Unit IV: End of the Cold War and Contemporary America
The Americans: Chapters 24 & 25, plus Issues for 21st Century (p. 792-916)
History Alive! Chapters 54-60 (p. 695-795)
Each student will select or be assigned to “RESEARCH” an essential CONCEPT (person, event, term, etc.)
including, but not limited to the items listed below. Later, each student will DISPLAY relevant images &
limited text on the front of a “flip-up, word wall tile-like” product, that includes (INSIDE) additional pictures,
historical details from www.history.com (and/or other reliable on-line sources) and The Americans and History
Alive! (plus chapter & page #s). Finally, each student will summarize the RELEVANCE of the concept as it
pertains to Unit VI: End of the Cold War & Contemporary America, plus WHY others should care to know &
understand this term TODAY.
Richard Nixon & détente
Richard Nixon (1913-94), the 37th U.S. president, is best remembered as the only president ever to resign from
office. Nixon stepped down in 1974, halfway through his second term, rather than face impeachment over his
efforts to cover up illegal activities by members of his administration in the Watergate scandal. A former
Republican congressman and U.S. senator from California, he served two terms as vice president under Dwight
Eisenhower (1890-1969) in the 1950s. In 1960, Nixon lost his bid for the presidency in a close race with
Democrat John F. Kennedy (1917-63). He ran for the White House again in 1968 and won. As president,
Nixon's achievements included forging diplomatic ties with China and the Soviet Union, and withdrawing U.S.
troops from an unpopular war in Vietnam. However, Nixon's involvement in Watergate tarnished his legacy and
deepened American cynicism about government.
http://www.history.com/topics/richard-m-nixon
Détente
Détente (a French word meaning release from tension) is the name given to a period of improved relations
between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971 and took decisive form when
President Richard M. Nixon visited the secretary-general of the Soviet Communist party, Leonid I. Brezhnev, in
Moscow, May 1972. Both countries stood to gain if trade could be increased and the danger of nuclear warfare
reduced. In addition, Nixon--a candidate for reelection--was under fire at home from those demanding social
change, racial equality, and an end to the Vietnam War. The trip to Russia, like his historic trip to China a few
months earlier, permitted him to keep public attention focused on his foreign policy achievements rather than
his domestic problems. Nixon's trip to China had also heightened the Soviets' interest in détente; given the
growing antagonism between Russia and China, Brezhnev had no wish to see his most potent rivals close
ranks against him.
On May 22 Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit Moscow. He and Brezhnev signed seven agreements
covering the prevention of accidental military clashes; arms control, as recommended by the recent Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks (salt); cooperative research in a variety of areas, including space exploration; and
expanded commerce. The salt treaty was approved by Congress later that summer, as was a three-year
agreement on the sale of grain to the Soviets. In June 1973, Brezhnev visited the United States for Summit II;
this meeting added few new agreements, but did symbolize the two countries' continuing commitment to
peace. Summit III, in June 1974, was the least productive; by then, the salt talks had ground to a halt, several
commercial agreements had been blocked in Congress because of Soviet treatment of Jews, and the
Watergate investigation was approaching a climax. Nixon's successor in the talks, President Jimmy Carter,
supported salt ii, but also pressed a military buildup and a human rights campaign, which cooled relations
between the countries. With the election of Ronald Reagan, who emphasized military preparedness as the key
to Soviet-American relations, détente as Nixon had envisioned it came to an end.
The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Gerald Ford
America's 38th president, Gerald Ford (1913-2006) took office on August 9, 1974, following the resignation of
President Richard Nixon (1913-1994), who left the White House in disgrace over the Watergate scandal. Ford
became the first unelected president in the nation's history. A longtime Republican congressman from
Michigan, Ford had been appointed vice president less than a year earlier by President Nixon. He is credited
with helping to restore public confidence in government after the disillusionment of the Watergate era.
An Unexpected Presidency
The unusual chain of events that lifted Ford to the Oval Office began in 1972 when operatives connected to President
Richard Nixon's (1913-1994) re-election campaign broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the
Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. A number of high-ranking Nixon administration officials knew about the break-in,
and the president himself took part in efforts to cover up the illegal activities that became known as the Watergate
scandal.
As the scandal came to light, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew (1918-1996) resigned from office in October 1973 over
unrelated charges of accepting bribes and evading taxes. Nixon used his power under the 25th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution to appoint Ford as his new vice president. The well-liked and respected Ford was easily confirmed by
Congress and took office on December 6, 1973.
For the next eight months, as the Watergate investigation heated up, Ford defended Nixon and represented the
administration. On August 9, 1974, however, Nixon chose to resign from office rather than face an impeachment trial over
his role in the scandal. Ford assumed the presidency and immediately took up the task of reassuring a shaken and
demoralized American public. "Our long national nightmare is over," he declared in his inaugural address. "Our
Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not men."
The Nixon Pardon
Shortly after taking office, Ford pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed as president. The presidential
pardon meant that Nixon would never have to face criminal charges over his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Ford's
decision generated a swirl of controversy. Millions of Americans wanted to see the disgraced former president brought to
justice. Some critics charged that Ford issued the pardon as part of a pre-arranged deal to reach the Oval Office. But Ford
insisted that the nation's future hinged on ending the ordeal of Watergate and beginning the process of healing. During
the remaining two years of his presidency, Ford faced a domestic energy crisis and a weak economy marked by high
inflation and unemployment. He also struggled to work effectively with a heavily Democratic Congress. In fact, Ford
vetoed 66 pieces of legislation that conflicted with his basic philosophy of fiscal conservatism.
Ford's foreign policy generated both successes and failures. Unable to convince Congress to approve further military aid
to South Vietnam, he could only watch as the country fell to North Vietnamese Communist forces in 1975. Later that year,
however, Ford helped reduce tensions with the Soviet Union by signing the Helsinki Accords, which were meant to
strengthen the relationship between Western nations and the communist countries of Europe.
Post-White House Years
Ford understood that his decision to pardon Nixon could have political consequences, and it probably cost him the presidency in 1976.
That year, he lost a close election to Democrat Jimmy Carter (1924-). Ford took the loss in stride, however, telling friends that he had
planned to retire from Congress that year anyway. He viewed his brief tenure in the Oval Office as an unexpected bonus at the end of a
long career in politics. Ford often said that he was pleased to have had the opportunity to help the nation emerge from the shadow of
Watergate. The former president remained active in his retirement. He gave speeches, served on the boards of major corporations and
indulged his passions for golf and downhill skiing. He and his wife, who battled alcoholism at a time when the disease was not publicly
discussed, also opened the Betty Ford Clinic in California to support research, treatment and rehabilitation for alcohol addiction. In
1999, Ford received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor "awarded to individuals who make an
especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant
public or private endeavors." Ford died on December 26, 2006, at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, at the age of 93. At the time
of his death, he was America's oldest ex-president.
http://www.history.com/topics/gerald-r-ford
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Annual_Inflation/inflation_and_recession_chart.htm
recession
A recession is defined by two consecutive quarters of decline in a nation's gross domestic product.
Read more: Video: What Is a Recession? | eHow.com
http://www.ehow.com/video_4997865_recession_.html#ixzz1wIOQL4rU
From wiki:
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity.[1][2] Macroeconomic
indicators such as GDP, employment, investment spending, capacity utilization, household income, business profits, and
inflation fall, while bankruptcies and the unemployment rate rise.
Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending, often following an adverse supply shock or the
bursting of an economic bubble. Governments usually respond to recessions by adopting expansionary macroeconomic
policies, such as increasing money supply, increasing government spending and decreasing taxation.
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Recession
stagflation
http://www.history.com/videos/ask-steve-1960s-economy
Stagflation in the 1970s
From U.S. Department of State
The term "stagflation" -- an economic condition of both continuing inflation and stagnant business activity, together
with an increasing unemployment rate -- described the new economic malaise. Inflation seemed to feed on itself.
People began to expect continuous increases in the price of goods, so they bought more. This increased demand
pushed up prices, leading to demands for higher wages, which pushed prices higher still in a continuing upward spiral.
Labor contracts increasingly came to include automatic cost-of-living clauses, and the government began to peg some
payments, such as those for Social Security, to the Consumer Price Index, the best-known gauge of inflation. While
these practices helped workers and retirees cope with inflation, they perpetuated inflation. The government's everrising need for funds swelled the budget deficit and led to greater government borrowing, which in turn pushed up
interest rates and increased costs for businesses and consumers even further. With energy costs and interest rates
high, business investment languished and unemployment rose to uncomfortable levels.
In desperation, President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) tried to combat economic weakness and unemployment by
increasing government spending, and he established voluntary wage and price guidelines to control inflation. Both
were largely unsuccessful. A perhaps more successful but less dramatic attack on inflation involved the "deregulation"
of numerous industries, including airlines, trucking, and railroads. These industries had been tightly regulated, with
government controlling routes and fares. Support for deregulation continued beyond the Carter administration. In the
1980s, the government relaxed controls on bank interest rates and long-distance telephone service, and in the 1990s
it moved to ease regulation of local telephone service.
But the most important element in the war against inflation was the Federal Reserve Board, which clamped down hard
on the money supply beginning in 1979. By refusing to supply all the money an inflation-ravaged economy wanted,
the Fed caused interest rates to rise. As a result, consumer spending and business borrowing slowed abruptly. The
economy soon fell into a deep recession.
http://economics.about.com/od/useconomichistory/a/stagflation.htm
The 1970s
The 1970s were a tumultuous time. In some ways, the decade was a continuation of the 1960s. Women, African
Americans, Native Americans, gays and lesbians and other marginalized people continued their fight for
equality, and many Americans joined the protest against the ongoing war in Vietnam. In other ways, however,
the decade was a repudiation of the 1960s. A “New Right” mobilized in defense of political conservatism and
traditional family roles, and the behavior of President Richard Nixon undermined many people’s faith in the
good intentions of the federal government. By the end of the decade, these divisions and disappointments had
set a tone for public life that many would argue is still with us today.
The Conservative Backlash
Many Americans, particularly working class and middle class whites, responded to the turbulence of the late 1960s–the urban riots, the
antiwar protests, the alienating counterculture–by embracing a new kind of conservative populism. Sick of what they interpreted as
spoiled hippies and whining protestors, tired of an interfering government that, in their view, coddled poor people and black people at
taxpayer expense, these individuals formed what political strategists called a “silent majority.”
This silent majority swept President Richard Nixon into office in 1968. Almost immediately, Nixon began to dismantle the welfare state
that had fostered such resentment. He abolished as many parts of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty as he could, and he
made a show of his resistance to mandatory school desegregation plans such as busing. On the other hand, some of Nixon’s domestic
policies seem remarkably liberal today: For instance, he proposed a Family Assistance Plan that would have guaranteed every
American family an income of $1,600 a year (about $10,000 in today’s money), and he urged Congress to pass a Comprehensive
Health Insurance Plan that would have guaranteed affordable health care to all Americans. In general, though, Nixon’s policies favored
the interests of the middle class people who felt slighted by the Great Society of the 1960s.
As the 1970s continued, some of these people helped shape a new political movement known as the “New Right.” This movement,
rooted in the suburban Sun Belt, celebrated the free market and lamented the decline of “traditional” social values and roles. New Right
conservatives resented and resisted what they saw as government meddling. For example, they fought against high taxes,
environmental regulations, highway speed limits, national park policies in the West (the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion”) and
affirmative action and school desegregation plans. (Their anti-taxism emerged most notably in California in 1978, when the Proposition
13 referendum–“a primal scream by The People against Big Government,” said The New York Times–tried to limit the size of
government by restricting the amount of property tax that the state could collect from individual homeowners.)
The Environmental Movement
In some ways, though, 1960s liberalism continued to flourish. For example, the crusade to protect the environment from all sorts of
assaults–toxic industrial waste in places like Love Canal, New York; dangerous meltdowns at nuclear power plants such as the one at
Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania; highways through city neighborhoods–really took off during the 1970s. Americans celebrated the
first Earth Day in 1970, and Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act that same year. The Clean Air Act and the Clean
Water Act followed two years later. The oil crisis of the late 1970s drew further attention to the issue of conservation. By then,
environmentalism was so mainstream that the U.S. Forest Service’s Woodsy Owl interrupted Saturday morning cartoons to remind kids
to “Give a Hoot; Don’t Pollute.”
Fighting for Women's Rights
During the 1970s, many groups of Americans continued to fight for expanded social and political rights. In 1972, after years of
campaigning by feminists, Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution, which reads: “Equality of rights
under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” It seemed that the Amendment
would pass easily. Twenty-two of the necessary 38 states ratified it right away, and the remaining states seemed close behind.
However, the ERA alarmed many conservative activists, who feared that it would undermine traditional gender roles. These activists
mobilized against the Amendment and managed to defeat it. In 1977, Indiana became the 35th–and last–state to ratify the ERA.
Disappointments like these encouraged many women’s rights activists to turn away from politics. They began to build feminist
communities and organizations of their own: art galleries and bookstores, consciousness-raising groups, daycare and women’s health
collectives (such as the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, which published “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in 1973), rape crisis centers
and abortion clinics.
The Antiwar Movement
Even though very few people continued to support the war in Indochina, President Nixon feared that a retreat would make the United
States look weak. As a result, instead of ending the war, Nixon and his aides devised ways to make it more palatable, such as limiting
the draft and shifting the burden of combat onto South Vietnamese soldiers.
This policy seemed to work at the beginning of Nixon’s term in office. When the United States invaded Cambodia in 1970, however,
hundreds of thousands of protestors clogged city streets and shut down college campuses. On May 4, National Guardsmen shot four
student demonstrators at an antiwar rally at Kent State University in Ohio. Ten days later, police officers killed two black student
protestors at Mississippi’s Jackson State University. Members of Congress tried to limit the president’s power by revoking the Gulf of
Tonkin resolution authorizing the use of military force in Southeast Asia, but Nixon simply ignored them. Even after The New York
Times published the Pentagon Papers, which called the government’s justifications for war into question, the bloody and inconclusive
conflict continued. American troops did not leave the region until 1973.
The Watergate Scandal
As his term in office wore on, President Nixon grew increasingly paranoid and defensive. Though he won reelection by a landslide in
1972, he resented any challenge to his authority and approved of attempts to discredit those who opposed him. In June 1972, police
found five burglars from Nixon’s own Committee to Re-Elect the President in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located
in the Watergate office building. Soon, they found that Nixon himself was involved in the crime: He had demanded that the Federal
Bureau of Investigation stop investigating the break-in and told his aides to cover up the scandal.
In April 1974, a Congressional committee approved three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, misuse of federal agencies
and defying the authority of Congress. Before Congress could impeach him, however, President Nixon announced that he would resign.
Gerald Ford took over his office, and–to the distaste of many Americans–pardoned Nixon right away.
After Watergate, many people withdrew from politics altogether. They turned instead to pop culture–easy to do in such a trend-laden,
fad-happy decade. They listened to 8-track tapes of Jackson Browne, Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer and Marvin Gaye. They
made latch-hook rugs and macramé, took up racquetball and yoga, read “I’m OK, You’re OK” and “The Joy of Sex,” went to wifeswapping parties and smoked even more pot than they had in the 1960s. In general, by the end of the decade, many young people
were using their hard-fought freedom to simply do as they pleased: to wear what they wanted, to grow their hair long, to have sex, to do
drugs. Their liberation, in other words, was intensely personal.
http://www.history.com/topics/1970s
America’s birth rate declined after the 1960s in part due to the effects of the women’s liberation movement and
a worsening economy.
Jimmy Carter
As the 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter struggled to respond to formidable challenges,
including a major energy crisis as well as high inflation and unemployment. In the foreign affairs arena, he
reopened U.S. relations with China and made headway with efforts to broker peace in the historic Arab-Israeli
conflict, but was damaged late in his term by a hostage crisis in Iran. Carter's diagnosis of the nation's "crisis of
confidence" did little to boost his sagging popularity, and in 1980 he was soundly defeated in the general
election by Ronald Reagan. Over the next decades, Carter built a distinguished career as a diplomat,
humanitarian and author, pursuing conflict resolution in countries around the globe.
Jimmy Carter's Early Life and Start in Politics
Born in Plains, Georgia, on October 1, 1924, James Earle Carter Jr. attended the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, graduating in
1946. Shortly thereafter he married Rosalynn Smith, a fellow native of Plains; the couple would have four children. Carter's seven-year
career in the Navy included five years on submarine duty. In 1953, he was preparing to serve as an engineering officer on the
submarine Seawolf when his father died. Carter returned home and was able to rebuild his family's struggling peanut warehouse
business after a crippling drought. Active in community affairs and a deacon at the Plains Baptist Church, Carter launched his political
career with a seat on his local board of education. In 1962, he won election to the Georgia State Senate as a Democrat; he was
reelected in 1964. Two years later, he ran for the governor's office, finishing a disappointing third. The loss sent Carter into a period of
depression, which he overcame by finding renewed faith as a born-again Christian. He ran again for the governorship in 1970 and won.
A year later, Carter was featured on the cover of Time magazine as one of a new breed of young political leaders in the South, known
for their moderate racial views and progressive economic and social policies.
Carter and the Presidential Election of 1976
Carter announced his candidacy for president in 1974, just before his gubernatorial term was up. For the next two years, he traveled
around the country making speeches and meeting as many people as possible. His core message was one of values: He called for a
return to honesty and an elimination of secrecy in government, and repeatedly told voters, "I'll never tell a lie." At a time when
Americans were disillusioned with the executive branch of government in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Carter managed to build a
constituency by marketing himself as an outsider to Washington politics. He won the Democratic nomination in July 1976 and chose
Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate. In the general election, Carter faced Republican incumbent Gerald R.
Ford, who had succeeded to the presidency after Nixon's resignation. In November, Carter won a narrow victory, capturing 51 percent
of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes (compared with Ford's 240).
"Outsider" in Washington
As president, Carter sought to portray himself as a man of the people, dressing informally and adopting a folksy speaking style. He
introduced a number of ambitious programs for social and economic reform, and included a relatively large number of women and
minorities in his cabinet. Despite Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Congress blocked Carter's proposal for welfare
reform, as well as his proposal for a long-range energy program, a central focus of his administration. This difficult relationship with
Congress meant that Carter was unable to convert his plans into legislation, despite his initial popularity. Carter's relationship with the
public suffered in 1977, when Bert Lance–a close friend of the president whom he had named as director of the Office of Management
and Budget–was accused of financial misdealings in his pre-Washington career as a Georgia banker. Carter initially defended Lance,
but was later driven to ask for his resignation. Though Lance was later cleared of all charges, the scandal marred the president's muchvaunted reputation for honesty.
Jimmy Carter's Leadership Abroad and at Home
In 1977, Carter brokered two U.S. treaties with Panama; the following year, he presided over a tough round of meetings between
Egypt's President Anwar el-Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin at Camp David. The resulting Camp David Accords
ended the state of war between the two nations that had existed since Israel was founded in 1948. Carter also reopened diplomatic
relations between the United States and China while breaking ties with Taiwan, and signed a bilateral strategic arms limitation treaty
(SALT II) with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Throughout his presidency, Carter struggled to combat the nation's economic woes,
including high unemployment, rising inflation and the effects of an energy crisis that began in the early 1970s. Though he claimed an
increase of 8 million jobs and a reduction in the budget deficit by the end of his term, many business leaders as well as the public
blamed Carter for the nation's continuing struggles, saying he didn't have a coherent or effective policy to address them. In July 1979,
Carter called a special summit with national leaders at Camp David. His televised speech after the meeting diagnosed a "crisis of
confidence" occurring in the country, a mood that he later referred to as a "national malaise.”
Hostage Crisis and Carter's Defeat
In November 1979, a mob of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took its diplomatic staff hostage as a protest
against the arrival in the United States of the deposed Iranian shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, in order to receive medical
treatment. The students had the support of Iran's revolutionary government, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Carter stood firm in
the tense standoff that followed, but his failure to free the hostages led his government to be perceived as inept and inefficient; this
perception increased after the failure of a secret U.S. military mission in April 1980. Despite sagging approval ratings, Carter was able
to defeat a challenge by Senator Edward Kennedy to win the Democratic nomination in 1980. He was defeated by a large margin in the
general election that year by Ronald Reagan, a former actor and governor of California who argued during his campaign that the
problem facing the country was not a lack of public confidence, but a need for new leadership.
Jimmy Carter's Post-Presidency Career
With his wife Rosalynn, Carter established the nonprofit, nonpartisan Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta in 1982. In the decades that
followed, he continued his diplomatic activities in many conflict-ridden countries around the globe. In 1994 alone, Carter negotiated with
North Korea to end their nuclear weapons program, worked in Haiti to ensure a peaceful transfer of government and brokered a
(temporary) ceasefire between Bosnian Serbs and Muslims. Carter has also built homes for the poor with the organization Habitat for
Humanity and worked as a professor at Emory University. He is the author of numerous books, the topics of which range from his views
on the Middle East to memories of his childhood; they also include a historical novel and a collection of poetry. In 2002, Carter was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize committee cited his role in helping forge the Camp David accord between Israel and Egypt
during his presidency, as well as his ongoing work with the Carter Center.
http://www.history.com/topics/jimmy-carter
Iran hostage crisis
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60
American hostages. The immediate cause of this action was President Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow Iran’s
deposed Shah, a pro-Western autocrat who had been expelled from his country some months before, to come to
the United States for cancer treatment. However, the hostage-taking was about more than the Shah’s medical
care: it was a dramatic way for the student revolutionaries to declare a break with Iran’s past and an end to
American interference in its affairs. It was also a way to raise the intra- and international profile of the
revolution’s leader, the anti-American cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The students set their hostages free
on January 21, 1981, 444 days after the crisis began and just hours after President Ronald Reagan delivered his
inaugural address. Many historians believe that hostage crisis cost Jimmy Carter a second term as president.
The Iran Hostage Crisis: The Shah and the C.I.A.
The Iran hostage crisis had its origins in a series of events that took place nearly a half-century before it began. The source of tension
between Iran and the U.S. stemmed from an increasingly intense conflict over oil. British and American corporations had controlled the
bulk of Iran’s petroleum reserves almost since their discovery--a profitable arrangement that they had no desire to change. However, in
1951 Iran’s newly elected prime minister, a European-educated nationalist named Muhammad Mossadegh, announced a plan to
nationalize the country’s oil industry. In response to these policies, the American C.I.A. and the British intelligence service devised a
secret plan to overthrow Mossadegh and replace him with a leader who would be more receptive to Western interests.
Through this coup, code-named Operation TP-Ajax, Mossadegh was deposed and a new government was installed in August 1953.
The new leader was a member of Iran’s royal family named Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Shah’s government was secular, anticommunist and pro-Western. In exchange for tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid, he returned 80 percent of Iran’s oil reserves to the
Americans and the British.
For the C.I.A. and oil interests, the 1953 coup was a success. In fact, it served as a model for other covert operations during the Cold
War, such as the 1954 government takeover in Guatemala and the failed intervention in Cuba in 1961. However, many Iranians bitterly
resented what they saw as American intervention in their affairs. The Shah turned out to be a brutal, arbitrary dictator whose secret
police (known as the SAVAK) tortured and murdered thousands of people. Meanwhile, the Iranian government spent billions of dollars
on American-made weapons while the Iranian economy suffered.
The Iran Hostage Crisis
By the 1970s, many Iranians were fed up with the Shah’s government. In protest, they turned to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a
radical cleric whose revolutionary Islamist movement seemed to promise a break from the past and a turn toward greater autonomy for
the Iranian people. In July 1979, the revolutionaries forced the Shah to disband his government and flee to Egypt. The Ayatollah
installed a militant Islamist government in its place.
The United States, fearful of stirring up hostilities in the Middle East, did not come to the defense of its old ally. (For one thing, President
Carter, aware of the Shah’s terrible record in that department, was reluctant to defend him.) However, in October 1979 President Carter
agreed to allow the exiled leader to enter the U.S. for treatment of an advanced malignant lymphoma. His decision was humanitarian,
not political; nevertheless, as one American later noted, it was like throwing “a burning branch into a bucket of kerosene.” Anti-American
sentiment in Iran exploded.
On November 4, just after the Shah arrived in New York, a group of pro-Ayatollah students smashed the gates and scaled the walls of
the American embassy in Tehran. Once inside, they seized 66 hostages, mostly diplomats and embassy employees. After a short
period of time, 13 of these hostages were released. (For the most part, these 13 were women, African-Americans and citizens of
countries other than the U.S.--people who, Khomeini argued, were already subject to “the oppression of American society.”) Some time
later, a 14th hostage developed health problems and was likewise sent home. By midsummer 1980, 52 hostages remained in the
embassy compound.
Diplomatic maneuvers had no discernible effect on the Ayatollah’s anti-American stance; neither did economic sanctions such as the
seizure of Iranian assets in the United States. Meanwhile, while the hostages were never seriously injured, they were subjected to a
rich variety of demeaning and terrifying treatment. They were blindfolded and paraded in front of TV cameras and jeering crowds. They
were not allowed to speak or read, and they were rarely permitted to change clothes. Throughout the crisis there was a frightening
uncertainty about their fate: The hostages never knew whether they were going to be tortured, murdered or set free.
The Iran Hostage Crisis: Operation Eagle Claw
President Carter’s efforts to bring an end to the hostage crisis soon became one of his foremost priorities. In April 1980, frustrated with
the slow pace of diplomacy (and over the objections of several of his advisers), Carter decided to launch a risky military rescue mission
known as Operation Eagle Claw. The operation was supposed to send an elite rescue team into the embassy compound. However, a
severe desert sandstorm on the day of the mission caused several helicopters to malfunction, including one that veered into a large
transport plane during takeoff. Eight American servicemen were killed in the accident, and Operation Eagle Claw was aborted.
The Iran Hostage Crisis: The 1980 Election
The constant media coverage of the hostage crisis in the U.S. served as a demoralizing backdrop for the 1980 presidential race.
President Carter’s inability to resolve the problem made him look like a weak and ineffectual leader. At the same time, his intense focus
on bringing the hostages home kept him away from the campaign trail.
The Republican candidate, former California governor Ronald Reagan, took advantage of Carter’s difficulties. Rumors even circulated
that Reagan’s campaign staff negotiated with the Iranians to be sure that the hostages would not be released before the election, an
event that would surely have given Carter a crucial boost. (Reagan himself always denied these allegations.) On Election Day, one year
and two days after the hostage crisis began, Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide.
On January 21, 1981, just a few hours after Ronald Reagan delivered his inaugural address, the remaining hostages were released.
They had been in captivity for 444 days.
http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis
1980s (recession, Reagan Revolution, Reaganomics, social conservatism)
For many people in the United States, the late 1970s were a troubled and troubling time. The radical and
countercultural movements of the 1960s and early 1970s, the Watergate scandal, the Vietnam War, uncertainty
in the Middle East and economic crisis at home had undermined Americans’ confidence in their fellow citizens
and in their government. By the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the idealistic dreams of the 1960s were worn
down by inflation, foreign policy turmoil and rising crime. In response, many Americans embraced a new
conservatism in social, economic and political life during the 1980s, characterized by the policies of President
Ronald Reagan. Often remembered for its materialism and consumerism, the decade also saw the rise of the
“yuppie,” an explosion of blockbuster movies and the emergence of cable networks like MTV, which
introduced the music video and launched the careers of many iconic artists.
The 1980s: Rise of the New Right
The populist conservative movement known as the New Right enjoyed unprecedented growth in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It
appealed to a diverse assortment of Americans, including evangelical Christians; anti-tax crusaders; advocates of deregulation and
smaller markets; advocates of a more powerful American presence abroad; disaffected white liberals; and defenders of an unrestricted
free market. Historians link the rise of this New Right in part to the growth of the so-called Sunbelt, a mostly suburban and rural region
of the Southeast, Southwest and California, where the population began to expand after World War II and exploded during the 1970s.
This demographic shift had important consequences. Many of the new Sunbelters had migrated from the older industrial cities of the
North and Midwest (the “Rust Belt”). They did so because they had grown tired of the seemingly insurmountable problems facing aging
cities, such as overcrowding, pollution and crime. Perhaps most of all, they were tired of paying high taxes for social programs they did
not consider effective and were worried about the stagnating economy. Many were also frustrated by what they saw as the federal
government’s constant, costly and inappropriate interference. The movement resonated with many citizens who had once supported
more liberal policies but who no longer believed the Democratic Party represented their interests.
The 1980s: The Reagan Revolution and Reaganomics
During and after the 1980 presidential election, these disaffected liberals came to be known as “Reagan Democrats.” They provided
millions of crucial votes for the Republican candidate, the personable and engaging former governor of California, Ronald Reagan
(1911-2004), in his victory over the incumbent Democratic president, Jimmy Carter (1924-). Reagan won 51 percent of the vote and
carried all but five states and the District of Columbia. Once a Hollywood actor, his outwardly reassuring disposition and optimistic style
appealed to many Americans. Reagan was affectionately nicknamed “the Gipper” for his 1940 film role as a Notre Dame football player
named George Gipp.
Reagan’s campaign cast a wide net, appealing to conservatives of all stripes with promises of big tax cuts and smaller government.
Once he took office, he set about making good on his promises to get the federal government out of Americans’ lives and pocketbooks.
He advocated for industrial deregulation, reductions in government spending and tax cuts for both individuals and corporations, as part
of an economic plan he and his advisors referred to as “supply-side economics.” Rewarding success and allowing people with money to
keep more of it, the thinking went, would encourage them to buy more goods and invest in businesses. The resulting economic growth
would “trickle down” to everyone.
The 1980s: Reagan and the Cold War
Like many other American leaders during the Cold War, President Reagan believed that the spread of communism anywhere
threatened freedom everywhere. As a result, his administration was eager to provide financial and military aid to anticommunist
governments and insurgencies around the world. This policy, applied in nations including Grenada, El Salvador and Nicaragua, was
known as the Reagan Doctrine.
In November 1986, it emerged that the White House had secretly sold arms to Iran in an effort to win the freedom of U.S. hostages in
Lebanon, and then diverted money from the sales to Nicaraguan rebels known as the Contras. The Iran-Contra affair, as it became
known, resulted in the convictions–later reversed–of Reagan’s national security adviser, John Poindexter (1936-), and Marine Lt. Col.
Oliver North (1943-), a member of the National Security Council
The 1980s: Reaganomics
On the domestic front, Reagan’s economic policies initially proved less successful than its partisans had hoped, particularly when it
came to a key tenet of the plan: balancing the budget. Huge increases in military spending (during the Reagan administration,
Pentagon spending would reach $34 million an hour) were not offset by spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere. By early 1982, the
United States was experiencing its worst recession since the Great Depression. Nine million people were unemployed in November of
that year. Businesses closed, families lost their homes and farmers lost their land. The economy slowly righted itself, however, and
“Reaganomics” grew popular again. Even the stock market crash of October 1987 did little to undermine the confidence of middle-class
and wealthy Americans in the president’s economic agenda. Many also overlooked the fact that Reagan’s policies created record
budget deficits: In his eight years in office, the federal government accumulated more debt than it had in its entire history.
Despite its mixed track record, a majority of Americans still believed in the conservative agenda by the late 1980s. When Ronald
Reagan left office in 1989, he had the highest approval rating of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. In 1988, Reagan’s vice
president, George H.W. Bush, soundly defeated Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the presidential election.
The 1980s: Popular Culture
In some respects, the popular culture of the 1980s reflected the era's political conservatism. For many people, the symbol of the
decade was the "yuppie": a baby boomer with a college education, a well-paying job and expensive taste. Many people derided yuppies
for being self-centered and materialistic, and surveys of young urban professionals across the country showed that they were, indeed,
more concerned with making money and buying consumer goods than their parents and grandparents had been. However, in some
ways yuppiedom was less shallow and superficial than it appeared. Popular television shows like “thirtysomething” and movies like “The
Big Chill” and “Bright Lights, Big City” depicted a generation of young men and women who were plagued with anxiety and self-doubt.
They were successful, but they weren't sure they were happy.
At the movie theater, the 1980s was the age of the blockbuster. Movies like “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” “Return of the Jedi,” “Raiders
of the Lost Ark” and “Beverly Hills Cop” appealed to moviegoers of all ages and made hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office.
The 1980s was also the heyday of the teen movie. Films like “The Breakfast Club,” “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Pretty in Pink” are
still popular today.
At home, people watched family sitcoms like “The Cosby Show,” “Family Ties,” “Roseanne” and “Married...with Children.” They also
rented movies to watch on their new VCRs. By the end of the 1980s, 60 percent of American television owners got cable service–and
the most revolutionary cable network of all was MTV, which made its debut on August 1, 1981. The music videos the network played
made stars out of bands like Duran Duran and Culture Club and made megastars out of artists like Michael Jackson (1958-2009),
whose elaborate "Thriller" video helped sell 600,000 albums in the five days after its first broadcast. MTV also influenced fashion:
People across the country (and around the world) did their best to copy the hairstyles and fashions they saw in music videos. In this
way, artists like Madonna (1958-) became (and remain) fashion icons.
As the decade wore on, MTV also became a forum for those who went against the grain or were left out of the yuppie ideal. Rap artists
such as Public Enemy channeled the frustration of urban African Americans into their powerful album “It Takes a Nation of Millions to
Hold Us Back.” Heavy metal acts such as Metallica and Guns N’ Roses also captured the sense of malaise among young people,
particularly young men. Even as Reagan maintained his popularity, popular culture continued to be an arena for dissatisfaction and
debate throughout the 1980s.
http://www.history.com/topics/1980s
“Supply side”
economics (trickledown) favored probusiness policies &
reduced taxes. Reagan’s
defense spending
increased Cold War
pressures on the USSR,
while led to rising
deficits.
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), a former actor and California governor, served as the 40th U.S. president from
1981 to 1989. Raised in small-town Illinois, he became a Hollywood actor in his 20s and later served as the
Republican governor of California from 1967 to 1975. Dubbed the Great Communicator, the affable Reagan
became a popular two-term president. He cut taxes, increased defense spending, negotiated a nuclear arms
reduction agreement with the Soviets and is credited with helping to bring a quicker end to the Cold War.
Reagan, who survived a 1981 assassination attempt, died at age 93 after battling Alzheimer’s disease.
Ronald Reagan's Childhood and Education
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, to Edward "Jack" Reagan (1883-1941), a shoe salesman,
and Nelle Wilson Reagan (1883-1962). The family, which included older son Neil Reagan (1908-1996), resided in an apartment that
lacked indoor plumbing and running water and was located along the small town’s main street. Reagan’s father nicknamed him Dutch
as a baby, saying he resembled "a fat little Dutchman."
During Reagan’s early childhood, his family lived in a series of Illinois towns as his father switched sales jobs, then settled in Dixon,
Illinois, in 1920. In 1928, Reagan graduated from Dixon High School, where he was an athlete and student body president and
performed in school plays. During summer vacations, he worked as a lifeguard in Dixon.
Reagan went on to attend Eureka College in Illinois, where he played football, ran track, captained the swim team, served as student
council president and acted in school productions. After graduating in 1932, he found work as a radio sports announcer in Iowa.
Ronald Reagan's Hollywood Career and Marriages
In 1937, while in Southern California to cover the Chicago Cubs’ spring training season, Ronald Reagan did a screen test for the
Warner Brothers movie studio. The studio signed him to a contract, and that same year he made his film debut in "Love is on the Air,"
playing a radio news reporter. Over the next three decades he appeared in more than 50 movies. Among his best-known roles was that
of Notre Dame football star George Gipp in the 1940 biographical film "Knute Rockne All American." In the movie, Reagan’s famous
line–which he is still rememberd for–was "Win one for the Gipper." Another notable role was in 1942 in "Kings Row," in which Reagan
portrayed an accident victim who wakes up to discover his legs have been amputated and cries out, "Where’s the rest of me?" (Reagan
used this line as the title of his 1965 autobiography.)
In 1940, Reagan married actress Jane Wyman (1917-2007), with whom he had daughter Maureen (1941-2001) and an adopted son,
Michael (1945-). The couple divorced in 1948 (Reagan is the only U.S. president to have been divorced). In 1952, he married actress
Nancy Davis (1921-). The pair had two children, Patricia (1952-) and Ronald (1958-).
During World War II (1939-1945), Reagan was disqualified from combat duty due to poor eyesight and spent his time in the Army
making training films.
From 1947 to 1952, and from 1959 to 1960, he served as president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), during which time he testified in
front of the House Un-American Activities Committe (HUAC). From 1954 to 1962, he hosted the weekly television drama series "The
General Electric Theater." In this role, he toured the United States as a public relations representative for General Electric, giving probusiness talks in which he spoke out against too much government control and wasteful spending, central themes of his future political
career.
Golden State Governorship and Bid for the Presidency
In his younger years, Ronald Reagan was a member of the Democratic Party and campaigned for Democratic candidates; however, his
views grew more conservative over time, and in the early 1960s he officially became a Republican.
In 1964, Reagan stepped into the national political spotlight when he gave a well-received televised speech for Republican presidential
candidate Barry Goldwater (1909-1998), a prominent conservative. Two years later, in his first race for public office, Reagan defeated
Democratic incumbent Edmund "Pat" Brown Sr. (1905-1996) by almost 1 million votes to win the governorship of California. Reagan
was reelected to a second term in 1970.
After making unsuccessful bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 and 1976, Reagan received his party’s nod in 1980.
In that year’s general election, he and running mate George H.W. Bush (1924-) faced off against President Jimmy Carter (1924-) and
Vice President Walter Mondale (1928-). Reagan won the election by an electoral margin of 489-49 and captured almost 51 percent of
the popular vote. At age 69, he was the oldest person elected to the U.S. presidency.
1981 Inauguration and Assassination Attempt
Ronald Reagan was sworn into office on January 20, 1981. In his inaugural address, Reagan famously said of America’s then-troubled
economy, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem."
After the more informal Carter years, Reagan and his wife Nancy ushered in a new era of glamour in the nation’s capital, which became
known as Hollywood on the Potomac. The first lady wore designer fashions, hosted numerous state dinners and oversaw a major
redecoration of the White House.
Just over two months after his inauguration, on March 30, 1981, Reagan survived an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr.
(1955-), a man with a history of psychiatric problems, outside a hotel in Washington, D.C. The gunman’s bullet pierced one of the
president’s lungs and narrowly missed his heart. Reagan, known for his good-natured humor, later told his wife, "Honey, I forgot to
duck." Within several weeks of the shooting, Reagan was back at work.
Ronald Reagan's Domestic Agenda
On the domestic front, President Ronald Reagan implemented policies to reduce the federal government’s reach into the daily lives and
pocketbooks of Americans, including tax cuts intended to spur growth (known as Reaganomics). He also advocated for increases in
military spending, reductions in certain social programs and measures to deregulate business.
By 1983, the nation’s economy had started to recover and enter a period of prosperity that would extend through the rest of Reagan’s
presidency. Critics maintained that his policies led to budget deficits and a more significant national debt; some also held that his
economic programs favored the rich.
In 1981, Reagan made history by appointing Sandra Day O’Connor (1930-) as the first woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ronald Reagan and Foreign Affairs
In foreign affairs, Ronald Reagan’s first term in office was marked by a massive buildup of U.S. weapons and troops, as well as an
escalation of the Cold War (1946-1991) with the Soviet Union, which the president dubbed "the evil empire." Key to his administration’s
foreign policy initiatives was the Reagan Doctrine, under which America provided aid to anticommunist movements in Africa, Asia and
Latin America. In 1983, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a plan to develop space-based weapons to protect
America from attacks by Soviet nuclear missiles.
Also on the foreign affairs front, Reagan sent 800 U.S. Marines to Lebanon as part of an international peacekeeping force after Israel
invaded that nation in June 1982. In October 1983, suicide bombers attacked the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans. That
same month, Reagan ordered U.S. forces to lead an invasion of Grenada, an island in the Caribbean, after Marxist rebels overthrew the
government. In addition to the problems in Lebanon and Grenada, the Reagan administration had to deal with an ongoing contentious
relationship between the United States and Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi (1942-).
During his second term, Reagan forged a diplomatic relationship with the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-), who became
leader of the Soviet Union in 1985. In 1987, the Americans and Soviets signed a historic agreement to eliminate intermediate-range
nuclear missiles. That same year, Reagan spoke at Germany’s Berlin Wall, a symbol of communism, and famously challenged
Gorbachev to tear it down. Twenty-nine months later, Gorbachev allowed the people of Berlin to dismantle the wall. After leaving the
White House, Reagan returned to Germany in September 1990—just weeks before Germany was officially reunified–and took several
symbolic swings with a hammer at a remaining chunk of the wall.
1984 Reelection and Iran-Contra Affair
In November 1984, Ronald Reagan was reelected in a landslide, defeating Walter Mondale and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro
(1935-), the first female vice-presidential candidate from a major U.S. political party. Reagan, who announced it was "morning again in
America," carried 49 out of 50 states in the election and received 525 out of 538 electoral votes, the largest number ever won by an
American presidential candidate.
http://www.history.com/topics/ronald-reagan
Cold War
During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the Axis powers.
However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Americans had long been wary of Soviet
communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own
country. For their part, the Soviets resented the Americans’ decades-long refusal to treat the USSR as a
legitimate part of the international community as well as their delayed entry into World War II, which resulted
in the deaths of tens of millions of Russians. After the war ended, these grievances ripened into an
overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity. Postwar Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe fueled
many Americans’ fears of a Russian plan to control the world. Meanwhile, the USSR came to resent what they
perceived as American officials’ bellicose rhetoric, arms buildup and interventionist approach to international
relations. In such a hostile atmosphere, no single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War; in fact, some
historians believe it was inevitable.
The Cold War: Containment
By the time World War II ended, most American officials agreed that the best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy called
“containment.” In 1946, in his famous “Long Telegram,” the diplomat George Kennan (1904-2005) explained this policy: The Soviet
Union, he wrote, was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi
[agreement between parties that disagree]”; as a result, America’s only choice was the “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant
containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” President Harry Truman (1884-1972) agreed. “It must be the policy of the United
States,” he declared before Congress in 1947, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation…by outside
pressures.” This way of thinking would shape American foreign policy for the next four decades.
The Cold War: The Atomic Age
The containment strategy also provided the rationale for an unprecedented arms buildup in the United States. In 1950, a National
Security Council Report known as NSC–68 had echoed Truman’s recommendation that the country use military force to "contain"
communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring. To that end, the report called for a four-fold increase in defense
spending.
In particular, American officials encouraged the development of atomic weapons like the ones that had ended World War II. Thus began
a deadly "arms race." In 1949, the Soviets tested an atom bomb of their own. In response, President Truman announced that the
United States would build an even more destructive atomic weapon: the hydrogen bomb, or "superbomb." Stalin followed suit.
As a result, the stakes of the Cold War were perilously high. The first H-bomb test, in the Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands, showed
just how fearsome the nuclear age could be. It created a 25-square-mile fireball that vaporized an island, blew a huge hole in the ocean
floor and had the power to destroy half of Manhattan. Subsequent American and Soviet tests spewed poisonous radioactive waste into
the atmosphere.
The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation had a great impact on American domestic life as well. People built bomb shelters in their
backyards. They practiced attack drills in schools and other public places. The 1950s and 1960s saw an epidemic of popular films that
horrified moviegoers with depictions of nuclear devastation and mutant creatures. In these and other ways, the Cold War was a
constant presence in Americans’ everyday lives.
The Cold War Extends to Space
Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental
ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for "traveler"), the world's first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed
into the Earth's orbit. Sputnik's launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans. In the United States, space was
seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much
ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly capable of delivering a
nuclear warhead into U.S. air space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.
In 1958, the U.S. launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von
Braun, and what came to be known as the Space Race was underway. That same year, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a public
order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration, as well as
several programs seeking to exploit the military potential of space. Still, the Soviets were one step ahead, launching the first man into
space in April 1961.
That May, after Alan Shepard become the first American man in space, President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) made the bold public
claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. His prediction came true on July 20, 1969, when Neil
Armstrong of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, became the first man to set food on the moon, effectively winning the Space Race for the
Americans. U.S. astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes, and earth-bound men and women seemed to enjoy
living vicariously through them. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass
America and prove the power of the communist system.
The Cold War: The Red Scare
Meanwhile, beginning in 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) brought the Cold War home in another way. The
committee began a series of hearings designed to show that communist subversion in the United States was alive and well.
In Hollywood, HUAC forced hundreds of people who worked in the movie industry to renounce left-wing political beliefs and testify
against one another. More than 500 people lost their jobs. Many of these "blacklisted" writers, directors, actors and others were unable
to work again for more than a decade. HUAC also accused State Department workers of engaging in subversive activities. Soon, other
anticommunist politicians, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), expanded this probe to include anyone who worked in
the federal government. Thousands of federal employees were investigated, fired and even prosecuted. As this anticommunist hysteria
spread throughout the 1950s, liberal college professors lost their jobs, people were asked to testify against colleagues and "loyalty
oaths" became commonplace.
The Cold War Abroad
The fight against subversion at home mirrored a growing concern with the Soviet threat abroad. In June 1950, the first military action of
the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People’s Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. Many
American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was
not an option. Truman sent the American military into Korea, but the war dragged to a stalemate and ended in 1953.
Other international disputes followed. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy faced a number of troubling situations in his own
hemisphere. The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis the following year seemed to prove that the real communist
threat now lay in the unstable, postcolonial "Third World" Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vietnam, where the collapse of the
French colonial regime had led to a struggle between the American-backed nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem in the south and the communist
nationalist Ho Chi Minh in the north. Since the 1950s, the United States had been committed to the survival of an anticommunist
government in the region, and by the early 1960s it seemed clear to American leaders that if they were to successfully "contain"
communist expansionism there, they would have to intervene more actively on Diem’s behalf. However, what was intended to be a brief
military action spiraled into a 10-year conflict.
The Close of the Cold War
Almost as soon as he took office, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) began to implement a new approach to international relations.
Instead of viewing the world as a hostile, "bi-polar" place, he suggested, why not use diplomacy instead of military action to create more
poles? To that end, he encouraged the United Nations to recognize the communist Chinese government and, after a trip there in 1972,
began to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing. At the same time, he adopted a policy of "détente"–"relaxation"–toward the Soviet
Union. In 1972, he and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), which
prohibited the manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and took a step toward reducing the decades-old threat of nuclear war.
Despite Nixon’s efforts, the Cold War heated up again under President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Like many leaders of his
generation, Reagan believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened freedom everywhere. As a result, he worked to
provide financial and military aid to anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the world. This policy, particularly as it was
applied in the developing world in places like Grenada and El Salvador, was known as the Reagan Doctrine.
Even as Reagan fought communism in Central America, however, the Soviet Union was disintegrating. In response to severe economic
problems and growing political ferment in the USSR, Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-) took office in 1985 and introduced two policies
that redefined Russia's relationship to the rest of the world: "glasnost," or political openness, and "perestroika," or economic reform.
Soviet influence in Eastern Europe waned. In 1989, every other communist state in the region replaced its government with a
noncommunist one. In November of that year, the Berlin Wall–the most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War–was finally
destroyed, just over two years after Reagan had challenged the Soviet premier in a speech at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: "Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall." By 1991, the Soviet Union itself had fallen apart. The Cold War was over.
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war
America’s economy changed from predominantly industrial-based to more technological and service-based.
Berlin Wall
On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany)
began to build a barbed wire and concrete "Antifascistischer Schutzwall," or "antifascist bulwark," between
East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western "fascists" from entering
East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass
defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East
German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased.
That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. Some crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought
hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the
most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.
The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin
As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany’s
territories. They split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union,
while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) France.
Even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the eastern
and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements split the city into similar sectors. The Soviets took the eastern half,
while the other Allies took the western. This four-way occupation of Berlin began in June 1945.
The Berlin Wall: Blockade and Crisis
The existence of West Berlin, a conspicuously capitalist city deep within communist East Germany, “stuck like a bone in the Soviet
throat,” as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put it. The Russians began maneuvering to drive the United States, Britain and France out
of the city for good. In 1948, a Soviet blockade of West Berlin aimed to starve the western Allies out of the city. Instead of retreating,
however, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift, lasted for
more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and other goods to West Berlin. The Soviets called off the
blockade in 1949.
After a decade of relative calm, tensions flared again in 1958. For the next three years, the Soviets–emboldened by the successful
launch of the Sputnik satellite the year before and embarrassed by the seemingly endless flow of refugees from east to west (nearly 3
million since the end of the blockade, many of them young skilled workers such as doctors, teachers and engineers)–blustered and
made threats, while the Allies resisted. Summits, conferences and other negotiations came and went without resolution. Meanwhile, the
flood of refugees continued. In June 1961, some 19,000 people left the GDR through Berlin. The following month, 30,000 fled. In the
first 11 days of August, 16,000 East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin, and on August 12 some 2,400 followed—the largest
number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day.
The Berlin Wall: Building the Wall
That night, Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for
good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed
wire and concrete block wall–the Berlin Wall–that divided one side of the city from the other.
Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed the East-West border to
work, to shop, to go to the theater and the movies. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. After the wall was built,
it became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through one of three checkpoints: at Helmstedt (“Checkpoint Alpha” in
American military parlance), at Dreilinden (“Checkpoint Bravo”) and in the center of Berlin at Friedrichstrasse (“Checkpoint Charlie”).
(Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall.) At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and
other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave. Except under special circumstances, travelers from East and West Berlin
were rarely allowed across the border.
The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989
The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. (Though he
was not happy about it, President Kennedy conceded that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”) Over time, East German officials
replaced the makeshift wall with one that was sturdier and more difficult to scale. A 12-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide mass of reinforced concrete
was topped with an enormous pipe that made climbing over nearly impossible. Behind the wall on the East German side was a socalled “Death Strip”: a gauntlet of soft sand (to show footprints), floodlights, vicious dogs, trip-wire machine guns and patrolling soldiers
with orders to shoot escapees on sight.
In all, at least 171 people were killed trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall. Escape from East Germany was not
impossible, however: From 1961 until the wall came down in 1989, more than 5,000 East Germans (including some 600 border guards)
managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons,
crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds.
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party
announced a change in his city’s relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross
the country’s borders. East and West Berliners flocked to the wall, drinking beer and champagne and chanting “Tor auf!” (“Open the
gate!”). At midnight, they flooded through the checkpoints.
More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist
wrote, “the greatest street party in the history of the world.” People used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall–they
became known as “mauerspechte,” or “wall woodpeckers”—while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the
wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. “Only today,” one Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, “is the
war really over.”
The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on October 3, 1990, almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
http://www.history.com/topics/berlin-wall
Fall of the Soviet Union
When Mikhail S. Gorbachev (1931-) became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in
March 1985, he launched his nation on a dramatic new course. His dual program of "perestroika"
("restructuring") and "glasnost" ("openness") introduced profound changes in economic practice, internal affairs
and international relations. Within five years, Gorbachev's revolutionary program swept communist
governments throughout Eastern Europe from power and brought an end to the Cold War (1945-91), the largely
political and economic rivalry between the Soviets and the United States and their respective allies that emerged
following World War II. Gorbachev's actions also inadvertently set the stage for the 1991 collapse of the Soviet
Union, which dissolved into 15 individual republics. He resigned from office on December 25, 1991.
Perestroika and Glasnost
When Mikhail S. Gorbachev stepped onto the world stage in March 1985 as the new leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR), it was immediately clear that he was different from his predecessors. Gorbachev, then 54, was significantly younger than the
aging party members who had led the Communist superpower in previous decades--the last two of whom had seen their rule cut short
by health problems. Hailing from a younger generation gave Gorbachev a new outlook on the challenges that faced his country.
Gorbachev realized that he had inherited significant problems. Even as the USSR vied with the United States for global political and
military leadership, its economy was struggling, and its citizens were chafing under their relatively poor standard of living and lack of
freedom. Those difficulties were also keenly felt in the Communist nations of Eastern Europe that were aligned with and controlled by
the Soviets.
Gorbachev took a new approach toward addressing these problems: He introduced a reform program that embodied two overarching
concepts. Perestroika, his restructuring concept, started with an overhaul of the top members of the Communist Party. It also focused
on economic issues, replacing the centralized government planning that had been a hallmark of the Soviet system with a greater
reliance on market forces. The accompanying concept of glasnost sought to ease the strict social controls imposed by the government.
Gorbachev gave greater freedom to the media and religious groups and allowed citizens to express divergent views. By 1988,
Gorbachev had expanded his reforms to include democratization, moving the USSR toward an elected form of government.
Slowing the Arms Race
Gorbachev's internal reforms were matched by new approaches to Soviet foreign policy. Determined to end his country's nuclear rivalry
with the United States, he pursued negotiations with U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Although Reagan held strong anticommunist views and had intensified the Cold War by initiating a buildup of U.S. forces in the early 1980s, the two leaders managed to
find common ground.
Gorbachev and Reagan took part in five summits between 1985 and 1988. Their discussions resulted in the signing of the IntermediateRange Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which brought about a major reduction in both nations' weapons stockpiles. The productive
dialogue was the result of fresh thinking on both sides, but progress on many points began with Gorbachev's willingness to abandon
long-held Soviet positions.
The Liberation of Eastern Europe
The Gorbachev initiative that had the most far-reaching effects was his decision to abandon Soviet control of the Communist nations of
Eastern Europe. Since World War II, leaders of the USSR had viewed the maintenance of these states as essential to their nation's
security, and they had crushed anti-Soviet uprisings in Warsaw Pact countries (a group of eight Communist nations in Eastern Europe,
including Poland and Hungary) that sought greater independence. However, just a year after taking power, Gorbachev oversaw reforms
that loosened the Soviet grip on these states. Then, in a landmark December 1988 speech at the United Nations, he declared that all
nations should be free to choose their own course without outside interference. To the amazement of millions, he capped this speech
by announcing that the USSR would significantly reduce the number of troops and tanks that were based in the Eastern Bloc countries.
Gorbachev's move had unintended consequences. He had hoped that his reforms would revitalize and modernize the Soviet Union.
Instead, they unleashed social forces that brought about the dissolution of the USSR (which had been in existence since 1922). In
1989, Communist regimes fell in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. By the end of that year, the
Berlin Wall had been dismantled and discussions were under way that would result in the reunification of Germany in October 1990.
Gorbachev did not watch passively as these events unfolded. To the contrary, he adopted more conservative policies in 1990--the
same year he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite his willingness to try new approaches, Gorbachev remained committed to the
principles of socialism and determined to maintain the Soviet republics as one nation. In the end, however, his efforts to rein in the
reform spirit he had turned loose were ineffective.
Angry hard-line Communists attempted to remove Gorbachev from power in August 1991 by staging a coup. The revolt failed due to the
efforts of Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007), president of the Russian Republic, who emerged as the country's most powerful political figure.
However, before the end of the year, Yeltsin and other reformers succeeded in completely undoing the old order. The Soviet Union
dissolved into 15 individual republics, and on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned from the presidency of a nation that no longer
existed.
http://www.history.com/topics/perestroika-and-glasnost
George Herbert Walker Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush (1924- ) served as vice president under Ronald Reagan before his election as the 41st U.S.
president in 1988. He took office amid major shifts in the world order, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, making
foreign policy a central focus of his presidency. When Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait in 1990, Bush helped forge a military
coalition that swiftly resolved the conflict. Despite this success, Bush served only a single term, losing to Bill Clinton in
the midst of a faltering economy.
Introduction
George Herbert Walker Bush (born June 12, 1924, Milton, Mass., U.S.) is a politician and businessman who was vice president of the
United States (1981–89) and the 41st president of the United States (1989–93). As president, Bush assembled a multinational force to
compel the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.
Early life and career
Bush was the son of Prescott Sheldon Bush, an investment banker and U.S. senator from Connecticut, and Dorothy Walker Bush,
scion of a prominent St. Louis, Mo., family. (Her father established the amateur golf competition known as the Walker Cup.) The young
Bush grew up in Greenwich, Conn., and attended private schools there and in Andover, Mass. Upon graduation from Phillips Academy,
Andover, he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve. He served from 1942 to 1944 as a torpedo bomber pilot on aircraft carriers in the Pacific
during World War II, flying some 58 combat missions; he was shot down by the Japanese in 1944. For his service he won the
Distinguished Flying Cross. In January 1945 he married Barbara Pierce ( Barbara Bush).
Following the family tradition, Bush attended Yale University, graduating in 1948. His membership in the Skull and Bones secret society
there later became an issue that his critics used as evidence of elitism. Rejecting a position in his father's firm, he moved with his young
family to Texas and became a salesman of oil-field supplies. He cofounded the Bush-Overbey Oil Development Company (1951), the
Zapata Petroleum Corporation (1953), and the Zapata Off-Shore Company (1954). In 1959 he became active in the Republican Party in
Houston. After losing a campaign for the U.S. Senate to Democrat Ralph Yarborough in 1964, Bush was elected in 1966 to a safely
Republican seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He gave up the seat in 1970 to run again for the Senate. He was defeated
again, this time by Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, Jr. Shortly after his defeat, Bush was appointed by Pres. Richard M. Nixon to serve as
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (UN; 1971–72). In 1973, as the Watergate Scandal was erupting, Bush became chairman of the
Republican National Committee. In this post, he stood by Nixon until August 1974, when he joined a growing chorus of voices calling on
the president to resign. Later that year, Pres. Gerald R. Ford, who had nominated Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president, named a
disappointed Bush chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing—which was then the senior U.S. representative in China, because relations
between the two countries did not permit the exchange of ambassadors. He served in this capacity until he was asked to head the
Central Intelligence Agency in 1976. As CIA director, Bush took steps to ensure that the agency's activities did not exceed
congressional authorization. When Jimmy Carter took office in 1977, Bush resigned and returned to Texas, where in 1979 he
announced his candidacy for president.
Vice presidency
After declaring that his opponent, the more popular and conservative Ronald W. Reagan, would have to practice “voodoo economics” in
order to increase federal revenue by lowering taxes, Bush abandoned his campaign for the Republican Party's presidential nomination
in May 1980 and threw his support behind Reagan, who then chose Bush as his running mate. The Reagan-Bush ticket defeated the
Democratic ticket of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale by a wide margin in the 1980 presidential election. Bush won Reagan's loyalty,
and the two were reelected in 1984 for a second term in an even greater landslide.
As vice president, Bush traveled more than one million miles as the administration's representative. When asked about his involvement
in the Iran-Contra Affair—in which the Reagan administration, in violation of a law passed by Congress in 1984, used funds from the
illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund Contra rebels fighting the Marxist government of Nicaragua—Bush claimed that he was “out of the
loop,” though he did admit knowing about the arms sale to Iran. In 1987 he published an autobiography, Looking Forward (written with
Victor Gold).
An early and leading candidate for the Republican Party's nomination for the presidency in 1988, he secured the nomination and,
together with his running mate, Dan Quayle, defeated the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, winning 53 percent of the popular
vote to Dukakis's 46 percent. Although Bush had called for “a kinder, and gentler, nation” in his speech accepting the nomination, his
campaign was negative, at one point criticizing Dukakis with a phrase—“card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union”—
reminiscent of that used by Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare of the early 1950s. Bush also won supporters with his pledge
to continue the Reagan economic program, repeatedly stating: “Read my lips, no new taxes!”
Presidency
Upon assuming office, Bush made a number of notable senior staff appointments, among them that of Gen. Colin Powell to chairman of
the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. His other important policy makers included James Baker as secretary of state and William Bennett as
director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In the course of his presidency, he also nominated two Supreme Court justices,
David H. Souter (to replace the retiring William J. Brennan) and the more controversial Clarence Thomas (to replace Thurgood
Marshall).
From the outset of his presidency, however, Bush demonstrated far more interest in foreign than domestic policy. In December 1989,
he ordered a military invasion of Panama in order to topple that country's leader, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, who—though at one
time of service to the U.S. government—had become notorious for his brutality and his involvement in the drug trade. The invasion,
which lasted four days, resulted in hundreds of deaths, mostly of Panamanians, and the operation was denounced by both the
Organization of American States and the UN General Assembly.
Bush's presidency coincided with world events of large proportion, including the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. In November 1990 Bush met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Paris and signed
a mutual nonaggression pact, a symbolic conclusion to the Cold War. They also signed treaties sharply reducing the number of
weapons that the two superpowers had stockpiled over the decades of Cold War hostility.
In August 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. Bush led a worldwide UN-approved embargo against Iraq to force its withdrawal
and sent a U.S. military contingent to Saudi Arabia to counteract Iraqi pressure and intimidation. Perhaps his most significant diplomatic
achievement was the skillful construction of a coalition of western European and Arab states against Iraq. Over the objections of those
who favoured restraint, Bush increased the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf region to about 500,000 troops within a few
months. When Iraq failed to withdraw from Kuwait, he authorized a U.S.-led air offensive that began on Jan. 16–17, 1991. The ensuing
Persian Gulf War culminated in an Allied ground offensive in late February that decimated Iraq's armies and restored Kuwait's
independence.
On the strength of his victory over Iraq and his competent leadership in foreign affairs, Bush's approval rating soared to about 90
percent. This popularity soon waned, however, as an economic recession that began in late 1990 persisted into 1992. Throughout this
period, Bush showed much less initiative in domestic affairs, though he initially worked with Congress in efforts to reduce the federal
government's continuing large budget deficits. A moderate conservative, he made no drastic departures from Reagan's policies—
except in taxes. In 1990, in a move that earned him the enmity of his conservative supporters and the distrust of many voters who had
backed him in 1988, he reneged on his “read my lips” pledge and raised taxes in an attempt to cope with the soaring budget deficit.
Bush's policy reversal on taxation and his inability to turn around the economy—his failure to put across what he called “the vision
thing” to the American public—ultimately proved his downfall. Bush ran a lacklustre campaign for reelection in 1992. He faced a fierce
early challenge from Patrick Buchanan in the Republican primary and then lost votes in the general election to third-party candidate
Ross Perot. Meanwhile, Bush's Democratic opponent, Bill Clinton of Arkansas, hammered away at the issue of the deteriorating
economy. In the oft-repeated words of Clinton strategist James Carville, the key issue of the day was “the economy, stupid!” Bush, the
first vice president since Martin Van Buren in 1836 to succeed directly to the presidency via an election rather than the death of the
incumbent, lost to Clinton by a popular vote of 37 percent to Clinton's 43 percent; Perot garnered an impressive 19 percent of the vote.
In trying to explain how Bush—always an active man and an avid jogger—could have run such a lifeless campaign and performed so
poorly in formal debates with Clinton, some analysts postulated that Bush was hampered by medication he had been taking to treat his
atrial fibrillation, reportedly caused by Graves disease. Bush's campaign managers vehemently denied the theory.
In his last weeks in office, Bush ordered a U.S. military-led mission to feed the starving citizens of war-torn Somalia, thereby placing
U.S. marines in the crossfire of warring factions and inadvertently causing the deaths of 18 soldiers. Equally as controversial was his
pardoning of six Reagan administration officials charged with illegal actions associated with the Iran-Contra Affair.
Retirement
Bush and his wife, Barbara, returned to Houston on the day of Clinton's inauguration and had little formal involvement with the
Republican Party thereafter. His son George W. Bush, a popular two-term governor of Texas, successfully ran for president in 2000,
becoming only the second son of a president to win the White House; the first was John Quincy Adams in 1824. Another son, Jeb, was
elected governor of Florida in 1998. In 2005 Bush appeared with Clinton in a series of televised advertisements to raise funds for
victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004) and Hurricane Katrina (2005). Bush was also named UN special envoy for the disaster
resulting from the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Copyright © 1994-2009 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com.
http://www.history.com/topics/george-bush
Persian Gulf War
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in early August 1990.
Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and
other Western nations to intervene. Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from
Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-led air offensive known as
Operation Desert Storm. After 42 days of relentless attacks by the allied coalition in the air and on the ground,
U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared a cease-fire on February 28; by that time, most Iraqi forces in
Kuwait had either surrendered or fled. Though the Persian Gulf War was initially considered an unqualified
success for the international coalition, simmering conflict in the troubled region led to a second Gulf War–
known as the Iraq War–that began in 2003.
Background of the Persian Gulf War
Though the long-running war between Iran and Iraq had ended in a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in August 1988, by mid-1990 the
two states had yet to begin negotiating a permanent peace treaty. When their foreign ministers met in Geneva that July, prospects for
peace suddenly seemed bright, as it appeared that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was prepared to dissolve that conflict and return
territory that his forces had long occupied. Two weeks later, however, Hussein delivered a speech in which he accused neighboring
nation Kuwait of siphoning crude oil from the Ar-Rumaylah oil fields located along their common border. He insisted that Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia and cancel out $30 billion of Iraq's foreign debt, and accused them of conspiring to keep oil prices low in an effort to
pander to Western oil-buying nations.
In addition to Hussein's incendiary speech, Iraq had begun amassing troops on Kuwait's border. Alarmed by these actions, President
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt initiated negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait in an effort to avoid intervention by the United States or other
powers from outside the Gulf region. Hussein broke off the negotiations after only two hours, and on August 2, 1990 ordered the
invasion of Kuwait. Hussein's assumption that his fellow Arab states would stand by in the face of his invasion of Kuwait, and not call in
outside help to stop it, proved to be a miscalculation. Two-thirds of the 21 members of the Arab League condemned Iraq's act of
aggression, and Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, along with Kuwait's government-in-exile, turned to the United States and other members of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for support.
Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait & Allied Response
U.S. President George H.W. Bush immediately condemned the invasion, as did the governments of Britain and the Soviet Union. On
August 3, the United Nations Security Council called for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait; three days later, King Fahd met with U.S.
Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney to request U.S. military assistance. On August 8, the day on which the Iraqi government formally
annexed Kuwait–Hussein called it Iraq's "19th province"–the first U.S. Air Force fighter planes began arriving in Saudi Arabia as part of
a military buildup dubbed Operation Desert Shield. The planes were accompanied by troops sent by NATO allies as well as Egypt and
several other Arab nations, designed to guard against a possible Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia.
In Kuwait, Iraq increased its occupation forces to some 300,000 troops. In an effort to garner support from the Muslim world, Hussein
declared a jihad, or holy war, against the coalition; he also attempted to ally himself with the Palestinian cause by offering to evacuate
Kuwait in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. When these efforts failed, Hussein concluded a hasty peace with
Iran so as to bring his army up to full strength.
The Gulf War Begins
On November 29, 1990, the U.N. Security Council authorized the use of "all necessary means" of force against Iraq if it did not
withdraw from Kuwait by the following January 15. By January, the coalition forces prepared to face off against Iraq numbered some
750,000, including 540,000 U.S. personnel and smaller forces from Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, Egypt and
Saudi Arabia, among other nations. Iraq, for its part, had the support of Jordan (another vulnerable neighbor), Algeria, the Sudan,
Yemen, Tunisia and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Early on the morning of January 17, 1991, a massive U.S.-led air
offensive hit Iraq's air defenses, moving swiftly on to its communications networks, weapons plants, oil refineries and more. The
coalition effort, known as Operation Desert Storm, benefited from the latest military technology, including Stealth bombers, Cruise
missiles, so-called "Smart" bombs with laser-guidance systems and infrared night-bombing equipment. The Iraqi air force was either
destroyed early on or opted out of combat under the relentless attack, the objective of which was to win the war in the air and minimize
combat on the ground as much as possible.
War on the Ground
By mid-February, the coalition forces had shifted the focus of their air attacks toward Iraqi ground forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq. A
massive allied ground offensive, Operation Desert Sabre, was launched on February 24, with troops heading from northeastern Saudi
Arabia into Kuwait and southern Iraq. Over the next four days, coalition forces encircled and defeated the Iraqis and liberated Kuwait. At
the same time, U.S. forces stormed into Iraq some 120 miles west of Kuwait, attacking Iraq's armored reserves from the rear. The elite
Iraqi Republican Guard mounted a defense south of Al-Basrah in southeastern Iraq, but most were defeated by February 27. With Iraqi
resistance nearing collapse, Bush declared a ceasefire on February 28, ending the Persian Gulf War. According to the peace terms that
Hussein subsequently accepted, Iraq would recognize Kuwait's sovereignty and get rid of all its weapons of mass destruction (including
nuclear, biological and chemical weapons). In all, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Iraqi forces were killed, in comparison with only 300
coalition troops.
Aftermath of the Persian Gulf War
Though the Gulf War was recognized as a decisive victory for the coalition, Kuwait and Iraq suffered enormous damage, and Saddam
Hussein was not forced from power. Intended by coalition leaders to be a "limited" war fought at minimum cost, it would have lingering
effects for years to come, both in the Persian Gulf region and around the world. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Hussein's forces
brutally suppressed uprisings by Kurds in the north of Iraq and Shi'ites in the south. The United States-led coalition failed to support the
uprisings, afraid that the Iraqi state would be dissolved if they succeeded. In the years that followed, U.S. and British aircraft continued
to patrol skies and mandate a no-fly zone over Iraq, while Iraqi authorities made every effort to frustrate the carrying out of the peace
terms, especially United Nations weapons inspections. This resulted in a brief resumption of hostilities in 1998, after which Iraq
steadfastly refused to admit weapons inspectors. In addition, Iraqi force regularly exchanged fire with U.S. and British aircraft over the
no-fly zone. In 2002, the United States (now led by President George W. Bush, son of the former president) sponsored a new U.N.
resolution calling for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq; U.N. inspectors reentered Iraq that November. Amid differences between
Security Council member states over how well Iraq had complied with those inspections, the United States and Britain began amassing
forces on Iraq's border. Bush (without further U.N. approval) issued an ultimatum on March 17, 2003, demanding that Saddam Hussein
step down from power and leave Iraq within 48 hours, under threat of war. Hussein refused, and the second Persian Gulf War–more
generally known as the Iraq War–began three days later.
http://www.history.com/topics/persian-gulf-war
William Jefferson Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (1946- ), the 42nd president of the United States, was elected in 1992 after serving as
governor of Arkansas. He oversaw an era of peace and prosperity, marked by low unemployment, declining
crime rates and a budget surplus. In his second term, a sex scandal led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House
of Representatives; the Senate later acquitted him of all charges. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has
also had a career in politics, serving first in the U.S. Senate and then as President Barack Obama’s secretary of
state.
Bill Clinton's Early life
Bill Clinton's father was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before his son was born. His widow,
Virginia Dell Blythe, married Roger Clinton, and, despite their unstable union (they divorced and then remarried) and her husband's
alcoholism, her son eventually took his stepfather's name. Reared in part by his maternal grandmother, Bill Clinton developed political
aspirations at an early age; they were solidified (by his own account) in July 1963, when he met and shook hands with Pres. John F.
Kennedy. Clinton enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1964 and graduated in 1968 with a degree in international
affairs. During his freshman and sophomore years he was elected student president, and during his junior and senior years he worked
as an intern for Sen. J. William Fulbright, the Arkansas Democrat who chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Fulbright was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War, and Clinton, like many young men of his generation, opposed the war as well. He
received a draft deferment for the first year of his studies as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford in 1968 and later attempted to
extend the deferment by applying to the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program at the University of Arkansas School of Law.
Although he soon changed his plans and returned to Oxford, thus making himself eligible for the draft, he was not chosen. While at
Oxford, Clinton wrote a letter to the director of the Arkansas ROTC program thanking the director for “saving” him from the draft and
explaining his concern that his opposition to the war could ruin his future “political viability.” During this period Clinton also experimented
with marijuana; his later claim that he “didn't inhale” would become the subject of much ridicule. After graduating from Yale University
Law School in 1973, Clinton joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas School of Law, where he taught until 1976. In 1974 he ran
unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1975 he married a fellow Yale Law graduate, attorney Hillary
Rodham ( Hillary Clinton), who thereafter took an active role in his political career. In the following year he was elected attorney general
of Arkansas, and in 1978 he won the governorship, becoming the youngest governor the country had seen in 40 years.
Bill Clinton as Governor of Arkansas
After an eventful two-year term as governor, Clinton failed in his reelection bid in 1980, the year his daughter and only child, Chelsea,
was born. After apologizing to voters for unpopular decisions he had made as governor (such as highway-improvement projects funded
by increases in the state gasoline tax and automobile licensing fees), he regained the governor's office in 1982 and was successively
reelected three more times by substantial margins. A pragmatic, centrist Democrat, he imposed mandatory competency testing for
teachers and students and encouraged investment in the state by granting tax breaks to industries. He became a prominent member of
the Democratic Leadership Council, a group that sought to recast the party's agenda away from its traditional liberalism and move it
closer to what it perceived as the centre of American political life. Clinton declared his candidacy for president while still governor of
Arkansas. Just before the New Hampshire presidential primary, his campaign was nearly derailed by widespread press coverage of his
alleged 12-year affair with an Arkansas woman, Gennifer Flowers. In a subsequent interview watched by millions of viewers on the
television news program 60 Minutes, Clinton and his wife admitted to having marital problems. Clinton's popularity soon rebounded,
and he scored a strong second-place showing in New Hampshire—a performance for which he labeled himself the “Comeback Kid.” On
the strength of his middle-of-the-road approach, his apparent sympathy for the concerns of ordinary Americans (his statement “I feel
your pain” became a well-known phrase), and his personal warmth, he eventually won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992.
Facing incumbent Pres. George Bush, Clinton and his running mate, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, argued that 12 years of Republican
leadership had led to political and economic stagnation. In November the Clinton-Gore ticket defeated both Bush and independent
candidate Ross Perot with 43 percent of the popular vote to 37 percent for Bush and 19 percent for Perot; Clinton defeated Bush in the
electoral college by a vote of 370 to 168.
Bill Clinton's Presidency
The Clinton administration got off to a shaky start, the victim of what some critics called ineptitude and bad judgment. His attempt to
fulfill a campaign promise to end discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the military was met with criticism from conservatives
and some military leaders—including Gen. Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In response, Clinton proposed a
compromise policy—summed up by the phrase “Don't ask, don't tell”—that failed to satisfy either side of the issue. Clinton's first two
nominees for attorney general withdrew after questions were raised about domestic workers they had hired. Clinton's efforts to sign
campaign-finance reform legislation were quashed by a Republican filibuster in the Senate, as was his economic-stimulus package.
Clinton had promised during the campaign to institute a system of universal health insurance. His appointment of his wife to chair the
Task Force on National Health Care Reform, a novel role for the country's first lady, was criticized by conservatives, who objected both
to the propriety of the arrangement and to Hillary Rodham Clinton's feminist views. They joined lobbyists for the insurance industry,
small-business organizations, and the American Medical Association to campaign vehemently against the task force's eventual
proposal, the Health Security Act. Despite protracted negotiations with Congress, all efforts to pass compromise legislation failed.
Despite these early missteps, Clinton's first term was marked by numerous successes, including the passage by Congress of the North
American Free Trade Agreement, which created a free-trade zone for the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Clinton also appointed
several women and minorities to significant government posts throughout his administration, including Janet Reno as attorney general,
Donna Shalala as secretary of Health and Human Services, Joycelyn Elders as surgeon general, Madeleine Albright as the first woman
secretary of state, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second woman justice on the United States Supreme Court. During Clinton's first
term, Congress enacted a deficit-reduction package—which passed the Senate with a tie-breaking vote from Gore—and some 30 major
bills related to education, crime prevention, the environment, and women's and family issues, including the Violence Against Women
Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
In January 1994 Attorney General Reno approved an investigation into business dealings by Clinton and his wife with an Arkansas
housing development corporation known as Whitewater. Led from August by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater
inquiry consumed several years and more than $50 million but did not turn up conclusive evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons.
The renewal of the Whitewater investigation under Starr, the continuing rancorous debate in Congress over Clinton's health care
initiative, and the liberal character of some of Clinton's policies—which alienated significant numbers of American voters—all
contributed to Republican electoral victories in November 1994, when the party gained a majority in both houses of Congress for the
first time in 40 years. A chastened Clinton subsequently tempered some of his policies and accommodated some Republican
proposals, eventually embracing a more aggressive deficit-reduction plan and a massive overhaul of the country's welfare system while
continuing to oppose Republican efforts to cut government spending on social programs. Ultimately, most American voters found
themselves more alienated by the uncompromising and confrontational behaviour of the new Republicans in Congress than they had
been by Clinton, who won considerable public sympathy for his more moderate approach.
Clinton's initiatives in foreign policy during his first term included a successful effort in September–October 1994 to reinstate Haitian
Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted by a military coup in 1991; the sponsorship of peace talks and the eventual Dayton
Accords (1995) aimed at ending the ethnic conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and a leading role in the ongoing attempt to bring about
a permanent resolution of the dispute between Palestinians and Israelis. In 1993 he invited Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and
Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasir 'Arafat to Washington to sign a historic agreement that granted limited Palestinian
self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
Although scandal was never far from the White House—a fellow Arkansan who had been part of the administration committed suicide;
there were rumours of financial irregularities that had occurred in Little Rock; former associates were indicted and convicted of crimes;
and rumours of sexual impropriety involving the president persisted—Clinton was handily reelected in 1996, buoyed by a recovering
and increasingly strong economy. He captured 49 percent of the popular vote to Republican Bob Dole's 41 percent and Perot's 8
percent; the electoral vote was 379 to 159. Strong economic growth continued during Clinton's second term, eventually setting a record
for the country's longest peacetime expansion. By 1998 the Clinton administration was overseeing the first balanced budget since 1969
and the largest budget surpluses in the country's history. The vibrant economy also produced historically high levels of home ownership
and the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years.
In 1998 Starr was granted permission to expand the scope of his continuing investigation to determine whether Clinton had encouraged
a 24-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, to state falsely under oath that she and Clinton had not had an affair. Clinton
repeatedly and publicly denied that the affair had taken place. His compelled testimony, which appeared evasive and disingenuous
even to Clinton's supporters (he responded to one question by stating, “It depends on what the meaning of the word is is”), prompted
renewed criticism of Clinton's character from conservatives and liberals alike. After conclusive evidence of the affair came to light,
Clinton apologized to his family and to the American public. On the basis of Starr's 445-page report and supporting evidence, the
House of Representatives in 1998 approved two articles of impeachment, for perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton was acquitted of
the charges by the Senate in 1999. Despite his impeachment, Clinton's job-approval rating remained high.
In foreign affairs, Clinton ordered a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998 in response to Iraq's failure to
cooperate fully with United Nations weapons inspectors (the bombing coincided with the start of full congressional debate on Clinton's
impeachment). In 1999 U.S.-led forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted a successful three-month bombing
campaign against Yugoslavia designed to end Serbian attacks on ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. In 1998 and 2000 Clinton
was hailed as a peacemaker in visits to Ireland and Northern Ireland, and in 2000 he became the first U.S. president to visit Vietnam
since the end of the Vietnam War. He spent the last weeks of his presidency in an unsuccessful effort to broker a final peace
agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Shortly before he left office, Clinton was roundly criticized by Democrats as well
as by Republicans for having issued a number of questionable pardons, including one to the former spouse of a major Democratic
Party contributor.
Life after the presidency
As Clinton's presidency was ending, his wife's political career was beginning. In 2000 Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the U.S.
Senate representing New York; she was the first wife of a U.S. president to win elected office. She went on to lose narrowly to Barack
Obama the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008, but Obama appointed her secretary of state in his presidential
administration. Bill Clinton remained active in political affairs and was a popular speaker on the lecture circuit. In 2001 he founded the
William J. Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that addressed various global issues through such programs as the Clinton
HIV/AIDS Initiative (established 2002), the Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative (2002), the Clinton Global Initiative (2005), and the
Clinton Climate Initiative (2006). In 2004 the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum opened in Little Rock. The following
year, after a tsunami in the Indian Ocean had caused widespread death and devastation, Clinton was appointed by United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan to serve as a special envoy for relief efforts, a position he held until 2007. In 2009 Clinton succeeded
former president George H.W. Bush as chairman of the National Constitution Center, a history museum in Philadelphia. Later that year
he was named a UN special envoy to Haiti. Clinton's writings include an autobiography, My Life (2004), and Giving: How Each of Us
Can Change the World (2007), in which he encouraged readers to become involved in various worthy causes.
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Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda, Arabic for "The Base" is a broad-based militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden,
the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In the 1990s, al-Qaeda launched a series of terrorist
attacks against U.S. embassies and military outposts, culminating in the 9/11 attacks, which claimed the lives of
nearly 3,000 victims. Despite being forced into hiding following the start of the War on Terror, the group has
retained much of its power, spreading its base of operations to Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere in the
Middle East and Africa. In addition to its jihad (holy war) against the West, al-Qeda has also denounced all
non-Sunni branches of Islam, and has been responsible for the rise of the insurgency campaign and resulting
sectarian violence in Iraq.
Al-Qaeda began as a logistical network to support Muslims fighting against the Soviet Union during the Afghan War; members were
recruited throughout the Islamic world. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the organization dispersed but continued
to oppose what its leaders considered corrupt Islamic regimes and foreign (i.e., U.S.) presence in Islamic lands. Based in Sudan for a
period in the early 1990s, the group eventually reestablished its headquarters in Afghanistan (c. 1996) under the patronage of the
Taliban militia.
Al-Qaeda merged with a number of other militant Islamist organizations, including Egypt’s Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group, and on
several occasions its leaders declared jihad (holy war) against the United States. The organization established camps for Muslim
militants from throughout the world, training tens of thousands in paramilitary skills, and its agents engaged in numerous terrorist
attacks, including the destruction of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanz. (1998), and a suicide bomb attack
against the U.S. warship Cole in Aden, Yemen (2000; see USS Cole attack). In 2001, 19 militants associated with al-Qaeda staged the
September 11 attacks against the United States. Within weeks the American government responded by attacking Taliban and al-Qaeda
forces in Afghanistan. Thousands of militants were killed or captured, among them several key members (including the militant who
allegedly planned and organized the September 11 attacks), and the remainder and their leaders were driven into hiding.
The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 challenged that country’s viability as an al-Qaeda sanctuary and training ground and compromised
communication, operational, and financial linkages between al-Qaeda leadership and its militants. Rather than significantly weakening
al-Qaeda, however, these realities prompted a structural evolution and the growth of “franchising.” Increasingly, attacks were
orchestrated not only from above by the centralized leadership (after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, based in the Afghan-Pakistani
border regions) but also by the localized, relatively autonomous cells it encouraged. Such grassroots independent groups—coalesced
locally around a common agenda but subscribing to the al-Qaeda name and its broader ideology—thus meant a diffuse form of
militancy, and one far more difficult to confront.
With this organizational shift, al-Qaeda was linked—whether directly or indirectly—to more attacks in the six years following September
11 than it had been in the six years prior, including attacks in Jordan, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, the United Kingdom,
Israel, Algeria, and elsewhere. At the same time, al-Qaeda increasingly utilized the Internet as an expansive venue for communication
and recruitment and as a mouthpiece for video messages, broadcasts, and propaganda. Meanwhile, some observers expressed
concern that U.S. strategy—centred primarily on attempts to overwhelm al-Qaeda militarily—was ineffectual, and at the end of the first
decade of the 21st century, al-Qaeda was thought to have reached its greatest strength since the attacks of September 2001.
On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was killed by U.S. military forces after U.S. intelligence located him residing in a secure compound in
Abbottabad, Pak., 31 miles (50 km) from Islamabad. The operation was carried out by a small team that reached the compound in
Abbottabad by helicopter. After bin Laden’s death was confirmed, it was announced by U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, who hailed the
operation as a major success in the fight against al-Qaeda. On June 16, 2011, al-Qaeda released a statement announcing that Ayman
al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s long-serving deputy, had been appointed to replace bin Laden as the organization’s leader.
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Terrorists intent on
destroying the US & other
“western” powers have
become the greatest global
threat to peace, security, and
prosperity
9-11 Attacks
On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four
airliners and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into
the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington,
D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Often referred to as 9/11, the attacks resulted in
extensive death and destruction, triggering major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism and defining the
presidency of George W. Bush. Over 3,000 people were killed during the attacks in New York City and
Washington, D.C., including more than 400 police officers and firefighters.
On September 11, 2001, at 8:45 a.m. on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet
fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor
of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors. As the evacuation of the
tower and its twin got underway, television cameras broadcasted live images of what initially appeared to be a freak accident. Then, 18
minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767–United Airlines Flight 175–appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the
World Trade Center and sliced into the south tower near the 60th floor. The collision caused a massive explosion that showered
burning debris over surrounding buildings and the streets below. America was under attack.
The attackers were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations. Reportedly financed by Saudi fugitive Osama
bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist organization, they were allegedly acting in retaliation for America's support of Israel, its involvement in
the Persian Gulf War and its continued military presence in the Middle East. Some of the terrorists had lived in the United States for
more than a year and had taken flying lessons at American commercial flight schools. Others had slipped into the country in the months
before September 11 and acted as the "muscle" in the operation. The 19 terrorists easily smuggled box-cutters and knives through
security at three East Coast airports and boarded four flights bound for California, chosen because the planes were loaded with fuel for
the long transcontinental journey. Soon after takeoff, the terrorists commandeered the four planes and took the controls, transforming
ordinary commuter jets into guided missiles.
As millions watched the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington, D.C., and
slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating
inferno that led to the structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building. All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were
killed in the Pentagon, along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.
Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn for
the worse when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. The structural steel of the
skyscraper, built to withstand winds in excess of 200 miles per hour and a large conventional fire, could not withstand the tremendous
heat generated by the burning jet fuel. At 10:30 a.m., the other Trade Center tower collapsed. Close to 3,000 people died in the World
Trade Center and its vicinity, including a staggering 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers and 37 Port
Authority police officers who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher
floors. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 others were treated for
injuries, many severe.
Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane–United Flight 93–was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark International Airport
in New Jersey. Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington
via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground. Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group
of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection. One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett Jr., told his wife over the phone
that "I know we're all going to die. There's three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey." Another passenger–
Todd Beamer–was heard saying "Are you guys ready? Let's roll" over an open line. Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her
husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were
"Everyone's running to first class. I've got to go. Bye."
The passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped
over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field in western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. All
45 people aboard were killed. Its intended target is not known, but theories include the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David
presidential retreat in Maryland or one of several nuclear power plants along the eastern seaboard.
At 7 p.m., President George W. Bush, who had spent the day being shuttled around the country because of security concerns, returned
to the White House. At 9 p.m., he delivered a televised address from the Oval Office, declaring, "Terrorist attacks can shake the
foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the
steel of American resolve." In a reference to the eventual U.S. military response he declared, "We will make no distinction between the
terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."
Operation Enduring Freedom, the American-led international effort to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and destroy Osama bin
Laden's terrorist network based there, began on October 7. Within two months, U.S. forces had effectively removed the Taliban from
operational power, but the war continued, as U.S. and coalition forces attempted to defeat a Taliban insurgency campaign based in
neighboring Pakistan. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks, remained at large until May 2, 2011,
when he was finally tracked down and killed by U.S. forces at a hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In June 2011, President Barack
Obama announced the beginning of large-scale troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, with a final withdrawal of U.S. forces tentatively
scheduled for 2014.
http://www.history.com/topics/9-11-attacks
Election of 2000
Candidates: Al Gore (Democrat), George W. Bush (Republican), Ralph Nader (Green Party), Patrick
Buchanan (conservative populist), Harry Browne (Libertarian)
Winner: George W. Bush
Popular Vote: 50,996,582 (Gore) to 50, 465,062 (Bush)
Electoral College: 271 (Bush) to 266 (Gore)
http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/memorable-elections
Congress certifies Bush winner of 2000 elections
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-certifies-bush-winner-of-2000-elections
After a bitterly contested election, Vice President Al Gore presides over a joint session of Congress that certifies
George W. Bush as the winner of the 2000 election. In one of the closest Presidential elections in U.S. history,
George W. Bush was finally declared the winner more then five weeks after the election due to the disputed
Florida ballots.
Gore became the third Presidential candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election after the Supreme
Court ruled 5-4 to halt Florida’s manual recount. The ruling in effect gave Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Bush
giving him 271 to Gore’s 266—where 270 is needed to win the election. George W. Bush took the oath of
office on January 20, 2001, to become the 43rd President of the United States.
Four years later, Bush was re-elected, beating out Democratic Senator John Kerry.

The 2000 election was one of four elections in U.S. history in which the winner of the electoral votes did not

carry the popular vote.
Gore conceded on election night, but retracted his concession when he learned that the vote in Florida was too
close to call. A recount of the Florida votes ensued, but was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the U.S.
Supreme Court.

Ralph Nader has formally run for president four times; the first time was in 1996. He was also a write-in
candidate in 1992.
George Walker Bush
George Walker Bush (1946- ) took office as the 43rd U.S. president in 2001. The son of former president
George H.W. Bush, he had previously served as governor of Texas. Bush’s tenure was largely shaped by the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to which he responded with a range of domestic and global initiatives
aimed at strengthening national security. He established the Department of Homeland Security, launched an
international “War on Terrorism” and ordered the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush served two terms.
Introduction
George Walker Bush
(born July 6, 1946, New Haven, Conn., U.S.) 43rd president of the United States (2001–09), who led his
country's response to the terrorist September 11 attacks in 2001 and initiated the Iraq War in 2003. Narrowly winning the electoral
college vote over Vice Pres. Al Gore in one of the closest and most controversial elections in American history, George W. Bush
became the first person since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to be elected president despite having lost the nationwide popular vote.
Before his election as president, Bush was a businessman and served as governor of Texas (1995–2000).
September 11th and Response
The September 11 attacks
On September 11, 2001, Bush faced a crisis that would transform his presidency. That morning, four American commercial airplanes
were hijacked by Islamic terrorists. Two of the planes were deliberately crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New
York City, destroying both towers and collapsing or damaging many surrounding buildings, and a third was used to destroy part of the
Pentagon building outside Washington, D.C.; the fourth plane crashed outside Pittsburgh, Pa., after passengers apparently attempted
to retake it. The crashes—the worst terrorist incident on U.S. soil—killed some 3,000 people.
The Bush administration accused radical Islamist Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, al-Qaeda (Arabic: “the Base”), of
responsibility for the attacks and charged the Taliban government of Afghanistan with harbouring bin Laden and his followers (in a
videotape in 2004, bin Laden acknowledged that he was responsible). After assembling an international military coalition, Bush ordered
a massive bombing campaign against Afghanistan, which began on Oct. 7, 2001. U.S.-led forces quickly toppled the Taliban
government and routed al-Qaeda fighters, though bin Laden himself remained elusive. In the wake of the September 11 attacks and
during the war in Afghanistan, Bush's public-approval ratings were the highest of his presidency, reaching 90 percent in some polls.
Domestic measures
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, domestic security and the threat of terrorism became the chief focus of the Bush
administration and the top priority of government at every level. Declaring a global “war on terrorism,” Bush announced that the country
would not rest until “every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” To coordinate the government's
domestic response, the administration formed a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, which began operating on Jan. 24,
2003. In October 2001 the Bush administration introduced, and Congress quickly passed, the Uniting and Strengthening America by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (the USA PATRIOT Act), which significantly but
temporarily expanded the search and surveillance powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law-enforcement agencies.
(Most of the law's provisions were made permanent in 2006 by the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act.)
In January 2002 Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail
messages of American citizens and others in the United States without first obtaining an order from the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. When the program was revealed in news reports in
December 2005, the administration insisted that it was justified by a September 2001 joint Congressional resolution that authorized the
president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. Subsequent efforts in
Congress to provide a legal basis for the spying became mired in debate over whether telecommunications companies that cooperated
with the NSA should be granted retroactive immunity against numerous civil lawsuits. Legislation granting immunity and expanding the
NSA's surveillance powers was finally passed by Congress and signed by Bush in July 2008.
Treatment of detainees
In January 2002, as the pacification of Afghanistan continued, the United States began transferring captured Taliban fighters and
suspected al-Qaeda members from Afghanistan to a special prison at the country's permanent naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Eventually hundreds of prisoners were held at the facility without charge and without the legal means to challenge their detentions. The
administration argued that it was not obliged to grant basic constitutional protections to the prisoners, because the base was outside
U.S. territory; nor was it required to observe the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians during
wartime, because the conventions did not apply to “unlawful enemy combatants.” It further maintained that the president had the
authority to place any individual, including an American citizen, in indefinite military custody without charge by declaring him an enemy
combatant.
The prison at Guantánamo became the focus of international controversy in June 2004, after a confidential report by the International
Committee of the Red Cross found that significant numbers of prisoners had been interrogated by means of techniques that were
“tantamount to torture.” (The Bush administration had frequently and vigorously denied that the United States practiced torture.)
The leak of the report came just two months after the publication of photographs of abusive treatment of prisoners by American soldiers
at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In response to the Abu Ghraib revelations, Congress eventually passed the Detainee Treatment Act,
which banned the “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of prisoners in U.S. military custody. Although the measure became law with
Bush's signature in December 2005, he added a “signing statement” in which he reserved the right to set aside the law's restrictions if
he deemed them inconsistent with his constitutional powers as commander in chief.
In June 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , declared that the system of military commissions that the
administration had intended to use to try selected prisoners at Guantánamo on charges of war crimes was in violation of the Geneva
Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs American rules of courts-martial. Later that year, Congress
passed the Military Commissions Act, which gave the commissions the express statutory basis that the court had found lacking; the law
also prevented enemy combatants who were not American citizens from challenging their detention in the federal courts.
In separate programs run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), dozens of individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism were
abducted outside the United States and held in secret prisons in eastern Europe and elsewhere or transferred for interrogation to
countries that routinely practiced torture. Although such extrajudicial transfers, or “extraordinary renditions,” had taken place during the
Clinton administration, the Bush administration greatly expanded the practice after the September 11 attacks. Press reports of the
renditions in 2005 sparked controversy in Europe and led to official investigations into whether some European governments had
knowingly permitted rendition flights through their countries' territories, an apparent violation of the human rights law of the E. Union.
In February 2005 the CIA confirmed that some individuals in its custody had been subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,”
including waterboarding (simulated drowning), which was generally regarded as a form of torture under international law. The CIA's
position that waterboarding did not constitute torture had been based on the legal opinions of the Justice Department and specifically
on a secret memo issued in 2002 that adopted an unconventionally narrow and legally questionable definition of torture. After the memo
was leaked to the press in June 2004, the Justice Department rescinded its opinion. In 2005, however, the department issued new
secret memos declaring the legality of enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. The new memos were revealed in
news reports in 2007, prompting outrage from critics of the administration. In July 2007 Bush issued an executive order that prohibited
the CIA from using torture or acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, though the specific interrogation techniques it was allowed
to use remained classified. In March 2008 Bush vetoed a bill directed specifically at the CIA that would have prevented the agency from
using any interrogation technique, such as waterboarding, that was not included in the U.S. Army's field manual on interrogation.
The Iraq War
Road to war
In September 2002 the administration announced a new National Security Strategy of the United States of America. It was notable for
its declaration that the United States would act “preemptively,” using military force if necessary, to forestall or prevent threats to its
security by terrorists or “rogue states” possessing biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons—so-called weapons of mass destruction.
At the same time, Bush and other high administration officials began to draw worldwide attention to Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein and to
suspicions that Iraq possessed or was attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction in violation of United Nations Security
Council resolutions. In November 2002 the Bush administration successfully lobbied for a new Security Council resolution providing for
the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq. Soon afterward Bush declared that Iraq had failed to comply fully with the new resolution and
that the country continued to possess weapons of mass destruction. For several weeks, the United States and Britain tried to secure
support from other Security Council members for a second resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force against Iraq (though
administration officials insisted that earlier resolutions provided sufficient legal justification for military action). In response, France and
Russia, while agreeing that Iraq had failed to cooperate fully with weapons inspectors, argued that the inspections regime should be
continued and strengthened.
As part of the administration's diplomatic campaign, Bush and other officials frequently warned that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction, that it was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, and that it had long-standing ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist
organizations. In his State of the Union address in January 2003, Bush announced that Iraq had attempted to purchase enriched
uranium from Niger for use in nuclear weapons. The subsequent determination that some intelligence reports of the purchase had
relied on forged documents complicated the administration's diplomatic efforts in the United Nations. Meanwhile, massive peace
demonstrations took place in several major cities around the world.
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Finally, Bush announced the end of U.S. diplomacy. On March 17 he issued an ultimatum to Saddam, giving him and his immediate
family 48 hours to leave Iraq or face removal by force. Bush also indicated that, even if Saddam relinquished power, U.S. military forces
would enter the country to search for weapons of mass destruction and to stabilize the new government. After Saddam's public refusal
to leave and as the 48-hour deadline approached, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, called Operation Iraqi Freedom, to begin on March
20 (local time). In the ground phase of the Iraq War, U.S. and British forces quickly overwhelmed the Iraqi army and irregular Iraqi
fighters, and by mid-April they had entered Baghdad and all other major Iraqi cities and forced Saddam's regime from power.
In the wake of the invasion, hundreds of sites suspected of producing or housing weapons of mass destruction within Iraq were
investigated. As the search continued without success into the following year, Bush's critics accused the administration of having misled
the country into war by exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq. In 2004 the Iraq Survey Group, a fact-finding mission comprising
American and British experts, concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction or the capacity to produce them at the
time of the invasion, though it found evidence that Saddam had planned to reconstitute programs for producing such weapons once UN
sanctions were lifted. In the same year, the bipartisan 9-11 Commission (the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United
States) reported that there was no evidence of a “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Saddam, who went
into hiding during the invasion, was captured by U.S. forces in December 2003 and was executed by the new Iraqi government three
years later.
Occupation and insurgency
Although the Bush administration had planned for a short war, stabilizing the country after the invasion proved difficult. From May 1,
when Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq, to the end of December 2003, more than 200 U.S. soldiers were killed as a result
of attacks by Iraqis. During the next four years the number of U.S. casualties increased dramatically, reaching more than 900 in 2007
alone. (The number of Iraqis who died during the invasion or the insurgency is uncertain.) Widespread sectarian violence, accompanied
by regular and increasingly deadly attacks on military, police, and civilian targets by militias and terrorist organizations, made large
parts of the country virtually ungovernable. The increasing numbers of U.S. dead and wounded, the failure to uncover weapons of mass
destruction, and the enormous cost to U.S. taxpayers (approximately $10 billion per month through 2007) gradually eroded public
support for the war; by 2005 a clear majority of Americans believed that it had been a mistake. By the fifth anniversary of Operation
Iraqi Freedom in March 2008, some 4,000 U.S. soldiers had been killed. As the death toll mounted, Bush's public-approval ratings
dropped, falling below 30 percent in many polls.
While acknowledging that it had underestimated the tenacity of the Iraqi resistance, the Bush administration maintained that part of the
blame for the continuing violence lay with Iran, which it accused of supplying weapons and money to Iraqi-based terrorist groups. In his
State of the Union address in 2002, Bush had warned that Iran (along with Iraq and North Korea) was part of an “axis of evil” that
threatened the world with its support of terrorism and its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. In 2006–07 the United States joined
other members of the Security Council in condemning Iran's nuclear research program. The administration's repeated warnings
concerning a possible Iranian nuclear weapon led to speculation that Bush was contemplating military action against the country. In
December 2007, however, the administration's suspicions were contradicted by the National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus report
of U.S. intelligence agencies, which declared with “high confidence” that in 2003 Iran had abandoned attempts to develop a nuclear
weapon.
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