Chapter 27 - From Triumph To Tragedy

- A Supreme Court case in 2000 - a months after the 2000 vote. - By a vote of 5-4, a halt to the recounting of FL ballots was decided, allowing the state's governor Jeb Bush (Bush's brother) to decide the outcome of the election - obviously chose Bush. - One of the oddest Supreme Court decision in history came out of this case - the majority justified it by insisting that the 14th Amendment required all ballots within a state to be counted in accordance with a single standard (impossible with the wide variety a voting mediums used in FL and other states), but only applied to this single case because of its impracticality.

"Bush v. Gore"

- A 1992 Supreme Court case. - Reaffirmed a women's right to terminate a pregnancy. - Overturned a requirement that the husband be notified before the procedure was undertaken. - The Court declared this as a right to choice without interference. - Repudiated the centuries-old doctrine that a husband has a legal claim to control the body of his wife. - Though the Supreme Court was dominated by conservatives at the time of this decision, it was still in favor of abortion.

"Casey v. Planned Parenthood of PA"

- Instituted by Clinton. - Modified the military's strict ban on gay soldiers. - Declared that officers would no longer seek out gays for dismissal from the armed forces.

"Don't ask, don't tell"

Communism fell in eastern Europe.

1989

Dissolution of the Soviet Union took place.

1991

Gulf War took place.

1991

"Casey v. Planned Parenthood of PA" occurred.

1992

Clinton was elected as president.

1992

Los Angeles riots took place.

1992

Israel and Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords.

1993

North American Free Trade Agreement was approved.

1993

Republicans won Congress; made the Contract with America.

1994

OK City federal building was bombed.

1995

Clintion eliminated the AFDC.

1996

Defense of Marriage Act was passed.

1996

Cliton impeachment proceedings took place.

1998-1999

Glass-Steagall Act was repealed.

1999

Protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization took place.

1999

"Bush v. Gore" occurred.

2000

9/11 attacks took place.

2001

US entered war in Afghanistan.

2001

Bush identified the "axis of evil."

2002

Department of Homeland Security was established.

2002

Iraq War began.

2003

- Its passage was won by disabled Americans in 1990s. - A reflection of the continued power of the rights revolution. - This far reaching measure prohibited discrimination in hiring and promotion against persons with disabilities and required that entrances to public buildings be redesigned to ensure access for the disabled.

Americans with Disabilities Act

- Most complex foreign crisis of Clinton's presidency. - Arose from the disintegration of Yugoslavia after communism collapsed there in 1989. - After a few years Yugoslavia's 6 provinces dissolved into 5 new states, some of which were soon plagued with conflict over ethic cleansing. - By the end of 1993 more than 100000 Bosnians, nearly all of them civilians, had perished in this. - Gave NATO a new purpose - launched air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces (American planes contributed). - UN troops, including 20000 Americans, arrived as peacekeepers to try and curb it. - Ethnic cleansing resurfaced in 1998, this time by Yugoslavia troops and local Serbs against Albanians in Kosovo. - More than 800000 Albanians fled the region. - To halt bloodshed NATO gain intervened launching a 2 month was in 1999 against Yugoslavia leading to the deployment of American and UN forces in Kosovo.

Balkan crisis

- 1993-2001 - Democrat. - No one seized more effectively on the widespread sense of unease in the US during the 1992 election than him. - Combined social liberalism (abortion rights, gay rights, and affirmative action) with elements of conservatism (government reduction, and and end to welfare). - A charismatic campaigner. - In his first 2 years in office he turned away from some of the social and economic policies of Reagan and Bush. - Appointed many black women to his cabinet - Janet Reno, the first female attorney general. - Named 2 supporters of abortion rights to the Supreme Court - Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. - Instituted "Don't ask, don't tell" into the military. - His first budget raised taxes on the wealthy - Significantly expanded the EITC (cash payment for low income workers) which became the most effective anti-poverty policy since the Great Society and raised 4 million Americans (many of them children) above the poverty line during his presidency. - Passed NAFTA despite opposition from the public. - A major policy initiative of his first term was a plan devised by a panel headed by his wife, Hilary called the Clinton plan - attempted to address the rising cost of healthcare and the increasing number of Americans who lacked health insurance - failed in 1994 (too complex for many voters to understand and vulnerable to criticism for further expanding the government). - With his first 2 years in office seemingly lacking significant accomplishments voters turned against him in 1994 = the first Republican Congress since the 1950s. - Like Truman he rebuilt his popularity by campaigning against a radical Congress. - He opposed the most extreme parts of his opponents' programs, while adopting others. - In his state of the union address in 1996 he declared the era of big government to be over truing back on the tradition of Democratic Party liberalism and embracing the antigovernment outlook associated with Republicans. - In 1996, ignoring his own party's protests, he signed into law a Republican bill that abolished the AFDC (welfare) and replaced it with grants of money to the states with strict limitations on how recipients could receive payments - poverty numbers stayed the same. - Had succeeded in one of his primary goals by the late 1990s - ending welfare causing it to disappear from political debate. - His strategy enabled him to neutralize Republican claims that Democrats were the party of high taxes and lavish spending on persons who preferred dependency to honest labor. - His passion for free trade alienated many working class Democrats but convinced much of the middle class that his party was not bound to unions. - He easily defeated Bob Deal in the 1996 election becoming the first Democrat to be elected to 2 terms since FDR. - His accomplishment for Reaganism was what Eisenhower had done for the New Deal and Nixon for the Great Society - consolidated a basic shift in American politics by accepting his opponents' views. ` - Like Carter his primary political focus was domestic, not international affairs, but with the US now the world's dominant power he took steps to encourage the settlement of long standing International conflict and elevate support for human rights. - Strongly supported the Oslo Accords but they failed. - Brought Israel and Palestine leaders to Camp David towards the end of his presidency to try to work out a final peace treaty but failed and violence soon resumed. - Like Carter, Clinton found it difficult to balance concern for human rights with strategic and economic interests and to formulate clear guidelines for humanitarian intervention overseas. - Ex: US did nothing after the Rwandan genocide. - The most complex foreign policy crisis of his presidency was the Balkan crisis. - During his presidency, human rights played an increasingly important role in International affairs. - Ex: the US dispatched the military to distant parts of the world to assist in international missions to protect civilians. - Spoke of an American mission to create a single global free market as the path to rising living standards, the spread of democracy, and greater worldwide freedom. - Left behind massive budget deficits and worked hard to balance the federal budget though it was a conservative policy. - Since economic growth produced rising tax revenues, during his second term he not only balanced the federal budget but actually produced budget surpluses. - Repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. - The retreat of government economic regulation, embraced by him, left no one to represent the public interest. - The unusual party tensions of the 1990s seemed ironic considering he had moved toward the political center. - Republicans strongly disliked him because he symbolized everything conservatives hated about 1960s culture - prevailed. - Ex: smoked weed and participated in antiwar protests as a student. - Ex: married to a feminist and made it a point of leading a multicultural administration supporting gay rights. - His popularity puzzled and frustrated conservatives - reinforced their idea that something was off in American society. - His political opponents and the scandal-hungry media stood ready to pounce - he provided the ammunition. - In 1998 it became known that he carried on an affair with Monica Lewinsky (a White House intern). - Kenneth Starr threw himself in his investigation issuing a lengthy report containing almost pornographic details of his sexual acts with Lewinsky and accused him a lying under oath when he denied it. - In 1998 the Republican-controlled House of Reps voted to impeach him for perjury and obstruction of justice - 2nd president tried. - In 1999, the vote to remove him from office took place and much less than the 2/3 necessary to convict him. - His impeachment had to do with what most Americans considered a just a childish fling - did not compare to the reasons presidents had been impeached, or almost impeached, in the past. - Polls suggested that the obsession of Starr and member of Congress with his sexual acts appalled Americans far more than the presidents irresponsible behavior. - His continued popularity throughout the impeachment controversy demonstrated how profoundly traditional attitudes towards sexual morality had changed. - Had he been eligible to run for reelection in 2000, he probably would have still won.

Bill Clinton

- Announced by Bush in the speech in which he addressed a joint session of Congress and a national TV audience 9 days after 9/11. - A new foreign policy principle that launched the American war on terrorism.

Bush Doctrine

- A platform devised by Newt Gingrich. - Promised to curtail the scope of government, cut back on taxes and economic and environmental regulations, overhaul the welfare system, and end affirmative action. - Viewing their electoral triumph in the 1994 election as an endorsement of the contract and proclaiming it as the "Freedom Revolution," Republicans moved swiftly to implement its provisions. - The House approved deep cuts in coal, educational, and environmental programs, including the Medicare system. - Gingrich discovered that most Republicans had really just voted against Clinton in 1994 and not for its full implementation. - However, with the president and Congress unable to reach agreement on a budget the government shut down all nonessential operations in 1995, including DC's museums and national parks - led to a retreat by Congress (Americans blamed this impasse on Republicans).

Contract with America

- Battles over moral values that raged throughout the 1990s. - Immigration occupied only one front in this. - The Christian Coalition was an example of a cultural conservative group - launched crusades against gay rights, abortion, secularism in public schools, and government aid to the arts (hailed Pat Buchanan's Republican convention speech in 1992 as a rallying cry). - It sometimes appeared as though this was the refighting of old battles between traditional religion and modern secular culture. - Ex: In echo of the 1920s a number of localities required the teaching of creationism (a religious alternative to Darwin's evolution theory). - Ex: many cultural conservatives fought against the erosion of the traditional family, the changing racial landscape, and what they considered the general decline in traditional values. - Ex: the battles of the 1960s seemed to be forever unresolved.

Culture Wars

- Passed in 1996. - Barred gay couples form spousal benefits provided by federal law. - Cultural conservatives were not satisfied with their few victories like this regarding what they considered immorality.

Defense of Marriage Act

- Clinton won the Democratic nomination in 1992 by combining social liberalism with elements of conservatism. - Clinton conveyed sincere concern for voters' economic anxieties, while Bush seemed out of touch with ordinary Americans. - Bush was further weakened by Pat Buchanan - a conservative leader who declared a cultural war against gays, feminists, and supporters of abortion rights confined the Democratic portrait of Republicans and intolerant and divisive. - Ross Perot (eccentric TX billionaire) also entered this election. - Perot attack Bush and Clinton as lacking the economic credibility to deal with the recession and ever increasing national debt - testified to widespread dissatisfaction with the major parties. - Perot's support faded as Election Day approached but he still received 19% of the popular vote - most third-party since FDR in 1912. - Clinton won by a substantial margin - a humiliating outcome for Bush given his earlier popularity.

Election of 1992

- Had Clinton been eligible to run he probably would have won. - Democrats nominee was Clinton's VP Al Gore with Joseph Lieberman as his running mate (first Jewish VP nominee). - Republican nominee was George W. Bush with Dick Cheney. - Proved to be one of the closet in the nation's history. - The outcome of this remained uncertain until a month after the ballots had been cast. - Gore won popular vote by a tiny margin 540000 out of 100 million. - Victory in the electoral college however, hinged on which candidate carried FL. - Amid widespread confusion at the polls and claims of irregularities in counting ballots, Bush claimed the margin in FL by a few hundred. - It fell to the Supreme Court justices to decide the outcome of this election - similar to the election of 1876 (Bargain of 1877). - Bush's victory ultimately came from the decision in "Bush v. Gore" allowing his own brother to pick the winner. - Revealed troubling features of the American political system. - Ex: the electoral college gave the White House to a candidate that did not receive the most votes and was not even applicable to a modern democracy considering it was created by the Founding Fathers to enable the country's prominent men, rather than ordinary citizens, to vote and choose the president. - Ex: a country that prided itself in modern technology had a voting system in which citizens' votes could not be reliably determined. - Ex: reinforced the widespread belief that money dominated the political system - campaigns cost billions of dollars mostly raised from wealthy individuals and corporate donors. -Ex: a broad disengagement from public life in the political sphere was demonstrated - more people watched the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 than did the Bush-Gore debates in this though the population had increased by 100 million. - Ex: both candidates sought to occupy the political center and relied on public opinion polls and media consultants to shape their messages - controversial topics were barely brought up in this.

Election of 2000

- 1989-1993 - Republican. - Spoke of the coming new world order after the US Cold War victory. - His first major foreign policy action was a throwback to the days of American interventionism in the Western Hemisphere. - Dispatched troops to Panama in 1989 to overthrow the government General Manuel Noriega (former US ally involved in international drug trade) and was successful - then installed a new government and convicted Noriega on drug charges. - Succeed in the Gulf War - the Iraqi invasion was such a violation of international law that he was able to build a 40 nation coalition committed to restoring Kuwait's independence, secure UN support, and send half a million US troops and a naval armada to the region. - US success in the Gulf War left him with unprecedented public approval at 89%. - Would have been victorious if an election was held in 1991. - Because many Americans believed the nation was on the wrong track, his lack of captioning skills, and the fact that the country fell into economic recession in 1991, he faced a humiliating loss in the election of 1992. - Spoke of an American mission to create a single global free market as the path to rising living standards, the spread of democracy, and greater worldwide freedom. - Left behind massive budget deficits.

George H.W. Bush

- 2001-2009 - Republican. - Won the election of 2000 because of "Bush v. Gore." - Quickly blamed Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden for 9/11. - 9/11 transformed his presidency and he seized the opportunity to give his administration a new direction and purpose. - Like presidents before him he made freedom the rallying cry for a nation at war with terrorism. - He addressed a joint session of Congress and a national TV audience with a speech that echoed the words of FDR, Truman, and Reagan regarding freedom just 9 days after 9/11 (repeated this theme in later speeches) and announced his Bush Doctrine. - Started the war in Afghanistan by demanding that the Islamic fundamentalists called the Taliban surrender Osama Bin Laden who had established a base in their country - refused. - Named the war in Afghanistan "Enduring Freedom." - The toppling of the Taliban, he repeatedly insisted, marked only the beginning fo the war on terrorism. - In his State of the Union address in 2002, or his axis of evil speech, he accused Iraq, Iran, and North Korea of harboring terrorists and developing weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the US calling them the axis of evil - no evidence (weren't involved in 9/11 and never cooperated). - Tensions between America and the rest of the world became starkly evident in his next foreign initiatives. - His conservative administration seized the opportunity presented by 9/11 to press their case to oust the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, from power and he adopted this outlook. - His administration announced a goal of a regime change in Iraq in 2002 - justified this by insisting that Hussein must be ousted because he had developed an arsenal of chemical and bacteria weapons of mass destruction and was seeking to acquire nuclear arms (had no evidence linking Hussein to 9/11 though). - American newspaper and TV journalists repeated his claims about other countries that threatened the US with almost no independent investigation and even those who opposed his new policies at first went along with it eventually (Colin Powell). - Called this the Iraq War "Operation Iraqi Freedom." - Justified the Iraq War by claiming it was an attempt to defend US freedom and bring freedom to others. - After the fall of Baghdad he appeared on the deck of an aircraft carrier beneath a banner reading "Mission Accomplished." - Issued an executive order in 2001 authorizing the holding of secret military tribunals for noncitizens deemed to have assisted terrorism. -in these trials traditional constitutional protections did not apply. - Soon after 9/11 he authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans' telephone conversations without a court warrant - clear violation of a law limiting the NSA to foreign intelligence gathering. - Officials of his administration insisted that after 9/11 the US need not be bound by international law in pursuing the war on terrorism - especially eager to sidestep the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention against torture. - In 2003 he prohibited the use of torture except where special permission had been granted - Defense Department approved methods of interrogation the most observers considered torture and the CIA set up a series of jails in foreign countries outside the traditional chain of military command and took part in rendition of suspects (undermined the reputation of the US as a country that adheres to the standards of civilized behavior and the rule of law. - The Supreme Court did not prove receptive to his claim of authority to disregard laws and treaties and to suspend constitutional protections of individual liberties. - Appointed 2 new Supreme Court justices -(John Roberts and Samuel Alito Jr.) making the Court more conservative, but not enough to side with his abuse of power. - Ex: "Hamdi v. Rumsfeld" - protected citizens' right to a judicial hearing and declared that wartime did give him the power to take rights away from US citizens. - Ex: "Hamdan v. Rumsfeld" - afforded protection to prisoners of war through the Geneva Conventions (the law of the land) and rebuked his presumption that he could unilaterally set up secret military tribunals in which defendants had few view rights. - Ex: "Boumediene v Bush" - affirmed detainees' right to challenge their detention in the US courts and freedom from arbitrary arrest (a powerful affirmation that constitutional rights remain in wartime).

George W. Bush

- Bush set up this detention camp at a Cuban US naval base located in Guantánamo Bay. - Meant for persons captured in Afghanistan or otherwise accused of terrorism. - Over 700 persons of many foreign countries were detained here. - Some military personnel here and in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq got caught up an atmosphere of lacking clear rules of behavior, resulting in them beating prisoners who were being held for interrogation, subjecting them to electric shocks, letting them be attacked by dogs, and forcing them to strip naked and lie atop of other prisoners - exposure of this did not look good on the US. - The Supreme Court rebuffed Bush's strategy of denying detainees here of the normal protection guaranteed by the Constitution in "Boumediene v Bush."

Guantánamo Bay camp

- Occurred because of an Iraqi invasion in Kuwait (oil-rich country of the Persian Gulf) that resulted in its annexation in 1990. - Bush then rushed to defend Kuwait and warned Iraq to withdraw from the country or face far (feared that Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, might next attack Saudi Arabia - major US oil supplier). - The Iraqi invasion was such violation of international law that Bush was able to build a 40 nation coalition committed to restoring Kuwait's independence, secure UN support, and send half a million US troops and a naval armada to the region. - In 1991 the US launched Operation Desert Storm, which quickly drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. - Tens of thousands of Iraqis and 184 Americans died in this conflict. - The UN ordered Iraq to disarm and impose economic sanctions that produced widespread civilian suffering for the next 10 years. - Hussein remained in power, but so did a large American military establishment in Saudi Arabia (outraged Islamic fundamentalists who deemed US presence insult to their faith). - The first post-Cold War international crisis. - Relied on high tech weaponry like cruise missiles that reached Iraq from bases and aircraft carriers hundreds of miles away. - The US was able to come out victorious quickly avoiding the prolonged involvement and high casualties of Vietnam. - Its immediate aftermath left Bush's approval rate at unseen 89%. - After this Osama Bin Laden's anger increasingly turned against the US though he had joined America in the fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, developed a relationship with the CIA, and received American funds to help him build mountain bases - outraged by the presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia and American support from Israel in their conflict with Palestine. - After this Osama Bin Laden declared war on the US.

Gulf War

- The decision to begin this split the Western alliance and inspired a massive antiwar movement throughout the world. - Ex: between 10-15 million people across the globe demonstrated against the impending war. - Ex: both traditional foes of the US, like Russia and China, and traditional allies of the US, like Germany and France, refused to support this unnecessary strike against Iraq. - The US began this war anyway despite opposition in 2003 with Great Britain as its sole significant ally. - Bush called this war "Operation Iraqi Freedom." - Bush justified it by claiming into was attempt to defend US freedom and bring freedom to others. - The Hussein regime proved no match for American armed forces with their precision bombing, satellite-guided missiles, and well-trained soldiers. - Within a month of this American troops occupied Baghdad.. - After hiding out for several months, Hussein was captured by American forces and put on trial before an Iraqi court - found guilty of ordering to kill many Iraqis during his reign (nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction) and was executed. - Everything seemed to go wrong after Americas "victory." - Ex: rather than parades to welcome American liberators, looting and chaos ensued after the fall of the Iraqi regime. - Ex: Sectarian violence swept through Iraq with militias of Shiite and Sunni Muslims fighting each other - Sunni's were aligned with Hussein and Shiite now sought to exercise there power and get revenge. - Marked a new departure in American foreign policy - never both had the US occupied a nation in the center of the world's most volatile region and rarely in history had they found themselves so isolated form the world public opinion. - Initially it proved to be popular in the US, but the realization that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction discredited the administration's justification for this war. - By 2007 polls showed that a large majority of Americans considered this a mistake and a lost cause.

Iraq War

- Clinton obtained congressional approval for its creation in 1993. - Also referred to as the NAFTA. - Created because of Clinton's passion for free trade - like his predecessors. - Faced strong opposition from unions and environmentalists. - A treaty negotiated by Bush that created a free-trade zine consisting of Canada, Mexico, and the US. - Thank to this, a thriving industrial zone emerged just across the southern border of the US, where American manufacturers built plants to take advantage of cheap labor and weak environmental and safety regulations.

North American Free Trade Agreement

- A 1993 agreement, negotiated in Oslo, Norway, in which Israel recognized the legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation Organization. - Strongly supported by Clinton. - Seemed to outline a road to Mideast peace. - Neither side was willing to implement it fully. - Ex: Israeli governments continued to build Jewish settlements in Palestinian land in the West Bank - Ex: new Palestinian Authority, proved to be corrupt, powerless, and unable to curb the growth of groups bent on violence against Israel.

Oslo Accords

- Occurred in 1994 when tribal massacres racked Rwanda, Africa. - 800000 people were slaughtered In this and 2 million refugees fled the country. - The US did noting.

Rwandan genocide

- Rushed by Congress in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. - A mammoth bill (over 300 pages) that few member of Congress actually read before passing it. - Conferred unprecedented powers on law-enforcement agencies - to prevent the new, vaguely defined crime of domestic terrorism. - Included the power to wiretap, spy on citizens, open letters, read emails, and obtain personal from universities and libraries without the knowledge of the suspect.

USA Patriot Act

- A terrible new term meaning the forcible expulsion go a particular ethnic group entered the International vocabulary in the 1990s. - Created in the Balkan crisis and was resurfaced by Yugoslavia troops and local Serbs against Albanians in Kosovo.

ethnic cleansing

- A set of conservative beliefs that stressed the superiority of the tradition family with heterosexual marriage, children, and traditional gender roles. - A censuses of 2000 and 2010 showed these to be in disarray. - Ex: half of all marriages ended in divorce - Ex: in 2010 more than 40% of births were to unmarried women - not just sexually active teenagers but also middle age women. - Ex: for the first time fewer than half of all households consisted of married couples and only 1/5 were traditional families. - Ex: more than half of all adults were single or divorced. - Ex: 2/3 of married women worked outside the house.

family values

- The process by which people, investment, goods, information, and culture increasingly flow across national boundaries. - Ex: Microsoft's worldwide reach through Windows (its operating system used in most of the world computers) symbolized this. - During the 1990s the media resounded with announcements that a new era in human history had opened with a borderless economy and a "global civilization," or this. - Was hardly a new phenomenon - the internationalization of commerce and culture and the reshuffling of the world's peoples had been going on since the 1400s. - The scale and scope of this in the late 1900s was unprecedented - satellites and the Internet allowed information and popular culture to flow instantaneously to every concern of the world, and manufacturers and financial institutions scoured the world for profitable investment opportunities. - The collapse of communism also fueled this because it opened the entire world to the spread of market capitalism and to the idea that government should interfere as little as possible in the economy. - Those who organized in the Battle of Seattle were viewed as anti-this and challenged its consequences more than it - demonstrators claimed that this accelerated the worldwide creation of wealth but widened gaps between rich and poor countries and between haves and have-nots within societies. - The Battle of Seattle itself placed on the national and international agendas a question that reverted into the 2000s - the relationship between this, economic justice, and freedom. - The economy's performance in the 1990s seemed to justify the claims of its advocates. - In Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe, the waning of movement based on socialism and the declining power of nation-states arising from globalization unleashed long-simmering ethnic and religious antagonisms. - Post 1965 immigration formed part of the worldwide uprooting of labor arising from this.

globalization

- Became a term for a new awareness of the diversity of American society, past and present, and for the vocal demands that jobs, education, and politics reflect that diversity. - A celebration of group difference and demands for group recognition. - One of the most striking developments of the 1990s. - Ex: as numbers of minority and female students at US colleges and universities rose, these institutions moved to diversify their faculties and revise the traditional curriculum. - One sign of this could be seen in the spread of academic programs dealing with the experience of specific groups (Black Studies, Latino Studies, Women's Studies, and so on). - Ex: literature departments added the writings go female and minority authors to those of white men. - Ex: many scholars now taught and wrote history in ways that stressed the experiences of diverse groups of Americans.

multiculturalism

- Bush spoke of this to come. - No one knew what its cartable characteristics would be and what new challenges to American power might arise. - The sudden shift from a bipolar world to one of unquestioned American prominence promised to redefine the country's global role inspired this ideology.

new world order

- Started when Bush demanded Afghanistan, ruled by a group of Islamic fundamentalists called the Taliban, surrender Osama Bin Laden who had established a base in their country - refused. - In 2001 the US launched air strikes against its strongholds. - Bush gave it the name "Enduring Freedom." - By the end of 2001, American bombing and ground combat by the Northern Alliance combined had driven the Taliban from power. - A new government was then instituted in Afghanistan that was friendly to and reliant on the US - The new government however found it difficult to established full control over the country forcing US troops to remain in Afghanistan until 2021 - the longest war in American history. - Most of the world originally supported this as a legitimate response to the terrorist attacks - soon many people feared that the US was claiming the right to act as a world police power (violating international law).

war in Afganistan

- Put in place by the Bush Doctrine. - Unlike pervious wars, it had a vaguely defined enemy - any terrorist group around the world that might threaten the US or its allies. - Had no predictable timetable for victory. - The nation would recognize no middle ground in this new war. - The war in Afghanistan was part of this. - Bush repeatedly claimed that the toppling of the Taliban marked only the beginning of this. - Bush's axis of evil speech was a part of this. - Iraq war was a part of this. - Like earlier wars, this war raised anew the problem of balancing security and liberty. - US Patriot Act was passed as part of this. - At least 5000 foreigners with Middle Eastern connections were rounded up and more than 1200 arrested many with no link to terrorism with held for months without a formal charge or public notice of their fate. - A detention camp at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay was set up as a part of this. - An executive order issued by Bush in 2001 authorized the holding of secret military tribunals for noncitizens deemed to have assisted terrorism - did not repeat constitutional protections. - Also in 2001, the Justice Department declared that American citizens could be held indefinitely without charge and not allowed to see a lawyer if the government declared them "enemy combatants." - The majority of Americans seemed willing to accept the restraints on time-honored liberties as a necessity to fight this, but others recalled previous times when liberties were limited in war time. - Liberty vs. security debate seemed to last as long as this war had. - Officials of Bush's administration insisted that after 9/11 that the US did not need to follow international law in pursuing this war.

war on terrorism