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This book considers the policy of the George W. Bush administration towards issues such as abortion, sex education, obscenity and same-sex marriage. It suggests that, although accounts have often emphasised the ties between George W. Bush and the Christian right, the administration's strategy was, at least until early 2005, largely directed towards the courting of middle-ground opinion. The study offers a detailed and comprehensive survey of policy making; assesses the political significance of moral concerns; evaluates the role of the Christian Right; and throws new light on George W. Bush's years in office and the character of his thinking.
This book examines the intellectual frameworks within which the case for war in Iraq has developed in the US and the UK. It analyzes the neoconservative roots of the decision to go to war. The book also analyzes the humanitarian intervention rationale that was developed in the context of the Kosovo campaign, Tony Blair's presentation of it, and the case of Iraq. It looks at the parallel processes through which the George Bush administration and Blair government constructed their cases for war, analyzing similarities and divergences in approach. The book considers the loci of the intelligence failure over Iraq, the lessons for the intelligence communities, and the degree to which the decision to go to war in Iraq represented a policy rather than an intelligence failure. It then complements the analyses of US prewar intelligence failures by analysing what post-war inquiries have revealed about the nature of the failure in the UK case. The book discusses the relationship between intelligence and policymaking. It looks at how US Congress dealt with intelligence before the war. The book also examines how the Bush administration tried to manage public opinion in support of its war policies. It then looks at the decisionmaking process of the Bush administration in the year before the war in Iraq. Finally, the book also provides excerpts from a number of speeches and documents which are key to understanding the nature of national security decisionmaking and intelligence failure.
The middle months of 2016 in the North Atlantic world offered a distinctly depressing constellation. This book offers a nuanced and multifaceted collection of essays covering a wide range of concerns, concepts, presidential doctrines, and rationalities of government thought to have marked America's engagement with the world during this period. The spate of killings of African Americans raised acute issues about the very parameters of citizenship that predated the era of Civil Rights and revived views on race associated with the pre- Civil War republic. The book analyses an account of world politics that gives ontological priority to 'race' and assigns the state a secondary or subordinate function. Andrew Carnegie set out to explain the massive burst in productivity in the United States between 1830 and 1880, and in so doing to demonstrate the intrinsic superiority of republicanism. He called for the abolition of hereditary privilege and a written constitution. The book also offers an exegesis of the US foreign policy narrative nested in the political thought of the German jurist Carl Schmitt. Understanding the nature of this realist exceptionalism properly means rethinking the relationship between realism and liberalism. The book revisits Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, which reviews the intellectual and policy environment of the immediate post- Cold War years. Finally, it discusses Paul Dundes Wolfowitz, best known for his hawkish service to the George W. Bush administration, and his strong push for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
implementation of national security policy in the US and UK. Parallels between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair At the outset it is useful to highlight a number of the most striking parallels and connections between the Bush administration in the US and the Blair government in the UK in making and sustaining the case for war in Iraq during 2002–3. Both leaders committed themselves to
159 7 David Milne Paul Wolfowitz and the promise of American power, 1969–2001 Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is best known for his hawkish service to the George W. Bush administration, when he pushed strongly –and by most accounts, influentially –for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But this was merely the most recent chapter in a long foreign policy career that began in 1969, and that included service to the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. This chapter characterises this period as one in which Wolfowitz’s worldview
, federal government agencies and most of the states pursued a ‘comprehensive’ or more commonly what TBA_C04.qxd 08/02/2007 11:20 AM Page 104 104 The Bush administration, sex and the moral agenda came to be often dubbed an ‘abstinence-plus’ approach. Only a minority of sex education programmes offered instruction about contraception or abortion without considering the personal dilemmas with which they are often associated. Instead, to a greater or lesser extent, programmes provided information and guidance about contraception and sexual health but also urged young
both sides of the political aisle in the United States and by America’s NATO allies. Bush chose as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an out-spoken and experienced official who, in the 1970s, had served as the US Permanent Representative to NATO (under President Nixon), White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense (under President Ford). From the outset, the Bush administration faced a mix of European fears and expectations as it confronted relations with the NATO allies. Candidate Bush had made some statements suggesting the United States should begin to
ensured ‘mutually assured destruction’ if things went wrong. The Security Council’s unanimous condemnation of Israel in 1981 was but the clearest indication of this thinking. In the first few years of the twenty-first century, the situation looked quite different – at least from the perspective of the Bush administration. Relations with Russia had improved, no other potential adversary had submarine-based nuclear missiles, and the first phase of a missile defence system was being implemented. In June 2002, George W. Bush announced a new policy of pre
eliminate the ‘marriage tax penalty’. Secondly, the Bush administration established the Healthy Marriage Initiative and sought Congressional funding for programmes that would promote and strengthen marital relationships. The tax penalty The ‘marriage tax penalty’, the sum that some married couples paid in federal income taxes over and above that which they would pay as single individuals, had its roots in the 1969 Tax Reform Act. The post1969 tax regime discriminated against some, although by no means all, married couples. The penalty arose in large part from the
Schwarzkopf (commander of US forces in the 1991 Gulf war). 25 The Bush administration sensed that opposition to war with Iraq was building and had to be countered, so Vice President Cheney took the occasion of an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on August 26, 2002, to lay out the administration’s case in blunt terms: “Saddam Hussein could . . . be expected to seek domination of the entire