War On Terror In Comparative Perspective

When the planes struck the Twin Towers in the early morning of September 11, 2001 it was an unimaginable event. Nevertheless, it was not just the collapse of the Twin Towers or the attack on the Pentagon that made this event internationally significant. The aftermath of 9/11 in regards to the United States’ response to the terrorism attacks that occurred had a monumental impact on the international system and made it a major event in world politics. The book “The War on Terror in Comparative Perspective” (Miller, Mark, & Stefanova, Boyka) presents an in depth examination of the War on Terrorism at an international and domestic level and explains the political impact of the United States security relations directly following the events that

After these changes occurred, the invasion of Afghanistan quickly followed. Once the United States had troops on the ground in Afghanistan, it gave them more of an ability to shift their focus specifically from Al-Qaeda to a more general War on Terror that was focused on Iraq. This policy shift was made public in President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address where he explained that the the United States would help fight the War on Terrorism by helping “prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction" (Bush 2002). After presenting this idea, President Bush then publicly called out countries like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as being countries that are evil to the core and have no interest in making peace in the world. He also then described hypothetical situations where these countries could provide arms to the very terrorists that attacked the United States which would put our country and our allies in further danger. This move by President Bush helped shift the Al-Qaeda factor in the War on Terror to the side and helped bring the fight against the Axis of Evil to the forefront. Because of this, President Bush made it clear that the “War on Terror will not be won on the defensive… we must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge” (Bush 2002). Despite these claims from President Bush, he had already been preoccupied with Iraq and he had taken on a realist mindset with this conflict as a result. He wanted to see a regime change and remove Saddam Hussein from power and was not opposed to taking the United States to war to accomplish this goal. President Bush obviously felt that the United States was the most important state in the world, and because of the events that occurred on 9/11,