Amusing political advertisement (NSFW!)

[ka9q]

And had Nader not run in 2000, it is almost certain that Albert Gore, not George W. Bush, would have been president on 11 September 2001.

How different things might have been. Kinda like if Henry VIII had had a centrifuge.

[ka9q]

With electronic voting machines, prioritizing could be a relatively straight forward process, I suppose.

Electronic voting is extremely controversial in the United States, and with good reason. The election commissions that certify these machines were, for a long time, technically clueless and deaf to the security concerns voiced by many computer people. The market is dominated by one player, Diebold, who takes a very proprietary attitude toward their products. They expect everyone to just trust them because they also make ATMs. They've made it especially hard to get the counterintuitive message across that security through obscurity is a very dangerous practice.

The commissions began to pay attention only after numerous third-party technical invesigations showed how many of these machines could be subverted, at least in theory.  There is little if any meaningful auditing, so even though there's been no hard evidence of cheating in any real election it has also been impossible to rule out. It's just very hard to design electronic voting machines with very high security and almost impossible to design them that everyone can see as such.

In California, the preferred voting system is a large computer-readable marked paper ballot that can be audited by hand. Purely electronic machines are available for the disabled but they do not seem to be used much.

Any lack of complaint about the 2008 election was simply because the McCain/Palin ticket was so bad that it made the Big O look like a prince.

That's certainly true but I was actually referring to the two-faced nature of the Obama/Biden ticket. A lot of people got thoroughly taken in 2008, including yours truly, into thinking that we finally had a viable choice that was a net positive, not just the lesser of two evils.

To think that I actually donated money to a political campaign for the first time in my life in 2008....needless to say, in 2012 I reverted to voting for the lesser of two evils while making it clear to the many fundraising callers that they were wasting their time.

[gillianren]

And had Nader not run in 2000, it is almost certain that Albert Gore, not George W. Bush, would have been president on 11 September 2001.

How different things might have been. Kinda like if Henry VIII had had a centrifuge.

It's a controversial opinion, but I believe that, had he won (which I also attribute largely to Nader, particularly in Florida), 11 September 2001 would have been just another day.  I mean, we know that the Clinton administration left a lot of advice to the incoming administration on Bin Laden and what they believed should be done about him.  A lot of it was things that the Bush the Younger administration ended up doing afterward but couldn't be bothered with before.  It is possible that an attack during the theoretical Gore administration would have been successful, but I believe a Gore administration would have been prepared in a way the Bush administration was not.  Gore wouldn't have demanded that his advisors focus on Saddam Hussein starting in March 2001, either.

[raven]

This is why I think we should do away with political parties all together.
This petty squabbling and us vs. them decisiveness just distracts from real issues.

[ka9q]

Unfortunately, the way governments and elections work there is a very strong incentive to join a political party. That is, you won't get very far unless you are a member of a party.

Washington may have been right, but he didn't offer a practical alternative.

[ka9q]

It's a controversial opinion, but I believe that, had he won [...] 11 September 2001 would have been just another day.

That's fascinating to think about, but of course we have no way to ever know. We don't have a parallel earth on which we can test that theory -- or live the years 2001 through 2008 ourselves without George W. Bush as president.

The presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia was one of bin Laden's stated reasons for attacking the US. It's possible that had Gore withdrawn them soon after taking office bin Laden might have aborted his plot, but given his other grievances it seems more likely that he'd have continued his "planes project".

But I agree that the response would have been very different. Gore already had experience with al Qaeda as Clinton's VP, and it's quite likely he would have given them a much higher priority in the months leading up to 11 September. And had he failed, and the attack happened under Gore as it actually happened under Bush, I think his response would have been totally different. We would still have attacked Afghanistan in retaliation, but we would have caught bin Laden fairly quickly. And Gore certainly wouldn't fabricate claims about Iraqi WMD to attack that country. We wouldn't now have a US ex-president who is an unindicted war criminal.

[raven]

I agree with most of that, but how would a change in sitting president change how fast bin Ladin was captured? Some of the resources spent toward Iraq could have been pointed toward getting the guy, but other than that . . .?

[ka9q]

A different president would have conducted the search for bin Laden very differently. He wouldn't have given up right after trapping bin Laden in Bora Bora and turned his sights on Iraq to resolve his lingering daddy issues.

Also, don't forget the degree to which George W. Bush thoroughly alienated everyone who might have helped us find bin Laden. Do you recall that right after 9/11 there were candelight vigils in Tehran, of all places? Bush sure squandered that good will in a hurry.

Large, well-endowed military or paramilitary security organizations often seem to think they can do it all themselves without civilian help. But consider some of the larger manhunts in recent US history. The DC Beltway snipers were found by an alert truck driver at a rest stop. And despite a heavy-handed house-to-house search by heavily armed policemen, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wasn't found until an alert citizen noticed something wrong with his boat in his backyard. You alienate the population that can help you at your own risk.

Hmm, maybe this explains the effectiveness of the Underground in Nazi-occupied Europe despite the extraordinary brutality of the occupation tactics. The Germans certainly didn't have the enthusiastic support of the local population.

[raven]

That makes some sense, though how much better Al would have done is up for eternal debate.
One can only wander.
I agree that you certainly need the support of the local population, as an invading army is always outnumbered. Even if they don't engage directly, civilians can harbour local combatants, spy, sabotage, etcetera.

[Peter B]

This is why I think we should do away with political parties all together.
This petty squabbling and us vs. them decisiveness just distracts from real issues.

As ka9q said, that would be effectively impossible.

How, precisely, could you unscramble that omelette?

To be fair, it's worth noting that in Australian federal elections the proportion of votes given to minor party candidates has steadily grown since the 1970s, and is now over 20%. But the nature of both the electoral system and the Parliamentary system suggest that a Parliament of independents just won't occur: choosing a member for the next three years means you have to compromise on the extent to which your political views agree with those of the various candidates; and a Parliament full of politicians with differing views is going to mean constant realignments as issues arise. The idea of long-term planning, which is vital for a country's national interest, would be next to impossible.

[Peter B]

Also, don't forget the degree to which George W. Bush thoroughly alienated everyone who might have helped us find bin Laden. Do you recall that right after 9/11 there were candelight vigils in Tehran, of all places? Bush sure squandered that good will in a hurry.

This is a point worth repeating. Islam is not a monolithic force, and a nuanced understanding of the differences within that religion would have paid huge dividends in the aftermath of 9/11. I understand, for example, that Iran has taken in tens of thousands of refugees from Afghanistan (in fact it could be hundreds of thousands), and that the Iranian government had no love for the Taliban.

And consider the Syrian Civil War right now: Al Qaeda fighters are on one side, and Hezbollah are on the opposing side. The fact that they both dislike the USA and Israel is largely irrelevant - their religious views are quite different.

[gillianren]

The presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia was one of bin Laden's stated reasons for attacking the US. It's possible that had Gore withdrawn them soon after taking office bin Laden might have aborted his plot, but given his other grievances it seems more likely that he'd have continued his "planes project".

Certainly true.  But I think Gore would have started doing something before we were attacked, because I think he would have listened to his intelligence agencies--and, again, the information the Clinton administration passed on.

[qt]

We wouldn't now have a US ex-president who is an unindicted war criminal.

I'm not sure the author of the statement "Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action" would have suddenly developed a scrupulous conscience.  The idea that it's only terrorism when other people do it enjoys widespread bipartisan support among American politicians, and the American people.  From a paper by William Odom,

Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today’s war on terrorism merely make the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.

Lest one think that this statement must have been authored by some drug-smoking hippie wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, William Odom was a US army three star general, and was appointed the director of the NSA by Ronald Reagan.

When was the last time the US had a president who was not an unindicted war criminal?

[ka9q]

I'm not sure the author of the statement "Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action" would have suddenly developed a scrupulous conscience.

The invasion of Iraq could hardly have been a covert action. Anyway, Gore seems to have gotten a lot more conscientious after leaving office. I guess losing power does that to you.

Lest one think that this statement must have been authored by some drug-smoking hippie wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, William Odom was a US army three star general, and was appointed the director of the NSA by Ronald Reagan.

Yes, I was very surprised and impressed that someone in his position and with his presumed politics could write such a well-reasoned and enlightened argument against W's war in Iraq. Maybe I underestimate those people with the stars sometimes.

When was the last time the US had a president who was not an unindicted war criminal?

It's a matter of degree. As I understand it, it's legal to fight a war of choice if you first get UN Security Council approval, as Bush Sr did for the first Iraq war. But it's illegal to fight anything but a purely defensive war (e.g., repelling an attack) without Security Council approval, yet Bush Jr. invaded Iraq on his own schedule even after he'd been turned down by the Security Council. And he almost certainly falsified evidence to get the US Congress and public to reluctantly go along. Despite the many brush fires we've gotten ourselves into it's hard to find a better example of a purely aggressive, criminal war action by a US president than that one.

[raven]

This is why I think we should do away with political parties all together.
This petty squabbling and us vs. them decisiveness just distracts from real issues.

As ka9q said, that would be effectively impossible.

How, precisely, could you unscramble that omelette?

No parties whatsoever. As a Canadian, I see far too many benchsitters who just vote with the party line. I sadly see no way of bringing this to past in an existing country, too many vested interests.