226 Primary Source: George W. Bush on the Post-9/11 World (2002)
226 Primary Source: George W. Bush on the Post-9/11 World (2002)
In his 2002 State of the Union Address, George W. Bush proclaimed that the attacks of September 11 signaled a new, dangerous world that demanded American interventions. Bush identified an “Axis of Evil” and provided a justification for a broad “war on terror.”
… As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. …
We last met in an hour of shock and suffering. In four short months, our nation has comforted the victims, begun to rebuild New York and the Pentagon, rallied a great coalition, captured, arrested, and rid the world of thousands of terrorists, destroyed Afghanistan’s terrorist training camps, saved a people from starvation, and freed a country from brutal oppression.
The American flag flies again over our embassy in Kabul. Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay. And terrorist leaders who urged followers to sacrifice their lives are running for their own.
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For many Americans, these four months have brought sorrow, and pain that will never completely go away. Every day a retired firefighter returns to Ground Zero, to feel closer to his two sons who died there. At a memorial in New York, a little boy left his football with a note for his lost father: “Dear Daddy, please take this to heaven. I don’t want to play football until I can play with you again some day.”
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Our cause is just, and it continues. …
What we have found in Afghanistan confirms that, far from ending there, our war against terror is only beginning. …
Our nation will continue to be steadfast and patient and persistent in the pursuit of two great objectives. And, second, we must prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.
Our military has put the terror training camps of Afghanistan out of business, yet camps still exist in at least a dozen countries. … While the most visible military action is in Afghanistan, America is acting elsewhere. … My hope is that all nations will heed our call, and eliminate the terrorist parasites who threaten their countries and our own. … But some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will.
Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.
Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom.
Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear w