douglas Hofstadter's Contrafactus in his Gödel, Escher, Bach.

By the way, what if Sponge Bob was president in 2001? The economy might suck, and we may be in a world war, but we'd all have all the crab cakes we could eat. Yummy!

[Drunken Irishman]

37. You do know Charlie Brown is not real and was never president, right?

And check yourself ... I didn't create the thread.

[longship]

41. Yes, just like Barack Obama wasn't president in 2001 either.

Sorry for the ridicule, but it seemed appropriate.

[Drunken Irishman]

43. No it doesn't...

No more than asking how Pres. Clinton would have handled 9/11 or any other president. It's a hypothetical built around a shared background of people who are not fictional and certainly have things in common.

It's no different than asking where this country would be if McCain had won in 2008. I don't find that question stupid. I find it an important one because it gives insight into the way the country looks at certain REAL people. You might dismiss this question, but I think the point is real - Obama has never been afforded the benefit of the doubt that Bush was in 2001. All you have to do is look at the whole point with bin Laden. Obama has not only kept us safe for nearly four years, he killed the man responsible for the worst terrorist attack on our soil and Republicans, and great deal of Americans, still say he's weak or giving into our enemies and he never built up as much goodwill for doing something like killing bin Laden as Bush would have been able to do.

As someone said earlier this year, if Bush had killed bin Laden, they would've been carving his face on Mt. Rushmore and it's true. So, yes, I think the question is a good one - just as asking if things would be better or worse if McCain/Palin had won last time. It puts things into perspective.

[LaydeeBug]

54. perzactly. nt

[Douglas Carpenter]

25. no, most Republicans of today consider it unpatriotic to support Democratic office holders and

consider it patriotic to try to bring them down - especially during times of a national crisis. They would have interpreted the wave of patriotism following any national crisis as a cry to remove Democratic office holders from power. At one time most Republicans would have been capable of separating partisan politics from a broad bi-partisan loyalty to the country. But today most Republicans are incapable of recognizing the legitimacy or patriotism of Democratic office holders - even centrist or conservative Democrats. That is how they really think these days.

[left on green only]

26. I think that back then, "we" responded as a country, not as supporters of a particular president

Back then being American was not nearly that much of a partisan thing.

[former-republican]

32. I feel the same way

When you looked at congress and the senate.
It was the first time in a long time they all looked united together.
Same as our country men.

[Drunken Irishman]

28. I think a great deal of the country would have, yes, but not at the #s Bush saw.

You saw it after the death of bin Laden. Obama saw a bump, but it was pretty weak and didn't even compare to bumps past presidents have seen after a major event - either good or bad. Had 9/11 happened on Obama's watch, I think his approval would have shot up to about 70% - but twenty points behind Bush's and it would have never lasted as long.

There is a group of Americans, maybe 30%, who will never, ever back a Democrat regardless of what they did. Democrats aren't like that, though ... they're not vindictive. I mean, to put this whole thing into perspective ... 9/11 happened less than a year after many Democrats felt Bush stole the election was the bane of all our existence and yet, he still pulled in 90% support after the attacks. Much, much, much of that support were Democrats who, throughout most of 9/11, hated Bush.

[mzmolly]

30. There would be no bogus "he kept us safe" meme.

That's for darned sure.

[former-republican]

31. I think most of the country would have

It's a very good question LaydeeBug and never heard it asked before.
On here or any other place for that matter.

[FrenchieCat]

34. When one sees that the President who was in office when 9/11 happened was given another term...

with the "he kept us safe" total bullshit,
and one sees the current President having killed Osama Bin Laden, and yet not assured a 2nd term...
even as he deals with the financial tornado that the last President left us with.....
you know that Pres. Obama would have been totally railroaded out of office, one way or the other.....
hell, they attempted to to railroad the last Dem President out of office without a 9/11 or a financial disaster,
and they are trying to do that now to Pres. Obama!

So hell to the naw....they would have only come together to go in and get him from his office
and escort him out of it in handcuffs if required!

[Raine]

35. NO they would've blamed him or any Democrat for the whole thing. It was Bush's fault because he

ignored the warnings. When he was told by Clinton's people he said "OK you've covered your ass" and then he proceeded to ignore the warnings. Yet after that Bush got support and a second term and continually lied that he "kept us safe".

[quaker bill]

38. You can't redo history

However, I don't think President Obama would have engaged in a throwdown with the Taliban over a pipeline deal to help Ken Lay. He also would not a been the son of a President who stationed troops in Saudi Arabia and went to war with Iraq, or been from a party that shelled Beirut. These sorts of things actually matter. Terrorism is an attempted political statement, and there are obvious reasons that these guys did not like GWB politically. They might have still gone with the attack had we elected/selected Gore, but I think installing Bush* was extra motivation all by itself. (These guys are serious fundamentalists and recall that "the sins of the father are visited upon the son unto the seventh generation"... Just being another George Bush was motivation by itself)

[smokey nj]

39. I don't think that would have happened if any Democrat were in the White House.

[joeybee12]

40. Hypotehtical since 9-11 was solely the fault of Bush's incompetence...

Gore would not have ignored the warnings like Bush and Condo-liar Rice did.

[RepublicansRZombies]

46. Fighter jets would have intercepted all four planes before any damage could be done

There would be no attack on Afghanistan, no attack on Iraq, no war on terror, no Homeland Security, no TSA

The US would still be riding high on the surplus of the Clinton Administration, after having happily paid the debt to 0, we would be looking about the globe for positive ways to use our time and energy to help people creating good will rather than terror.

[CTyankee]

50. I would hope the fighter jets would have forced the commercial airliners down

but I am wondering if they would have refused and flown on. Since they were convinced that heaven and virgins awaited them upon death, the terrorists might have just been determined to die and it wouldn't have mattered...

[kctim]

49. Yes

Yes, the events on 9-11 would have happened.
Yes, the whole country would have rallied around President Obama.
And yes, nobody here would be claiming President Obama knew about it or had anything to do with it.

[valerief]

51. If he were prez, there wouldn't have been a 9-11. He's not part of PNAC. nt

[LaydeeBug]

55. *snap!* I hope you understand what I meant...

they do NOT support their country unless their party is in the WH. If not, *everything* is wrong, and NOTHING can be done until *they* are in charge.

[burrowowl]

56. We would not have attacked

Iraq since Cheney with his secret meetings wanted to attack Iraq to get the oil fields for BP, Exxon, etc.
However!?

[trailmonkee]

57. if it happened today, there would probably be a civil war as a result...