Alternate (recent) history

[Ignacio Upton]

What if:

Bin Laden a Zawahiri were captured or killed at Tora Bora in December 2001....AND....the Bush Administration did NOT take us into Iraq?

Would America be safer? Also, would Bush's post-9/11 approval ratings and "wartime President" image lasted longer? Possibly keeping him at this level until today?

[Vexatious Ape]

1. Yes.

I'd still hate the prick but we would be a lot safer if we never went into Iraq and created so many more terrorists.

[Kiouni]

2. he probably would have won by a larger margin

but that's it. And old shrub would have come up with something else to lie about in order to go into Iraq.

Polls now would be unchanged if Bin Laden was captured because the majority of Americans would probably say, "I say you he dead!"

[Ignacio Upton]

3. I'm assuming that he wouldn't have gone into Iraq

Of course, he would have tried even without 9/11. We would probably have gone in under some USS Maine-style incident. Bush even proposed the idea to Blair in a January 2003 meeting, that a U.S. drone would be painted with U.N. insignia and the goal would be for provoke Saddam into shooting it down.

[jgraz]

4. you mean lost by a smaller margin

thereby requiring less cheating to change the result

[Selatius]

5. It would be a wash. America would not be safer.

Osama and Zawahiri would be gone, but it doesn't change America's history of supporting dictators and oligarchs and interference in the region either. They're the biggest reasons why the US government has historically been disliked by people in this part of the world.

I bet you Bush would fuck up Afghanistan as badly as he did with Iraq. They would be using Afghanistan as a way to make money in the form of government contracts, while blood runs in the streets. Whether or not the job is done in good faith is immaterial to their greed to just get the money.