Been Winning So Long, I've Lost It - The Long War TL

Orville_third

Banned
A few bits on Katrina that can't be butterflied away:
-Levees: It's unlikely that McCain (or anyone) would have done much about the levees. They were suffering from years of neglect.
-Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR GO): This CoE canal helped to let a lot of water into New Orleans, and nobody was willing to do much about it.
-Corps Funding: In OTL, the CoE was low on money for domestic projects simply because they were sent to Iraq! While Iraq may not be in this TL, the CoE is no doubt busy in Afghanistan and Boston, which can lower funds.

In short, while McCain (and TTL's state and local leaders) may get more people out, New Orleans will likely still get flooded...
 

Arachnid

Aracnid said:
Proof that doing the right thing is the wrong thing to do.
I'm mean you would think that a intelligent, reasonably articulate war hero would be the best person to be 44th President. You would think that getting Bin Laden would be a good thing. You would think that focusing on a country where Madrassa's actually do churn out suicide bombers, not a secular (though nasty) dictatorship would be a good thing.
But no, the brown stuff has hit the spinning object.

Blochead said:
Well, not quite. All of these policy steps could have turned out much better than I described. However, it is definitely an exercise in unintended consequences, and particularly a reflection on how lucky we are that the United States never turned the War on Terror into WWII.
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I understand, but some of the points you make, for example the questionable wisdom of focusing on Af-Pak 7 years earlier and in a much more aggressive way do a very good job of making you think twice.
 

Gwendolyn Ingolfsson

WestVirginiaRebel said:
I'm also concerned about The Mac's health. And Thomspon's probably wouldn't be much better by now. So, whoever's Speaker of the House by 2008 (John Boehner?) may have to wind up becoming President.
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All this stress cannot possibly be good. POTUS is a killing job to begin with.

WestVirginiaRebel said:
Who runs on the Democratic side in 2008? I assume the country is still in a hawkish mood four years after Boston, so maybe we see Hillary get the nomination...
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I don't know all that much about the intricacies of American party politics, but is there someone to the right of her who could possibly take the Dem nomination? I could see it happening in a political atmosphere as volatile as that one would undoubtedly be.

WestVirginiaRebel said:
So, I guess we really do live in the best of all possible worlds. Comforting thought...
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Heh, no way. :D But better than the ATL, surely.
 

Hendryk

Banned
Orville_third said:
A few bits on Katrina that can't be butterflied away:
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On the other hand, the hurricane itself can. A nuke has just been detonated in North America--that's bound to change the weather patterns. There may be a different hurricane which the meteorologists will name Katrina, but it may not follow the same route nor be as destructive.
 

Consumerist

Katrina was butterflied away the minute that car hit Karl Rove. The fact is that after a week you have to take into account the movement of all the atoms on earth to accurately predict the weather.
 

Expat

Consumerist said:
Katrina was butterflied away the minute that car hit Karl Rove. The fact is that after a week you have to take into account the movement of all the atoms on earth to accurately predict the weather.
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Inclined to agree, though the likelihood in a given ten-year period of this occurring is surprisingly high.

But one thing you really can't butterfly away is the Minnesota bridge collapse. If this occurs before a hurricane hits New Orleans AND you've got a vast new conscripted army seeking cohesion and purpose, I can't think of a better post-basic, pre-deployment exercise for your units than to send them on infrastructure refurbishment tours around the country. Sure, they're not all going to be up to performing ACE tasks, but trucking in concrete, mortar and steel rods doesn't really require high-grade engineers, and it serves the purpose of fostering the sense of duty to country that (let's be honest) basic doesn't really cover, and that active deployment sometimes even undermines in the less-than-willing.
 

WestVirginiaRebel

Banned
I don't know all that much about the intricacies of American party politics, but is there someone to the right of her who could possibly take the Dem nomination? I could see it happening in a political atmosphere as volatile as that one would undoubtedly be.
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Joe Lieberman was pretty hawkish on the WOT...
 

Constantinople

Banned
Bump!

Also, does anyone know if all of the buildings hit in super-911 collapsed?
That would make for some really depressing and brutal TV coverage.
 

Files

Just started reading this after it was bumped, I'm a few pages in and it seems pretty good, although I had one question that kept bothering me -

What's the rationale for the attack on Japan? I looked into the 10-plane plan, and nothing I saw mentioned Japan or any attack outside the US. Al-Qaeda really doesn't have a reason to attack Japan at this point, since they haven't deployed troops into any Muslim country.

Is this something that is dramatically revealed later in the TL, or is it just something I should suspend my disbelief about?

Edit: I read the whole thing and it didn't seem to be explained. Still confused.
 
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loughery111

Banned
They were aimed at American deployments in Japan or the RoK... but were unable to gain their bearings to enough of a degree to find something as small and indistinct (from the air) as a military base... so they took out the tallest building in Tokyo instead, because they could find it.
 
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