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| Sept.11 in the usa |
- Area size of USA:
Population
( est.): 305,146,000
Capital:
Washington, D.C.
Head of state and government:
President Barack Obama
USA war on terrorisim
Five years after leading the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the U.S. negotiated with the new Iraqi democratic government for an eventual end to allied combat operations. The agreement capped a year of declining violence and increased government control in Iraq and represented a dramatic turnaround for U.S. policy, which had seemed destined for a humiliating defeat only two years earlier. It also cleared the way for redeployment of U.S. troops elsewhere, particularly into resurgent terrorist areas of Afghanistan. Outgoing president George W. Bush hailed the Iraqi developments as a major step forward for democracy and credited the 2007 U.S. military surge, but his year-end visit to Iraq ironically was marred by dramatic political protest.
Under U.S. pressure the Iraqi parliament took several steps to accommodate Iraq's Sunni minority and achieve ethnic reconciliation. In March the Shiʿite-dominated government deployed 30,000 Iraqi troops, accompanied by U.S. air support, into Basra in a successful thrust to depose the Mahdi Army, a radical Shiʿite militia that had long controlled the port city. Iraqi troops later entered and occupied Sadr City, a renegade Shiʿite section of Baghdad, without significant resistance.
As violence ebbed markedly during the year, the Iraqi government took over increasing responsibility for its domestic security. In September Anbar province, once the cradle of the Sunni insurgency against the central government, was turned over to full Iraqi control. The following month Iraq assumed responsibility for some 100,000 (mostly Sunni) fighters; these Awakening Council forces had previously been paid and supervised by the U.S. military.
At year's end Iraq and the U.S. signed a status-of-forces agreement that called for the removal of allied troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 and complete withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by the end of 2011. The agreement also gave Iraqi civilian authorities criminal jurisdiction over off-duty U.S. troops who committed infractions while away from their bases. Incoming U.S. president Barack Obama had campaigned for earlier withdrawal of U.S. forces within 16 months—or by May 2010. Obama later signaled, however, that he would listen to military advice and remain flexible on his timetable.
By year's end allied forces were withdrawing from Iraq, and the U.S. military presence was diminishing toward presurge levels of 135,000. According to the Associated Press, U.S. troop deaths in 2008 stood at 314, down from more than 900 in 2007. (A total of 4,221 U.S. soldiers had died in the conflict since it began in 2003.) Some Middle East experts suggested that the security improvements were largely the result of internal Iraqi political reconciliation. In a final visit to Baghdad on December 14, however, President Bush declared that his administration's policies deserved credit and called the surge “one of the greatest successes in the history of the United States military.” At a press conference that same day with Iraqi Pres. Nuri al-Maliki, in a highly publicized incident, an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at Bush as a sign of disrespect. Bush ducked the shoes; the journalist was temporarily jailed; and critics noted that such political protest would have been inconceivable in Saddam's Iraq.
The military progress in Iraq was offset by renewed violence in Afghanistan as Sunni-dominated militant groups, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda, penetrated and challenged NATO forces in more than half of the country. In tacit recognition of the threat, U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, architect of the Iraq surge strategy, was elevated in October to head the U.S. Central Command, effectively taking control of allied military strategy in the war on terrorism, including the aggression in Afghanistan.
As Afghan terrorist violence increased during the year, several NATO countries augmented troop deployments. At year's end the U.S. had about 32,000 of 62,000 NATO combat troops in Afghanistan, including an additional 1,000 sent by President Bush in November as part of what he termed a “quiet surge.” U.S. forces were concentrated in the east, on the dangerous border with Pakistan; the U.S. pursued an active counterinsurgency program on both sides of the border that involved the use of unmanned drone airplanes equipped with missiles.
The Bush administration's legal strategy toward suspected terrorists suffered setbacks during 2008. In June the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a 5–4 decision, that even enemy combatants held outside the U.S.—at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—had a right to a review of their cases in U.S. civilian courts. The ruling declared unconstitutional parts of two laws approved by Congress after 9/11 that were designed to allow indefinite detention of suspects and their eventual trial by military commissions. It further complicated dozens of pending combatant cases that were already burdened with charges of torture, withholding of evidence, and violations of international law by the U.S. military.
Two war crimes trials were concluded during the year, the first in the U.S. since World War II. Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, was convicted in August on reduced charges of having provided “material support for terrorism.” He received a modest sentence of five and a half years and was released at year's end. A second defendant, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a Yemeni accused of having produced propaganda for al-Qaeda, including videos, was convicted by a military commission at Guantánamo Bay in October and given a life sentence. Neither Bahlul nor his attorney participated in his defense.
In U.S. civilian courts, federal prosecutors won convictions in two antiterrorism criminal cases. In November, after a previous trial ended in a hung jury, the Holy Land Foundation and five former organizers were found guilty in Dallas of having funneled $12 million to the terrorist group Hamas. One observer alleged that the Muslim foundation's practice of supplying cash payments to Palestinian terrorists' families was the moral equivalent of car bombing. In December five foreign-born Muslims were convicted in New Jersey on charges that included having planned to kill U.S. soldiers at Ft. Dix. Defense attorneys claimed that the men were only talking and had planned no real violence, but prosecutors said that the convictions proved the effectiveness of the U.S. post-9/11 strategy of infiltrating violence-prone groups.
USA Foreign Policy.
U.S. relations with a resurgent and energy-rich Russia deteriorated further in 2008. Effects of heightened tensions could be seen worldwide as the two countries sparred over missile defense, Latin America, Iraq, Iran, and Russia's invasion of a province of Georgia. In one example, Russia almost single-handedly blocked U.S. efforts to ratchet up UN sanction pressure on Iran over its refusal to allow nuclear inspections. By year's end some commentators were saying that U.S.-Russia relations were at their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War nearly two decades earlier.
In April, under U.S. prodding, NATO agreed that it would eventually accept Georgia, Russia's southern neighbour, as a member—even though Russia opposed NATO's eastward expansion and viewed it as a security threat. Four months later, Russian troops invaded two rebellious Georgian provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and recognized them as independent states. NATO stepped up its military presence in the region, with U.S. warships delivering relief efforts to Georgia via the Black Sea. In what was widely viewed as a response, Russia dispatched a military flotilla to Venezuela in November in a show of support for Pres. Hugo Chávez, a critic of the U.S., and at year's end Moscow also staged a rare Russian navy visit to Cuba.
With Chávez and Cuba's Raúl Castro in the lead, Latin American leaders formed a South American union (Unasur) and took other steps aimed at reducing U.S. influence in the region. A group of 33 countries staged a summit meeting in Brazil in December, pledging internal cooperation and welcoming Cuba after having failed to invite U.S. representatives.
Efforts to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation suffered setbacks during the year. No progress was made in stopping nuclear development in either Iran or North Korea or in numerous Middle Eastern countries that were nervous about a potential threat from Iran; a number of Middle Eastern countries had initiated steps toward starting their own nuclear programs. Iran, continuing to insist that its nuclear development was solely for civilian energy purposes, persisted in stonewalling international watchdogs, even while Russia supplied Iran with uranium for enrichment and processing that could be diverted to weapons purposes. At midyear, in Geneva, U.S. authorities engaged in direct talks with Iranian nuclear negotiators for the first time and also joined major powers in offering yet another package of incentives for Iranian abandonment of its nuclear ambitions. Iran continued to obfuscate, however, and Congress tightened U.S. economic sanctions on Iran in September.
After agreeing in 2005 to scrap its nuclear weapons program in return for normalized world relations, North Korea accepted promised food and fuel assistance from the U.S. and allies. As a show of good faith, Pres. George W. Bush removed Pyongyang from an international blacklist as a state sponsor of terrorism. In December five countries met to persuade North Korea to accept a verification regime written by its ally, China. The talks collapsed, however, when the North Koreans refused to sign the agreement, with analysts speculating that they were waiting for more favourable terms from the new U.S. administration. Prior to the breakdown, the U.S., Russia, China, and South Korea had already delivered 500,000 tons of fuel oil promised to North Korea for its cooperation.
The U.S. continued to push for rapprochement between India and Pakistan, both to facilitate critical support for antiterrorism efforts and to counter growing Chinese influence in Asia. In October the U.S. signed an agreement to supply technological aid for India's nuclear program, even though India had tested nuclear weapons and refused to sign the Non-proliferation Treaty. In November, after Pakistan-based terrorists staged a bloody raid on Mumbai (Bombay), U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the subcontinent to pressure both countries to continue normalizing relations. (See Special Report.)
