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In his first months in office Bush moved quickly to win congressional approval of his tax-cut program, as well as to halt or modify the institution of various regulations proposed in the last weeks of the Clinton administration. Many of his proposed measures were generally conservative and probusiness, as in legislation to modify bankruptcy laws, proposals to fund church-run social welfare programs, and the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and of the antiballistic missile (ABM) treaty (see disarmament, nuclear; Strategic Defense Initiative). In other areas, however, his administration pursued a less traditionally conservative course, for example, securing the establishment of federally mandated nationwide standardized testing for public school students. President Bush was also unusual in assigning greater policy-making and governing responsibilities to the vice president and members of the cabinet than earlier administrations had.
Devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Sept., 2001, confronted Bush with a crisis without recent parallels. Some 3,000 lives were lost in a coordinated assault against the United States, but the perpetrators were a decentralized and elusive terrorist network, not a nation. Bush demanded that Afghanistan's Taliban government turn over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born Islamic militant heading Al Qaeda, the group behind the attacks; the president adamantly refused to negotiate and said that no distinction would be made between terrorists and those who harbored them. The administration, which had previously pursued an essentially unilateralist foreign policy, now sought international support for military action against bin Laden and Afghanistan and for measures to cut off the financial resources of various terrorist groups. In addition, the Office of Homeland Security was created in the White House to coordinate government efforts to counter terrorist threats.
In October, Bush ordered air and then ground raids against Afghanistan, beginning a war whose immediate goals were the destruction of Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. Afghani opposition forces, with U.S. support, ousted the Taliban and largely routed it and Al Qaeda by the end of 2001, but bin Laden remained uncaptured. The long-term course of the "war on terrorism" that Bush proclaimed, however, was less clear. A second unsettling challenge confronted his government in late 2001 when cases of anthrax resulted from spores that had been mailed by an unknown source to U.S. media and government offices in bioterror attacks. Despite their coincidence, the anthrax and Al Qaeda attacks appeared to be unrelated. In Dec., 2001, Bush officially announced the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty, but he also had agreed to further missile cuts with Russia, which were formalized in 2002 by the Moscow Treaty.
As sporadic fighting in Afghanistan continued, with U.S. forces devoted mainly to mopping-up operations, the administration provided military assistance to a number of nations as part of the war on terrorism. Attempts in early 2002 to elicit Arab support for operations against Iraq were publicly unsuccessful, and the administration's generally strong support of Israel became more pronounced a few months later when it called for Arafat's replacement. Meanwhile, in February, the administration announced plans for the largest American military buildup since the 1980s. That increase in defense spending and the loss of revenue due to the 2001 tax cut led to new budget deficits, beginning in 2002. Very strong public support for the president declined somewhat in 2002, largely over domestic issues, where the administration, as in its decision to make the Homeland Security Office a cabinet department (enacted in Nov., 2002; see Homeland Security, U.S. Dept. of) and in its support for increased regulations on business accounting practices, appeared in part to be following the lead of Congress in responding to public concerns.
As 2002 progressed, the administration took a forceful stand against Iraq over its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and its resistance to UN arms inspections. President Bush called on the United Nations to act against Iraq or risk becoming irrelevant, but active international support for military action against Iraq came mainly from Great Britain. In November the Security Council passed a resolution offering Iraq a "final opportunity" to cooperate on arms inspections, this time under strict guidelines, and inspections resumed in late November, although not with full Iraqi cooperation. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress voted to authorize the use of the military force against Iraq, and the United States continued to build up its forces in the Middle East. The president clearly was determined on a course of "pre-emptive war" to prevent Iraq from developing or possessing weapons of mass destruction that might someday be used against the United States. The use of pre-emptive war in order to protect the United States, which was officially adopted by the administration in its National Security Strategy (2002) and is sometimes called the Bush doctrine, represented a significant shift in U.S. policy, and was the result in part of the September 11th attacks.
Bush faced a second crisis involving weapons of mass destruction beginning in Oct., 2002, when North Korea admitted it had a nuclear weapons program. The administration initially responded by ending fuel shipments required under a 1994 agreement and refusing to negotiate until the North Koreans complied completely with their responsibilities under that agreement (neither they nor the United States had fully done so). Subsequently, however, North Korea engaged in a series of well-publicized moves, including withdrawing from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, that were designed to enable it to resume the development of nuclear weapons. Faced with pressure from North Korea's neighbors for negotiated solution and apparently unwilling to pursue a military solution, the administration adopted a somewhat less confrontational tone in 2003.
The Nov., 2002, elections resulted in unexpected, if small, gains for Bush's party, giving Republicans control of both houses of Congress, and enhancing the political strength of the president, who had campaigned vigorously in the off-year election. A lack of real improvement in the economy : unemployment reached 6% in the prior month : led Bush to ask for the resignation of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in December. Also in that month, Bush ordered the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system designed to prevent so-called rogue missile attacks. In Jan., 2003, Bush proposed a new round of tax cuts, ostensibly as an economic stimulus, but many criticized the cuts as inappropriate because of the increasing budget deficits and because the most significant cuts would not occur immediately.
In early 2003, Bush, insisting that Iraq must prove it had no weapons of mass destruction or face being disarmed, pushed for an end to inspections and for the use of military force against Iraq. Despite strong opposition from many European allies as well as Russia, China, and most other nations, Bush demanded in March that Iraqi president Hussein step down or face invasion, and on March 19, U.S. and British forces commenced their attack. By mid-April the allies were largely in control of the major Iraqi cities and largely had turned their attention to the establishment of a new Iraqi government and the rebuilding of Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction, however, were found by allied forces in the months after the war, which soon became a point of U.S. political contention.
Bush won congressional approval of his new tax cuts (albeit at a reduced level) in May, and those cuts combined with the effects of the lackluster economy and the costs of the Iraq invasion and occupation were expected to produce a record budget deficit of $455 billion, as estimated in mid-2003. Also in mid-2003 the administration signed free-trade agreements with Singapore and Chile.
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