After President Gore won in 2000, there was a little grumbling from the Right at the really tight race, but right-wing pundits most comforted themself with how close it had been, and made public professions of support for democracy.
There were certain signs in the wind of the attack, but the problem is that that describes any day since the early Seventies. A tidal wave of information comes in each day, and only some of its true, and most of its disorganized so that its true significance is hid. Its also true that a lack of imagination plagued some individuals in the bueraucracy, but thats almost a redundancy. Bueraucracy and lack of imagination.
A few writers had speculated. Tom Clancy wrote a book about a Japanese kamikaze attack by a 747 on Capitol Hill by a lone nut driven to grief by a secret war between the US and Japan. An unimportant game designer and gamemaster named Eric Ashley had run a Champions game about some lunatic enviromental terrorists crashing a 747 into World Trade Tower One. Of course, the superheroes saved the day in his version.
Clinton had passed on lobbing a Tomahawk at Bin Laden, and Gore didn't really get a chance to do so in this version.
And then 9/11 happened.
Rage gripped the nation, even stronger than in the Prime Timeline for here the Left was in charge, and the Right was willing to follow if the Left called for war. That was no different, but the difference was the level of enthusiasm from the party out of power. On the Left, it had been occasionally muted, or even outright antagonistic at first.
Gore had no choice but to go after Afghanistan. He gave the UN some time, but mostly blew them off. War came, but the problem was that the leadership was getting disquieted. Sure it was fun to go to war, but that was not who they were. And frankly, they were not accustomed to thinking in terms of how to wage effective war. To put it bluntly, the Dems were even more clueless than the Reps at how to kill lots of people.
Instead of a brilliant mix of bribery and SF forces and native tribes, the Gorites went in heavy-sorta. That is they sounded heavy, acted heavy, but weren't really heavy. This got them the bad side effects of heavy (annoyed population, bullying looks) without the advantages of being heavy.
Things sagged. The media, as par for the course, covered for their side, and so Gore got a lot more leeway than a Republican would have. But something was fermenting. For one thing, the American people like to go to war TO WIN. Win or go home is their mentality.
Paleocons who were isolationist because they did not want the nasty world influencing the virtous America began to strenthen their hand on the Right. And Paleocons don't much like Neo-cons or war hawks.
On the Left, Blame America Firsters wanted to be isolationist because they did not want nasty America to affect the virtous world.
Falwellites emphasized getting right with God first. Libertarians worried about the Patriot Act and how 'war is the health of the state'.
It was a very weird coalition, but it had support near the top. Gore wanted to back out of Afghanistan. So, it was that in 2003, we declared 'peace with honor' and got out of Afghanistan after handing the keys to the 'President of Afghanistan', a nervous man who did not even control more than half his capital city as mayor let alone be a president.
The Taliban came back quickly. And soon, girls were back to being executed in soccer stadiums.
Muammar Quadaffi had been intimidated by W after Saddam got dragged out of his spider hole. And so the Libyan dictator had given up his nuke program. But that is not here.
Here, Quadaffi continued to research, and Saddam took his existing bio and chemical programs and expanded them and sought nukes. He had bubonic plague and sarin nerve gas already, now he wanted an A-bomb.
Without the 'flypaper strategy' of Iraq, ten more thousand mujaheddin helped in Chechnya and continued to bleed the Russians.
In America a general retreat behind walls began. Despite Gore's disapproval and that of Big Business as well, several things were pushed through in a grand bargain.
If America was going to lose its defensive depth, then it need really good walls. The Mexican border fence went up, and it went strong. Soon, the obvious point was realized. If you can't shoot, there is no fence high enough. Fences and barbed wire do not stop a determined foe, they only slow him down.
So, Americans got out the machine guns.
And America began building nuclear power plants at a rapid pace. And refurbishing the national electric grid. And installing nation wide fiber optics.
The payment for all this? Military spending was halved. Most sailors and soldiers were still on duty, it was just that ships and tanks were sitting still, not using fuel in their waiting areas of docks or warehouses.
Oil prices had jumped to five dollars a gallon. But then things got worse. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the busiest starais in the world. It is filled with oil tankers for Europe and Japan. Much of their oil comes through here.
Its also an easy point for terrorists to latch on too.
Oil prices jumped to Ten Dollars a gallon.
Japan was panicking. Its Prime Minister publically chided the US Navy which was no longer guarding the Strait of Hormuz. He pointed out that WW2 had been in large measure been helped along by the Japanese desire for oil.
"My people do not desire to freeze this winter. Will you do something President Gore?"
America ignored them...
