Bush’s First Term

Bush’s First Term

President George W. Bush began his first term as president on January 20, 2001 and ended on January 20, 2005, which is when his second term began. During his first term George W. Bush faced many challenges such as terrorist, immigration, war, and oil prices. He had at one point the highest approval rating of any president. (Biography of President George W. Bush) Internet.

On September 11, 2001, eight months after Bush had taken office, terrorists hijacked airplanes and flew them into the twin towers of the in New York City and The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. On the evening of the day of the attacks, the President declared a war on terror. Soon afterwards, President Bush's approval rating rose to 90%, the highest approval rating recorded for any president by the Gallup Organization, which began the poll during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Fahrenheit 9/11) Moore.

Bush's first policy-related response to 9/11 came on October 8, 2001 when, during a speech to Congress, he announced the creation of the Office of Homeland Security and appointed Tom Ridge, former governor of Pennsylvania, as its director. This was the first executive-level office to be created since 1988, when President Ronald Reagan appointed a head to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The stated goal of the Homeland Security office was to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy and to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks. The department's most public accomplishment came on March 12, 2002 with the unveiling of the Homeland Security Advisory System, a system of color-coded alerts designed to warn the populace of the assessed level of threat, based on the evaluation of credible intelligence reports, currently posed by terrorists. The terror alert level was and continues to be posted on a daily basis. (George W. Bush) Encyclopedia.

In the fall of 2002, during his State of the Union Address, Bush set forth what has come to be known as the Bush Doctrine. Although the doctrine was technically used for justifying the invasion of Afghanistan, it was not clearly stated until the address. Simply put, because of the "new world" Americans were now living in and the reality of massive terrorist attacks orchestrated by organizations that exist in multiple places all over the world, the United States no longer had the luxury of thinking of the world as exclusively made up of sovereign nations. Due to this, the United States would now implement a policy of using a preemptive strike against any nation known to harbor or aid any terrorist organization. President Bush also outlined what he called the Axis of Evil, consisting of three nations that he stated posed a threat to world peace, namely Iraq, North Korea and Iran. (George W. Bush) Encyclopedia.

The Bush administration began announcing that officials had supposedly discovered weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. The description of these weapons ranged from chemical to nuclear weapons. The administration supported their claim with intelligence documents as well as aerial photographs. Saddam Hussein, then-President of Iraq, was described as being a threat to the world and his own people as long as he remained in power - especially if his regime had access to WMDs. Changes in the political arena, especially since Saddam had been supplied with some conventional weapons and other assistance during the Iran-Iraq War by the United States in the 1980s, were largely due to an increasingly hardline stance that Saddam had imposed on Iraq and his subjects, and his arbitrary invasion of Kuwait in 1990. (George W. Bush) Encyclopedia.

The armed forces of the United States and several other countries, dubbed the Coalition, invaded Iraq in 2003. The operation was known in the United States as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though the American government, with encouragement from the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, had attempted to gain a United Nations Security Council resolution