this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
1497 points (90.4% liked)
Political Memes
5483 readers
3452 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The president has quite a bit of ability to set priorities and work assignments within the justice dept and intelligence agencies and other parts of the executive branch. Unlike legislative things, he really can just say “put 1,000 people on this Bin Laden thing” one day and just from that they just go off and do it exactly like he said.
Bush did pretty much the exact opposite, actively refusing to use his leadership position to instruct the people who worked for him to do anything about the threat that they were telling him existed. Idk if anything Gore did would have made a difference, but there definitely is a consensus that Bush fucked up on recognizing and reacting, in retrospect.
If he's a Republican, sure.
But Democrats always have their hands tied.
Bush was fixated, laser-like, on Iraq and looking for any excuse to invade. The Al Qaeda memos were treated as a distraction.
However, the theory that he just had a big "Stop Al Qaeda" button under his desk and refusee to press it is naive. There's no real policy Gore could have implemented to stop the 9/11 hijackings that would have come into force between January and September.
At best, he could have brought on a senior staffer who better coordinated between the NSA and the FBI. But even then, you're assuming the FBI would have been in the right place at the right time to act.
Gore, personally, wasn't going to do anything to change the outcome.