Congratulations, Mr. President

Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today.

I've often wondered, as I'm sure many other people have, what might have happened if Preident-elect Al Gore had been the sitting President on September 11, 2001, rather than President-appointee George W. Bush.* I think if all of the other variables were kept the same - and I seriously doubt they would be, since at the very least a President Gore would not have shown such a cavalier disregard of the warnings of Richard Clarke, among others, the way President Bush did - but the same attack, the same Congress, maybe even the same copy of My Pet Goat...well, I think on September 12, 2001 we would have seen President Gore removed from office by force at the direction of the Republican-controlled Congress. Don't think that's possible? Pick up a copy of Rise of the Vulcans and do a little reading on "Continuity of Government" exercises and how little regard there is in certain quarters for little things like the Presidential chain of succession. In a crisis, who knows what might have been declared justifiable by certain people?

So perhaps we dodged that bullet, at the expense of thousands of others. George W. Bush should not have been sworn in as President in January 2001, nor should he have been elected president in November 2004. We as a nation have paid dearly for these mistakes, in terms of blood and treasure - especially the most precious treasure of fundamental (yet, tragically, alienable) rights and liberties.

Congratulations on your Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Gore. May you continue to do good works for years to come.

*In an argument I once had with a gimme-my-$300-and-you-can-have-my-vote Bush supporter, he opened a response with, "You know, if Bush had been President on September 11...", as if the greatest national defense failure in U.S. history had happened on somebody else's watch.