Bush Doctrine

No, sure, but that's Iraq.

You remember the Bush Doctrine.

Well, Iraq was the first stop on the train station, right? It, it, the, the, the Bush Doctrine was designed, uh, to promote, uh, democracy across the entire Middle East at the end of a rifle barrel.

It, it's only because we failed in Iraq that people forget that we had planned to do Syria and Iran, and we thought that eventually all the countries in the region would throw up their hands and bandwagon with us, right? That was the idea.

But President Obama was involved with Libya.

Bush launched attacks on the Taliban government, successfully overthrowing it before the end of two thousand one, and then the administration undertook to reorder the Middle East in America's image.

In two thousand two, it announced the Bush Doctrine, arguing that the new conditions of terrorism required the government to act preemptively to forestall hostile acts rather than wait for an attack.

It embraced the idea that there was right and wrong in foreign affairs and demanded that America wage a war of ideas by spreading pro-American economic and cultural policies.

It warned that there were few greater threats to America than a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs, meaning nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.