Bush's Tragic Legacy~How 9/11 Triggered America's Decline

[Pharaoh]

The events of Sept. 11, 2001 led to a wave of solidarity with the US. But the superpower has lost that goodwill over the course of the wars it subsequently waged. Now America is mainly seen not as the victim of terrorism, but as a perpetrator of violence itself.


The smoke was still rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center when Richard Armitage, at the time the US deputy secretary of state, spoke in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. "History begins today," he said.

In the coming decade, Armitage would turn out to be right -- except the politician could not have foreseen how tragic the history would be following the epochal event.

It is the history of the decline of the USA as a superpower.

Immediately before the attacks, this country was in full bloom -- like Rome at its peak, as TV host Joe Scarborough recalls today.

The Republican President George W. Bush had inherited a fat budget surplus from the Democrat Bill Clinton. In Kosovo, the US, which Madeleine Albright dubbed "the indispensable nation," had just shown the Europeans how it could resolve conflicts, even in their own backyard. Bill Gates and Microsoft were still cool.


http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,785405,00.html

[Turbineguy]

1. He would have somehow managed

the decline even without the 9/11 Attacks

[Baby Bear]

2. Exactly

The hijacking of the 2000 election was the beginning of the decline.