War+on+Terrorism+and+Iraq

On September 12, 2001, President Bush declared that the September 11 attacks were acts of war. For the first time in history, the acts of terror became leading acts of war itself, thus starting the war on terrorism.On October 7, 2001 the U.S. led a missile atttack on Afghanistan launched from U.S. warships and one British submarine in the Arabian Sea. On October 9, the U.S. had weakened the air defense of the Taliban and had dominance of the skies over Afghanistan. Not only did Bush want to end terrorism, he wanted to isolate the Taliban even more, so the United States "exploited the unpopularity of the Taliban inside and ouside Afghanistan, due to its violent charater and extreme interpretation of the Islamic laws." ("The United States vs Terror: A new kind of war"). The United States also did this by emphasizing the fact that they were attacked by al Qaeda and the Taliban were strongly influenced by al Qaeda.

After several months in Afghanistan focus shifted to Iraq. After the Persian Gulf War, the UN told President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, to destroy the country's weapons of mass destruction. However Hussein avoided doing so, which wasn't a big problem until September 11 happened. In January 2002, Bush described Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil." Bush then stated in early 2003 that "If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him." and on March 17, 2003 Bush offered an ultimatum saying that Hussein is to leave Iraq within 48 hours or the United States will attack. Hussein did not leave, so the War in Iraq started. Soldiers from the U.S., Britain and Australia crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq on March 20. Hussein escaped Bagdad, where the soldiers were headed and was in hiding. However on December 13, 2003 he was captured by U.S. soldiers and eventually was killed. Bush then had a plan to reconstruct Iraq to a liberal democratic state and on January 30, 2005, Iraq had its first open elections in half a century. President Bush went over to Iraq for the elections and he said he " was struck by how joyous they were to be able to vote for a Government, a permanent Government under a new Constitution. We take it for granted in America because we tend to—we vote quite often in this country. These good folks got to vote for the first time for a permanent Government." ( U.S. Executive Office of the President). The legislature elected Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president and Ibrahim al Jaafari as prime minister. Despite the fact that Iraq is now a democracy, it still has many problems and many U.S. Troops are still there. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers die, making the Iraq War a very negative topic amoung U.S. citizens.