ABSTRACT
The twenty-first century dawned with a general sense of peace, power, and prosperity for the United States. George W. Bush was the governor of Texas prior to winning the presidential election, and before 9/11 he had little interest in or experience with the world of foreign policy, despite his father’s long service in national security. The Taliban regime had hosted Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda since bin Laden had been expelled from Sudan in 1994, and they refused to hand him over to the United States (US) after 9/11. A military response was imminent, and US diplomats went into overdrive securing the necessary international support for invading a distant, doubly landlocked country in a neighborhood of hostile countries. The Bush administration worked quickly to build the war on terror’s needed legal framework. The escalating disaster and US body count led a bipartisan group of experts and political leaders in Washington to call for a withdrawal from Iraq.
