Introduction

When Bush took office in January 2001, he was generally restrained in his approach to the outside world. There was little interest in becoming embroiled in foreign conflicts. While promising to bolster America's defences during the campaign, military expenditure, which had fallen significantly during Clinton's presidency, remained at its lowest level since Pearl Harbor. However, the events of 11 September 2001 would fundamentally change the course of Bush's presidency. In this chapter, I show how the failure of existing risk assessment frameworks led to a principled reinterpretation of US foreign policy interests following the attacks of 11 September resulting in normative displacement. This reinterpretation would lay the principled foundations for the construction of the War on Terror and the subsequent decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

First, I show how uncertainty consumed the administration following the attacks. Coupled with vision of the Pentagon surrounded by burning wreckage and the smouldering remains of the WTC in downtown Manhattan, such uncertainty lent itself to emotional, principled reactions as Bush cast the terrorists as the ‘heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the twentieth century’. He declared a ‘War on Terror’ which would be a ‘lengthy campaign’ that would leave the terrorists ‘in the unmarked grave of discarded lies’ (Bush, 2001c). Where early consensus saw intervention in Afghanistan to remove the Taliban regime, Colin Powell argued against more principled impulses of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to expand the war into Iraq. Initially, Powell's approach would be successful in advancing more cognitive interpretations.

Second, I work to show how ongoing uncertainty led Bush to justify an expansion of the War on Terror to include Iraq. Even as the initial emotion from the 9/11 attacks had subsided, the long-running suspicion regarding Saddam Hussein's state sponsorship of terrorism, and the regime's ongoing defiance of multiple UN Security Council resolutions to provide proof of disarmament would lay the foundations for further principled justifications for the use of force. While the decision to intervene was not clear-cut, with Colin Powell advancing clear warnings – ‘if you break it, you own it’ – Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz's principled warnings of Hussein's potential aggression would prove too powerful in the context of post-9/11 uncertainty.