>> If Gore had prevailed in 2000, would he have invaded Iraq?
>
> Iraq was already 'invaded' by Clinton as a continuation of GW I (do we so
> quickly forget the sanctions and "no-fly zones" ...?). Given the record
> of this attempt by the US to control Iraq and Saddam's response to it
> (i.e., it was disasterous, too), I think it's difficult to Monday-morning
> quarterback what a President Gore would have done. You can't compare that
> to what he says he would have done now, given what did happen. In fact,
> you also can't even say whether, had Gore more formally invaded Iraq, he
> would have used the same tactics. Hey, maybe he would have sent the
> 'right' number of troops, and the current Republicans on the Hill would be
> the ones calling for a withdrawal schedule.
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There's little evidence a Gore administration would have invaded Iraq with
US forces. There is abundant evidence the architects of the Project for A
New American Century who formed the core of the new Bush administration were
determined to do just that, when the opportunity presented itself.
In fact, the land invasion of Iraq by the new, impatient, and much too self-confident Bush administration was in no small measure a reaction to what they considered to be ineffective Democratic party dithering in foreign policy, even though the Democrats, as you note, practiced all forms of political, military, and economic aggression - short of the employment of US ground forces - to try and overthrow or change the policies of foreign governments they didn't like.
But the Bush invasion was akin to a swaggering public announcement to the world, friends and foes alike, that a new sheriff was in town, and that the world had better get used to it. The neocons itched to use every advanced conventional weapon in the American arsenal to "shock and awe" unfriendly governments into submission. Their big indictment of the Clinton administraton was that it was too timid and behaved as though a nuclear-armed USSR was still around to constrain it. The salient point for them was that the USSR had ceased to exist, and the US was now the sole remaining superpower: this was essentially what the neocons meant when they referred to a New American Century.
Iraq was chosen because it presented the easist target, weakened by sanctions and with a large restive Shia population which would welcome the Americans as liberators. So swift and complete would be the US victory that other so-called rogue states like the Iranians, North Koreans, Libyans, and Cubans would fall into line or be overthrown by US military forces coming off a victory in Iraq and acting in concert with small pro-US oppositions within these countries emboldened by the show of American strength and resolve.
This was a high-stakes maverick approach which made the more experienced Democratic and Republican foreign policy specialists nervous, not to say the US general staff and virtually all of America's allies abroad, with the exception of Blair who carried along his reluctant Cabinet. The memory of the last large-scale enterprise involving US troops in Vietnam was seared into their collective consciousness.
Fortunately - or, rather, thanks to the tenacious Iraqi resistance - their fears that the occupation would become a US military and political nightmare were justified and, as in Vietnam, a new "Iraq syndrome" has arisen to provide some breathing space for the world's peoples' to try to pursue a more independent course outside the orbit of US imperialism, most notably in the Islamic world and Latin America. The gains have still, by historical standards, been modest and, as Yoshie noted, the US has not been permanently damaged and is still the hegemonic power, but had the invasion gone according to the neocon blueprint, the world alignment of political forces would be much worse than it is today.
The Iranians, North Koreans, Cubans, and others know there is a qualitative difference between economic blockade and political subversion and the large-scale blood and chaos of a US invasion and occupation, and the Iraqis, who were bombed and embargoed by the Clinton administration prior to the Bush invasion, understand it best of all. So should we.