Would President Al Gore have invaded Iraq?

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Almost all of my liberal Democratic friends think the United States would have avoided the Iraq War if Al Gore had been elected President in 2000.   I’m not certain that is so.

Gore voted in favor of the 1991 authorization to use military force in Iraq.   Bill Clinton chose him as vice president partly because he had a reputation as a war hawk and had served honorably in Vietnam.   Gore chose another war hawk, Joe Lieberman, to be his running mate.

He and John Kerry criticized George W. Bush not on the grounds that the war was wrong, but that the war effort was being bungled.   The timing was wrong, more effort should have been made to get UN support, more should have been done to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Later on there was an argument that the U.S. should have focused more on Afghanistan rather than Iraq, or Afghanistan first and Iraq later.

But the argument for invading so-called rogue states was not questioned.  I don’t criticize them so much for that because that is what I, too, thought at the time.   I think that I, unlike them, have learned better now.

Here’s what why a political scientist named Frank Harvey thinks Al Gore would have supported the Iraq invasion.

• Gore expressed strong support for returning inspectors in Iraq and undertaking robust inspections.
• Gore and his advisers were hawkish on Iraq and regime change.
• Like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, Gore was a liberal internationalist, quite comfortable using force to achieve humanitarian policy aims.
• Gore had argued aggressively in favor of force in Iraq in 1991 and 1998, Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1998.
• Gore believed war was legal based on earlier UN resolutions.
• There were significant intelligence failures under Clinton and Gore.
• Public opinion was strongly in favor of robust inspections and military action to support UN resolutions.
• Gore would have obtained coalition support from at least the same allies and possibly others.
• The divisions at the UN would have been substantially the same (U.S. and U.K. vs France, Russia and China).

Source: The Globe and Mail

I don’t claim to know what Gore would have done.   I do know that Bill Clinton campaigned on a promise to focus on the economy like a laser beam, that George W. Bush campaigned on a promise to pursue a more “humble” foreign policy and that Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to avoid “dumb wars,” and that they all become more warlike when they took office.

In the last election, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigned as militarists.

Would Gore have been different?   Maybe.  Maybe not.

LINK

Why Al Gore would have invaded Iraq (and what it tells us about Syria) by Andrew Steele for the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Why President Gore might have done into Iraq, too by Steve Kornacki for Salon.

Liberal Myths: Would Al Gore Have Invaded Iraq? by David Barouh for Counterpunch.  [Added Later]

The case that President Gore would have gone to war with Iraq on Alternate History Discussion.

Tags: Al Gore, alternate history, Election 2000, Iraq Invasion