What if no 9/11? What alternative history would you propose?

What If No 9/11? Columnists Propose Alternative Histories
By Frank Rich
By E&P Staff
Published: August 14, 2006

Surely, during the past five years, all of us have pondred, perhaps at length, the question of what would have happened in America and the world if the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 had been thwarted or never reached an active stage. Now, in this week's issue, New York magazine, jumping the gun a bit on the fifth anniversary, presents a cover feature titled "What if 9/11 Never Happened?" and asks more than a dozen commentators to devise alternative histories. Contributors include Tom Wolfe, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Andrew Sullivan, Douglas Brinkley, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Ron Suskind, among many others.

Brinkley, for example, concludes: "Without 9/11, it seems certain that the Bush administration would have been shaped by the domestic crisis of Hurricane Katrina."

Also included are the scenarios of two New York Times columnists, Thomas Friedman and Frank Rich.

Friedman suggests that the U.S., minus 9/11, "would have a much more hostile relationship with China. September 11 took all the worst instincts of the Bush administration about China, the sense that we were somehow fated to be in a cold war with them, and put them in a deep freeze."

September 11 "didn't stop globalization, obviously, but it slowed the process down," he notes. "And North Korea would have been as far, if not farther along, in its ambitions, because China, given a more hostile relationship with the U.S., would have been less cooperative in dealing with Kim Jong Il.

"I seriously doubt that George W. Bush would be president. Security was the key issue in 2004, and absent that, it's hard for me to believe that John Kerry couldn't have beaten him. "

Rich, no surprise, agrees with this final assessment. "When President Bush returned from Crawford to Washington in September 2001, his poll numbers were mediocre, his one burning ideological mission had already been accomplished (tax cuts), and his administration's policy cupboard was bare except for Social Security privatization (a nonstarter with Democrats) and vague notions of immigration reform (a nonstarter with House Republicans)."

As for the 2003 invasion, "Without 9/11, there would have been no rationale for ginning up hysteria about imminent mushroom clouds emanating from Baghdad and hence no way to pivot to a gratuitous war in Iraq….

Since the Republicans would have had no fear card to play in the 2004 election, the Democrats, having won the popular vote in 2000, would have won it again, this time benefiting from a backlash against the religious right's overreach, even if they had neither better ideas nor candidates than the opposition."

And then, on the cultural end: "The Oliver Stone project of August '06, however, would not be World Trade Center, but, with exquisite timing, Fidel. Mel Gibson, having uncovered no ?'Jewish' wars to trigger his career self-immolation, would be the obvious choice to star. He would quickly sign on once Stone indicated his intention to make the movie in subtitled Spanish."