If 9/11 happened today...

...how would it be different than it happening 11 years ago? (Assuming it happened today and not then, meaning no War on Terror and OBL is alive)

For one thing, we'd have cell phone video from inside the planes and towers. People would be live-Tweeting it, giving us valuable insight to the minute-by-minute events of the day. Maybe information would filter to the other planes faster, causing the passengers to fight back.

I imagine both presidential campaigns would be suspended for at least a few weeks.

I can't imagine the Obama administration rushing to go into Iraq, though I think we'd have boots on the ground in Afghanistan just as fast.

But I don't know if we'd have the national coming-together that we did then. Our politics are so much more partisan and extreme then they were in 2001. I fear there would be a massive rush to pin the responsibility on Obama personally, and national reconciliation would be overtaken by gridlock and blame.

It's an interesting hypothetical.

It's also a distasteful topic of conversation.

Ooooooh, how voyueristic would we be???? I don't care to know.

I think the ODS-ers would probably start getting a bit bolder with the "N", word.

I don't think it's distasteful. The world has changed a lot since 2001. And it's not as if we're totally immune from the threat of another attack...

If it happened today the Republican House would impeach Obama within the week--mocked, quite properly, by the Senate, with no trial to follow--and force a constitutional crisis as it completely failed to make it possible for any sort of counter-terrorism action to be taken. The Republicans wouldn't back down an inch until the inevitable assassination attempt on Obama by some wingnut, and perhaps not even then.

And find a way to claim it was his fault, that he knew about it, even that he orchestrated it to win the election.

Very true. I think it would take more than box cutters to hijack a plane now. Back then passengers were told to cooperate in that situation. I don't see that happening now.

Probably

Obviously..

I don't know about it being less partisan back then. It had only been a short time after the 2000 election and Democrats were still questioning whether or not Bush was legitimate. Before that there was Clinton vs. Newt Gingrich. We've been very partisan in this country since the 1990s.

Far as Obama taking blame, he's passed the buck to Bush ever since being elected so I doubt that would change here. He's certainly no Harry Truman or JFK in that aspect.

You mean like Michael Moore did, right?

If it happened today, Obama would apologize to the terrorists for offending their sensibilities. He might even bow to them once or twice for good measure.

Your side is far more infatuated with Moore than anyone else here.

I'll see you one Moore and raise you a Coulter, a Malkin, a Limbaugh, a Beck...

Nice Dodge, but my point still stands.

Your point, just like every other point you make, does not stand. It has stumbled down the side of a hill into quicksand and is being passionately raped in the face by a monkey as it slowly sinks to its death.


As for the topic at hand, I suspect we'd see more 9/11 truthers than we have over the last 11 years. I suspect that movement would absorb a lot of the Obama birthers.

And you'd celebrate 3,000 dead New Yorkers and government jackboots, right?

Just go ahead and say yes.

No, since it's not true, especially if you've read my other posts.

But since you have a reading problem, I'll forgive you this time.

This is a hell of a what-if. If 9/11 had not happened when it did, George W Bush would very likely have been a one-term President and we'd be at the tail-end of John Kerry's second term right now instead of Obama's first.

That said, the invasion of Afghanistan would probably still happen. There would be no Iraq war, since the extra years would have shown Saddam to be no real threat to anyone but his own population. Our military would have been drawn down quite a bit had 9/11 not happened in 2001 and we would likely not have the wherewithall to launch a major invasion of Iraq anyway.

The economy would be in different condition, tho exactly what is impossible to assess.

That only came about as a result of 9/11. Had that not happened, we'd still be getting the same nonsense.

On the plus side, there'd be no TSA, no Department of Homeland Security, and no Patriot Act without 9/11 happening when it did.

Roughly the same confusion.

There still wouldn't be a protocol or clear path for escalating a hijack situation to the military for a response.

The communication systems aboard Air Force One would probably still be outdated as hell and everything would be overloaded just like before. Air Force One is suppose to be a full flying white house in keeping with the Continuity in Government plan, but it failed big time that day.

Intelligence wouldn't have changed at all and people like Atta who shouldn't have been here at all would still walk right through. Meanwhile the agency who sat on that little tidbit would still be sitting on it.

I think looking at the alternate possibilities on 9/11 is fascinating. Not the "government made it happen" nonsense, but the genuine twists of fate that could have gone any number of ways.

What if Al Gore were president instead of Bush? It could easily have happened.

What if the passengers on Flight 93 hadn't been able to fight back? Would it have hit the Capitol Building? Would our entire government have been beheaded?

What if the hijackers had been just slightly better pilots and hit the WTC buildings lower? How much higher would the death toll have been?

You're living in a dream land if you think the financial crises wouldn't have happened under a Kerry presidency.

There are two different hypotheticals: What if ANOTHER 9/11 happened today vs. What if 9/11 happened in 2012 rather than 2001?

I think only the first one is remotely answerable. It would be a much different world if 9/11/01 didn't happen, and we can only spitball as to how. I doubt if Bush 43 would have gotten another term. I don't know if Kerry would have gotten the nomination, or if Gore would have made a second run? 9/11 has shaped us all and our culture in so many minor and major ways, it's hard to think about how the politics, culture etc. of a world that only had 9/11/12 take place.

In terms of what would happen if a second 9/11-level terrorist attack actually succeeded, that's also hard to say, but at least I suppose I can make some educated guesses.

1. Obama would get much more of the blame. In part that would be fair, since we have had the very public realization that terrorism can potentially strike here, and we've increased spending on counter-terrorism measures a bunch. But in part it's because the political climate is so much more divided. It still amazes me that President Bush generally got a pass though 9/11 happened under his watch.

2. We would not be so quick to go to war. After our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, I would like to think that someone would put the brakes on "Let's spend another several bajillion on a war that could otherwise be avoided." That's probably wishful thinking, though.

3. People from all political perspectives would be seizing on the crisis as an opportunity. Democrats would be saying things of not changing horses midstream and that Obama would be better to stay in office than Mitt Romney and his seeming indifference to foreign affairs, while Republicans would be talking about how it shows that Obama is not fit to lead and can't keep us safe.

They all drive the same make of car? Who says there can't be common ground?

It wouldn't happen today because our current President isn't a complete piece of dog shit which would ignore absolutely clear, detailed, specific, and persistent warnings from CIA. Haven't you folks seen the latest 9/11 information from the NYT? It shows Bush's incompetence was worse than anyone, even his worst critics, believed and they really were to blame for not stopping 9/11 when they had all the information they needed. A bunch of neo-con shit stains thought taking reasonable actions against the 9/11 plot would distract from invading Iraq therefor they ordered the CIA to ignore it. No wonder Bush wanted to keep all of this classified. Bush was the worst President in our nation's history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=1

All a bunch of BS that has been repeated before.

There was no intelligence about the 9-11 plot before it happened that was remotely actionable.

We would apologize for making the Muslims mad.

True, but back then almost every jet hijacking was about money, and the hijackers were not suicidal. It made sense to cooperate - as a passenger it wasn't your money going to the hijackers.

I wouldn't blame Obama any more than I blamed Bush.

I place the blame where it belongs: on extremist Islamic terrorists.

And I don't think Obama would or could have done anything more with the vague "warnings" that happened before hand. No one knew when or where "something" was going to happen. America is a fairly large country. I don't think it's reasonable to think any President could have stopped it.

I would blame the Islamic terrorists, but I seem to recall roasting the Bush administration for ignoring the warnings that bin Laden was determined to strike in the US and ignoring the warnings that Islamic extremists were here in the US training on simulators to fly jets, but not on how to...you know...LAND them.

It's so much easier to pass judgement with hindsight.

On a personal level my life would be so totally different as to be impossible to predict. It's possible that I might have ended up studying Int Poli-Econ instead of the Poli-Sci/Pre-Law track I was on but VERY doubtful I would have joined the military after college. Change those, and change everything.

http://sandiegofreepress.org/2012/0...en-more-warnings-about-al-qaeda/#.UFAZl1HPX0c

That's right, the same people who ignored 9/11 and let it happen will be the same shit bags who get back into power if you vote for any Republican Presidential candidate for the next 30 years. That right there is an excellent objective reason to never vote for those cock suckers again. As far as I'm concerned their incompetence allowed 9/11 to happen and I can never forgive them for it.

Christ, you are dense sometimes. This is all new stuff which Bush & cronies kept hidden and classified refusing to release. Why? Simple it showed that there was indeed a mountain of evidence including some of which which was actionable even talking about Saudi students going to flight schools in South Florida and specifically naming the WTC and government buildings in Washington as targets for hijacked airplanes to be flown into. They even gave a time frame of which month it would occur in.

There was a HUGE amount there that was actionable and the Bush shitheads specifically and deliberately decided not to take action on it because they thought it would distract from trumping up a case against Saddam which was their one and only priority the second they took office. Read the NYTs article because it has a lot of new information about 9/11 in it which the Bushies deliberately hide.