George W. Bush's first term as president of the United States began on January 20, 2001 and continued until his second term commenced on January 20, 2005. By far the most memorable event of this first term in office was the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
Bush was instrumental in pushing forward legislation in education and national security, in bringing about tax-reduction and allocating funds for global emergency AIDS relief. He withdrew the United States from participation in the 1998 Kyoto Protocol on world climate change and from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, as well as withdrawing U.S. support for the International Criminal Court, but his legacy was defined by his response to the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Shortly after the terrorist attack, a U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan resulted in the overthrow of the Taliban government in Kabul, a regime which had allowed terrorist training camps, directed at western targets, to operate in Afghanistan. This approach was symptomatic of a change in the perception of the world and of the international threats to the United States, one expounded in Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address and known subsequently as the Bush Doctrine. The United States gave itself the right to pursue its enemies wherever they could be found. In 2003, a U.S.-led military force invaded Iraq.
More and more people understand that being a patriot is more than just putting your hand over your heart and saying the Pledge of Allegiance to a nation under God... more and more people understand that serving something greater than yourself in life is a part of being a complete American —President George W Bush, Thursday, August 15, 2002Read more about George W. Bush's First Term As President Of The United States: Election Controversy, Economic Policies, Education, Healthcare, Science and Technology, Military Incidents, September 11, 2001, Foreign Policy, Intelligence Reform, Time Magazine Person of The Year, Response To The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Major Bills Passed
Famous quotes containing the words united states, george, bush, term, president, united and/or states:
“God knows that any man who would seek the presidency of the United States is a fool for his pains. The burden is all but intolerable, and the things that I have to do are just as much as the human spirit can carry.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came to an end all wars.”
—David Lloyd George (1863–1945)
“Let the others have the charisma. I’ve got the class.”
—George Bush (b. 1924)
“When “reality” is sought for at large, it is without intellectual import; at most the term carries the connotation of an agreeable emotional state.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Our age is pre-eminently the age of sympathy, as the eighteenth century was the age of reason. Our ideal men and women are they, whose sympathies have had the widest culture, whose aims do not end with self, whose philanthropy, though centrifugal, reaches around the globe.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“I would like to be the first ambassador to the United States from the United States.”
—Barbara Mikulski (b. 1936)