Bush, George W(alker), Jr

43rd president of the USA from 2001. Republican governor of Texas 1994–2000 and son of former US president George Bush, he was elected president after defeating Democrat Al Gore in a hotly disputed contest and with a smaller share (48.1%) of the popular vote than his Democrat rival (48.3%). The presidency was conceded to Bush 36 days after the election, following a narrow decision by the divided US Supreme Court. The major domestic challenge he faced as president were the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York. He responded by launching a global ‘War on Terrorism’, beginning with the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, which overthrew its Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime. In 2003 he instigated the US-led Iraq War, to overthrow Iraqi president Saddam Hussein whom the US claimed was hiding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This action, along with decisions to withdraw from the antiballistic missile agreement and not to adopt the Kyoto Protocol on the environment, led to concerns of increasing US unilateralism in international affairs. He was re-elected in 2004, with 51% of the popular vote, after a bitter and often personal election battle with Democrat challenger John Kerry. During his second term, mounting US troop casualties in Iraq, where there was a gathering civil war between contending ethnic groups, and the failure to uncover WMD in Iraq, led to a sharp full in Bush's popularity in the US, and abroad. He also faced domestic criticism for the federal government's slow response to the destruction caused to New Orleans by the August 2005 floods caused by Hurricane Katrina. Democrats won back control over Congress in the November 2006 mid-term elections, after which Bush's defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, resigned in an acknowledgement that there had been mistakes in the ‘winning of peace’ in Iraq. However, although many Americans favoured gradually withdrawing US troops from Iraq, Bush announced in January 2007 that he would send in additional troops in a final ‘surge’ aimed at crushing insurgents.

Bush won election as president by projecting himself as a ‘compassionate conservative’, who combined traditional Republican values – such as support for low taxation, small but effective government, a strong military, and Christian family values – with greater concern for the underprivileged, including a larger role for churches and charities in helping the poor. Among his first acts as president, he ended federal aid to international agencies that performed or advocated abortion. Despite his populist appeal, his mandate to govern was weakened by the nature of his presidential victory, based on a very thin plurality of counted votes in Florida, a state in which his younger brother, Jeb Bush, was governor. He is only the fourth US president to have triumphed in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote and, after John Quincy Adams, only the second son of a former president to be elected to the Oval Office. He had the shortest experience in public service of any US president since Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

Bush's administration faced its toughest challenge in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, on 11 September 2001. It was the worst act of terrorism in the USA, and internal security and the fight against terrorism became the focus of the administration. Bush built up an international anti-terrorism coalition, and in October 2001 launched military strikes on Afghanistan in an attempt to force the Taliban regime to give up the prime suspect in the attacks, Saudi-born terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. The Taliban regime was toppled in December 2001, but Osama bin Laden remained at large. In 2003 Bush faced widespread international criticism for his administration's increasingly militaristic stance over the issue of Iraqi disarmament, which resulted in the Iraq War in March–April 2003. Saddam Hussein was toppled from power and, in December 2003, captured by coalition forces. In December 2006, he was executed after facing trial under Iraq's new regime. However, as the US did not find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, questions about the justification for going to war grew in the US from 2004 onwards.

The Bush administration was strongly criticized at home and abroad for its poor preparation and lack of a clear strategy for reconstructing and establishing order in post-Saddam Iraq and ‘winning the peace’. US troops faced a mounting insurgency in central Iraq with fighting and terrorist attacks and bombings by Shia and Sunni Muslim militias. Thousands of Iraqi civilians and coalition troops were killed, with the level of violence increasing from 2004. The US was also damaged by scandals concerning the ill-treatment of prisoners of war and terrorist suspects, both at Guantanomo Bay and at prisons in Iraq. Meanwhile, US-sponsored peace efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian dispute had foundered by 2006, with the radical Palestinian Hamas controlling the Palestinian government. In 2005 and 2006, as US troop casualties in Iraq mounted, Bush's personal popularity fell sharply and in the November 2006 mid-term elections the Republican party lost control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats. Donald Rumsfeld, a key architect of Bush's interventionist foreign policy, resigned as defence secretary after the elections. In January 2007, Bush controversially ordered additional troop deployments as part of a final surge to attempt to stamp out insurgency in Iraq. This approach was at odds with the policy of staged withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and diplomatic initiatives to resolve tensions, which was favoured by Democrats in Congress and by a 2006 report by the Iraq Study Group, chaired by James Baker, Secretary of State under President George H W Bush.