No Iraq war

A short one showing a world where Bush avoided the Iraq war due to more rational advisors, combined with Bush Sr. himself talking him out of it("Boy, what do you think you're doing? Are you on crack?"). As a result, the war on terror is focused on Afghanistan.

Before the timeframe of OTL's Iraq war, there isn't much change besides a slightly different emphasis on the news programs. There are "surges" in Afghanistan in 2003, 2005 and 2007 which produced better results due to being more focused. The increased crdedibility led to the following reslts: The republicans won the 2002 house and senate elecitons handily, won 2004's presidential elections with decent majorities, kept majorities in 2006, won the white house and managed to keep congressional parity in 2008 and took until 2012 to go from "slight republican minority" to a real loss.

Without spending on Iraq, the economy did better 2002-2006 than OTL's "jobless recovery". Nowhere near as good as the 1990s, but things went well enough for Dubya to get clear majorities in 2004. The diebold-related conspiracy theories which floated around 2004-8 of OTL are absent.

One visible point of of departure, is when a second Tora Bora raid leads to the capture of a good chunk of al Qeada's leadership -- Osama Bin Laden and 5-10 of his top men in 2005. They were then taken into custody, and then put on trial in a three year long trial that Bush was able to point to when it came time for the 2006 congressional elections.

There was a brief recession in 2006-7 due to the federal reserve raising interest rates, but the timely intervention of the Federal reserve, combined with pressure on realtors created a real estate boom that' s going on now. OTOH, without the extra burden of the Iraq war, combined with the fact that real estate boom coincides with a second internet boom(alas, based on the 'social media'  and "smartphone" scams) the time of reckoning will be pushed off a bit into the future. At any rate, 90% of probable futures diverging from this timeline have crashes at least as bad as what OTL saw 2006-2008 happening sometime between 2015 and 2025...

Despite the recession that was beginning to lift, Bush's handpicked successor managed to win the election of 2008 albeit with something of a close margin. The Cheney administration was mostly like Bush's second term of OTL minus any major domestic or foreign policy related disasters. In fact, Cheney's largest achievements lie in his managing to successfully implement certain reforms for good or ill. Cheney, with the help of a bipartisan majority in congress managed to pass a healthcare reform that's essentially Obamacare. In fact, the only distinction between it and Obamacare is that it was passed by someone who was a standard republican instead of an idealistic liberal. However, the amount of scandals returned to Clinton Years levels, with things like Cheney's first veep, Rick Santorum's accidental death during a hunting trip being the most newsworthy of them all.

Without OTL's real estate crash, there isn't OTL's pattern of pushes for amnesty/immigration 'reform' to reinflate the bubble. More states are copying Arizona's immigration policy without challenges from a DC that's less invested in open borders. Various right-wing media outlets are less prone to sniffing out and firing anti-immigration people within their ranks -- The paleos mostly lose the neocon/paleocon fight as in OTL but the paleos manage to score more points and take longer to be purged.

Removing the Iraq war meant that the rises in gas prices of OTL's mid-2000s have been delayed and significantly reduced in extent. Perhaps as a side effect, this butterflied out California's spectacular economic implosion of our 2000s. Reduced gas prices compared to OTL freeing up slightly more capital is likely one reason why the real estate bubble hasn't ended up sucking up. People are visibly worried about how gas prices have remained at or above $3 a gallon for the past two years. Peak oil blogging is emerging in a big way.

On various social and "moral"" issues, the electorate is similar to OTL if timed a bit differently less. There is one noted shift -- the mainstream "left" is more pro-civil liberties due to a longer bush era combined with the fact that the exact composition of the left is a bit different(OTL's SJW types got butterflied out) and is more moderate generally. Think the trendline that we saw during the bush era extended a bit further -- the right remains more 'establishment' and staid while the dean types in the Democrats are more visible.

The Republican party is different from OTL in one significant way -- it retains a bit more bush-era moderation. It's also a bit more interventionist economically. It's not any more economically left-wing or liberal, but it's more shamelessly pro-business. Cheney's former vice president, Santorum made a habit of regularly condemining libertarians for being too pro-free market and not willing to consider business interests. There is no "tea party" or other similar movements of aging republicans.

The extended period of Republican rule, combined with factors like 1) the failure of the Obama-Clinton ticket in 2008(They ran on what would be called the tumblr platform in OTL: talking about "cis privilege", as well as holding public sing-a-longs of "Umkhonto we Sizwe" on the campaign trail) 2) The NSA revelations of 2011 3) cultural butterfly effects preventing the rise of OTL's SJW movement means that the democratic party is  visibly different. It's more centrist in a model combining 90s Clinton democrats with 2000s-style Kerry dems with it's leftwards deviations coming from more pro-civil liberties Howard Dean instead of Obama's "social justice" lifestyle activism/attempts to ruin the lives of people who say mean things about protected groups publicly. The failure of Cheney's healthcare reform, has made those on the left more enthustiastic about the idea of healthcare reform that doesn't involve selling out to the insurance companies than they were in OTL.

There has been no arab spring, and likely won't be one anytime soon. The lack of a world economic crisis to seriously destabilize things meant that there wasn't the disruption in access to food supplies that led to OTL's troubles. Rising demand from China has led to prices going up, but the process has been more gradual.

Iraq is still under an aging Saddam who plans to leave it to the military instead of either of his two psyopathic sons. He's already had Uday killed, under the guise of an accident for going too far in his "interesting" hobbies. The other son of course hasn't gotten the message. The eternal struggle against the Kurds in the north continues, with the occasional use of mustard gas.

Syria manages to maintain order without the sort of problems Iraq has with it's kurds. The Assads have noted the potential for ethnically-based trouble and started to make plans to flee to Latakia. If revolution comes to Syria, the Assads will be ready. Non-alawites are being slowly shuffled out of Latakia.

With less percieved threat from outside with no US troops along both of it's borders, Iran is something of a less unified nation. The moderates won in 2009. Due to the fact that the Council of Guardians is blocking most attempts at reform, there is increasing unrest in Iran. Nothing revolutionary yet but protests are being harder for the government to suppress. Without the ability to use the war in Iraq as an excuse to rally the nation around, Iran isn't quite as prone to spouting virtual declarations of war against Israel.

More pressure from abroad led to the military ending up in charge of North Korea following Kim Jong Il's death, with Kim Jong un being promoted upwards to a position of no real authority. North Korea still exists, but there's massive unrest, along with refugees in both China and South Korea. Something will have to give soon...

President Howard Dean, aka "The comeback Kid" is presiding over a country that's in many ways more like the tail end of the bush administration or Obama's first OTL term instead of like our 2013. The congressional leadership of the Democrats are a bit annoyed that Dean at least tries to pay lip service to the idea of protecting civil liberties and has talked them out of ideas like further expanding surveillance of the internet or SOPA or making people be strip-searched to go on airplanes.

The combination of certain disasters, plus the ongoing Iraq quagmire being butterflied away meant that the cultural blip of our world's 2003-2007 was instead 2002 to 2011. Even now, the cultural energy is slowly fading away instead of OTL's near 180 degree turn 2007-2010. Even with OTL's "wardrobe malfunction" not being butterflied away, the culture got more lively. The mid-2000s Emo and scene subculture got replaced by a wave of crunk-core and "Swag" culture. The only upside of this, is that "Swag" burned out and isn't a thing in 2013. The "Hipster" subculture, is much less visible than OTL. In this world it has to compete with both Indie and grunge revivals.

A better economy in the last few years, combined with this different culture means that the anime boom of OTL's early to mid 2000s continued alot longer, and even now is merely slowing down instead of OTL's sudden and surprisingly sharp decline. ADV's idea of an anime network actually survived, even bringing in enough money to keep them in business.

The more lively culture than OTL, combined with a better economy means malls and various chain stores associated with them are doing better -- there are more decaying malls as opposed to outright dead malls. Also, those dead malls died later. Certain stores like Border's and Mediaplay managed to (barely) survive into 2013.