The world has undergone drastic change in the first decade of the 21st century. There appears to be no end to terrorist activities and international disputes in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide attacks on the United States.
In retaliation for the terrorist acts, the U.S. led the "Coalition of the Willing" to invade Afghanistan in an effort to quell the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban organization. In March 2003, the same coalition did not bother to wait for a U.N. Security Council resolution before starting the war in Iraq on the presumption that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington justified the war as a means of liberating Iraqi citizens from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush spent eight futile years pursuing American unilateralism.