George W. Bush's First Term As President of The United States | George Bush Term President United States

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, 2002

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“It is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief.”
—George Washington (1732–1799)

“Why doesn’t the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)

“I will cut the head off my baby and swallow it if it will make Bush lose.”
—Zainab Ismael, Iraqi housewife. As quoted in Newsweek magazine, p. 31 (November 16, 1992)

“Frankly, I do not like the idea of conversations to define the term “unconditional surrender.” ... The German people can have dinned into their ears what I said in my Christmas Eve speech—in effect, that we have no thought of destroying the German people and that we want them to live through the generations like other European peoples on condition, of course, that they get rid of their present philosophy of conquest.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

“In externals we advance with lightening express speed, in modes of thought and sympathy we lumber on in stage-coach fashion.”
—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)

“Places where he might live and die and never hear of the United States, which make such a noise in the world,—never hear of America, so called from the name of a European gentleman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)