United States History

Article Outline

XXVII

The Early 21st Century

By the end of the 20th century the Cold War had ended, and the United States was riding a wave of unparalleled economic prosperity. But Americans learned at the dawn of the 21st century that they were not immune to the dangers posed by a volatile and turbulent world.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists carried out a devastating attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. It was the first enemy action on American soil since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.

The country also faced an economic recession beginning in 2001 in which more than a million jobs were lost. The recession reminded the country that economic good times were not guaranteed to last forever. While new realities spawned new fears, they also revealed reserves of resilience and strength in the national character. Faced with unexpected challenges, a resourceful and increasingly diverse country showed the world that it could not be easily demoralized.

An Increasingly Diverse Population

The United States had a larger, more diverse population than ever as the 21st century began. According to the 2000 census, the population grew to more than 281 million people during the 1990s, an increase of 32.7 million since the 1990 census. Hispanic Americans fueled much of the population increase. The fastest growing minority group in the United States, the Hispanic population grew from 22.4 million to 35.3 million, a 58 percent increase, from 1990 to 2000. The Asian American population grew by 48 percent in the 1990s. The census also showed that, for the first time since the early 1930s, one out of every ten Americans was foreign-born. The country was getting older as well. The median age in the United States rose to 35.3 years, higher than ever. The fastest growing age group was a segment of the so-called “baby-boom” generation—people between 45 and 54.

The Bush Administration

As President Clinton’s second term came to an end, the country geared up for the 2000 presidential election. The main candidates were Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, and Texas governor George W. Bush, the son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush. A Democrat, Gore stressed protecting the environment and improving education. Bush, the Republican candidate, campaigned as a “compassionate conservative,” advocating a tax cut and conservative social policies.

The resulting vote was like no other in U.S. history. For five weeks after the election, the outcome of the race between Bush and Gore remained undecided. The critical state was Florida, where Bush led by just a few hundred votes. A bitter legal dispute arose over the recounting of some ballots in that state. After a tangled series of court hearings and recounts in some areas of the state, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that the counting should end. The decision effectively awarded Florida’s electoral votes and the election to Bush. Although Gore won the nation’s overall popular vote by more than 500,000 votes out of 105 million cast, Bush captured 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266, and thus the presidency. The extraordinary closeness of the election reflected, at least to some extent, the public’s doubts about whether either man was prepared to be president. It also showed that the country remained deeply divided over which political party was best able to address its problems. See Disputed Presidential Election of 2000.

Once in office Bush focused on tax cuts, education reform, and an expanded role for church-based charities in running social programs. In 2001 Congress approved Bush’s $1.35-trillion tax cut, which took effect over a ten-year period, lowered income tax rates for all taxpayers, and included a small refund to many taxpayers. In 2002 Bush signed into law an education bill that established, among other things, performance standards for public schools. A second round of tax cuts in 2003 provided benefits for stock market investors by lowering the tax rate paid on dividends. The cuts also reduced the estate tax and eliminated it entirely by 2010.

Terrorist Attacks on the United States

American life changed dramatically on the morning of September 11, 2001. Terrorists hijacked four commercial jetliners, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, which collapsed into smoldering rubble. Another hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, while the fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania after what was believed to be a passenger uprising against the hijackers. About 3,000 people died in the attacks. See also September 11 Attacks.

The government shut down all air traffic for two days as fighter jets patrolled the skies. National Guard troops were deployed on the streets in New York City and Washington, D.C. The major stock exchanges were closed.

The event traumatized the nation. Most Americans saw their country as virtually unassailable as the 21st century began. With the Cold War over, America’s status as the world’s lone superpower seemed secure. But as millions watched the catastrophe unfold on television, it was clear that the country was vulnerable in ways that most people had not imagined.

After the initial shock, the country mobilized. Volunteers flooded blood banks and military recruiting stations. Millions of dollars were raised for the families of victims. A new patriotic sentiment surfaced as sales of American flags surged. Many people spoke of simplifying their lives and of spending more time with family and friends.

The U.S. government quickly identified the hijackers as members of al-Qaeda, an organization that, according to U.S. officials, connected and coordinated fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups around the world. The government also believed that al-Qaeda was responsible for other attacks, including the bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and the attack on the Navy ship U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000. Its leader, a wealthy Saudi businessman named Osama bin Laden, had pledged jihad, or holy war, against the United States for its activities in the Middle East. The group made its headquarters in Afghanistan, where it was supported by the country’s rulers, an Islamic fundamentalist movement known as the Taliban.

Instead of launching an immediate attack, Bush spent the first days following the terrorist attacks consulting with military leaders and assembling a coalition of nations to fight terrorism. The coalition included countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, such as Britain.

Fears rose again in early October when a powdered form of the bacterium known as anthrax began to appear in letters in some places around the country. Anthrax lives in the soil and is most often found in grass-eating animals such as cattle. It forms hard-to-kill spores that, when ingested, can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections. Over the next few weeks, anthrax killed five people in Florida, New York, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. It also forced the temporary closure of two congressional office buildings. At first some investigators thought that the outbreak was another form of attack by al-Qaeda. As the investigation progressed, however, some came to believe that someone inside the United States was responsible.

In early October the United States went to war, bombing al-Qaeda training camps and missile installations in Afghanistan. Within a few weeks, U.S. marines joined with Afghan opposition groups to topple the Taliban. The U.S. forces killed or captured many al-Qaeda fighters, but bin Laden remained at large.

On the home front, President Bush signed the Patriot Act in 2001 to give the government expanded powers to monitor terrorist suspects. Some critics, however, said the new law represented an infringement on civil liberties. Bush also signed a law in 2002 that created a new executive department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The department’s mission was to protect the United States against terrorist attacks, reduce the country’s vulnerability to terrorism, and aid recovery in case of an attack. The DHS combined dozens of federal agencies into one department, the largest government reorganization since the Department of Defense was created in 1947. See also Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

In 2003 a congressional inquiry concluded in an 858-page report that the U.S. intelligence community “failed to fully capitalize on available, and potentially important, information” that could have helped prevent the September 11 attacks. The inquiry found that U.S. intelligence agencies failed to share information with each other and failed to take action based on the information they did have. Specifically, the report cited the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for missing numerous opportunities to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that two men linked to al-Qaeda could be in the United States. The two men were among the future hijackers, and prior to September 11 had contact with an FBI informant in San Diego, California. But because the FBI was unaware of their al-Qaeda link, the bureau did not investigate them, missing what the congressional probe called the “best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot.” Furthermore, the report found, the CIA failed to put the two men on a watchlist used by the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Customs Service to deny individuals entry into the United States.

The inquiry also found that FBI headquarters failed to heed warnings from its Phoenix office about terrorist suspects seeking to enroll in flight training schools or to act properly on a request from its Minneapolis office to conduct a search of an alleged conspirator in the terrorist attacks. Prepared by a joint committee of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, the report disputed an FBI claim that none of the hijackers had contacted any “known terrorist sympathizers,” finding instead that five hijackers had contact with 14 persons who had been investigated by the FBI for possible links to terrorism. The intelligence community was aware as early as 1994 that terrorists might use aircraft in an attack and knew as early as 1998 that bin Laden was planning an attack within the United States, the report concluded.

In July 2004 an independent, bipartisan commission formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States issued its final report after a nearly two-year investigation into the September 11 attacks. The commission, chaired by former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean, found that neither the administration of President Bill Clinton, nor the Bush administration, prior to September 11, had grasped the gravity of the threat posed by al-Qaeda. The report said that “none of the measures adopted by the U.S. government from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al-Qaeda plot. Across the government, there were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.” The commission said its purpose was not to cast blame, but to make recommendations for improving U.S. counterterrorist efforts, and it put forward several proposals to unify U.S. intelligence agencies and place them under a national intelligence director. Congress approved the creation of the office of a national intelligence director in January 2005.

War with Iraq

After the United States toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Bush administration turned its attention to Iraq. Although a U.S.-led coalition had defeated Iraq in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, remained in power. After that war ended, the United Nations (UN) ordered Iraq to destroy its biological and chemical weapons. Weapons inspectors were sent to Iraq to monitor its disarmament. However, in 1998 Iraq announced that it would no longer cooperate with the UN, and UN weapons inspectors left the country.

In 2002 the Bush administration put a renewed focus on Iraq as part of its war on terrorism. It claimed that Iraq supported terrorist organizations and still had an arsenal of banned weapons. The United States pressed the UN to force Iraq to allow weapons inspectors back into the country. In October the U.S. Congress passed a resolution authorizing the president to use military force against Iraq if Iraq did not cooperate with the UN. The next month the UN passed a resolution cosponsored by the United States and Britain ordering the immediate return of weapons inspectors to Iraq and threatening “serious consequences” if Iraq did not disarm. Iraq agreed to comply with the resolution, and inspectors began working in Iraq that same month.

In early 2003 the United States and Britain claimed that Iraq was not cooperating with UN weapons inspectors, and they sought UN authorization of force against Iraq. However, some countries, including France, Germany, Russia, and China, wanted to give the inspections more time to proceed and opposed military action. After weeks of diplomatic wrangling, the United States decided to forgo UN approval and pursue military action against Iraq with a coalition of willing countries.

In March 2003 U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq. By mid-April they had captured the capital city of Baghdād and other major population centers and overthrown the regime of Saddam Hussein. In May President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended and that an ally of al-Qaeda had been defeated. However, in the months that followed more U.S. troops were killed by guerrilla insurgents than during the invasion itself. In September Bush conceded that there was no evidence proving an al-Qaeda link to the regime of Saddam Hussein. Unrest continued in Iraq and even the capture and arrest of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 failed to end it. The insurgency was concentrated mainly among Sunni Muslims and a segment of Shia Muslims opposed to the U.S. occupation. See also U.S.-Iraq War.

The United States appointed a 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, consisting of the major ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, but the council’s authority was subordinate to that of the U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III. In March 2004 the council approved an interim constitution, although the 12 Shia Muslim members of the council objected to some of the constitution’s provisions. The constitution guaranteed a broad array of democratic rights, including rights for women and the Kurdish minority, and called for elections for a national assembly by January 1, 2005. The Bush administration transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June 2004, but it maintained about 130,000 troops in Iraq and imposed a number of orders that introduced privatization to Iraq’s previously state-run economy.

In the meantime the hunt for Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction proved fruitless. In October 2003 a team of U.S. weapons inspectors reported that it had found no weapons of mass destruction. In January 2004 the head of the group, David Kay, resigned and told Congress that “we were all wrong, probably” about the existence of such weapons. Kay urged an independent inquiry into the failure of U.S. intelligence. Kay said the group not only could not find weapons of mass destruction but more importantly could not discover any of the facilities needed to produce such weapons on a large scale. A final report concluded that Hussein had ordered the destruction of biological and chemical weapons and had discontinued a nuclear weapons program but tried to keep these facts secret, fearing an attack by Iran. The two countries had fought a nearly eight-year-long war (see Iran-Iraq War).