What If 9/11 Never Happened? A Counterhistory. [View All]

[Cassandra]

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/features/19147/

This is a very long series of pieces in this week's New York Magazine. Thought you'd all find this interesting.

"As a way of marking the fifth anniversary of 9/11, we’ve attempted to provide an answer—or, rather, many answers. But we’ve done so in a roundabout manner: by asking an assortment of big thinkers and public figures to address the question, What if 9/11 never happened? Now, let’s be clear, we’re well aware that the dangers of counterfactual speculation (If Bobby Kennedy had never been shot, then Nixon would never have been elected! So no Watergate! No Carter! No Reagan! Etc., etc., etc.) are almost as grave as those of unbridled futurism. But we also see the virtues of an approach that appeals both to left-brain analytics and right-brain imagination—and that, in the process, tends to uproot subterranean assumptions and challenge conventional wisdom.
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As with Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam, history is sure to designate Iraq as the defining feature of Bush’s presidency. But unlike with LBJ—who, if it weren’t for the conflict in Southeast Asia, would be remembered for civil rights and the Great Society—it’s difficult to conceive of what Bush’s legacy would be in the absence of 9/11 and its fallout. Rampant profligacy? Record deficits? Slavish fealty to the rich? Quite possibly, all three. Or perhaps, as historian Douglas Brinkley offers , Bush would have defined his administration by taking up the challenge presented by another disaster, Hurricane Katrina: “Rather than standing on the rubble at ground zero with his bullhorn,” Brinkley says, “Bush would best be known for standing on some waterlogged roof in the Ninth Ward.” Or perhaps he would have gone down to defeat in 2004, a 9/11-free election centering on domestic affairs, in which the Democratic candidate, therefore, wouldn’t have been John Kerry but John Edwards or Dick Gephardt—or Al Gore."


Interesting little Lieberman comment: "Joe Lieberman—a miserable, deluded putz who also happens to be a casualty of the newly virulent partisanship ushered in by 9/11—would probably be the Democratic nominee for Senate in Connecticut, as opposed to a poster boy for sour grapes."