Challenges Facing the United States in the 21st Century [APUSH Review]

Well, at long last, we have arrived at the very last video of the entire Stinking A-Push curriculum. But go ahead and stuff those emotions down deep for now, because we have one last bit of work to do, and that's to consider some of the various challenges America has faced in the 21st century. And I'll give you a proper goodbye at the end of the video, but for now, if you're ready to get them brain cows milked one last time, let's get to it. Alright, so it was arguably one event that shaped US policy in the 21st century more than any other, and that was the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. Now you need to understand that as the United States emerged into the 21st century, the Cold War was over, but radical Islamic movements in the Middle East would take center stage as the most challenging set of developments to address. So hopefully you'll recall that the United States had been deeply involved in the Middle East for decades prior to this. From the overthrow of the Iranian regime in 1953 to supporting Israel in their wars against Muslim states to the Persian Gulf War, Americans just couldn't seem to quit the Middle East. And that involvement, not surprisingly, had embittered many factions in the Middle East who desperately wanted the US out of the region and to stop messing with their craft. And as it happened, one of those embittered factions was a militant pan-Islamic organization called Al-Qaeda led by a guy named Osama Bin Laden. Now Bin Laden had started by aiding the anti-Soviet forces during the Soviet-Afghan war and then intensified his calls for retaliation against America after the Gulf War and the continuing presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia. And more to the point here, Bin Laden was the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks in 2001. So on that morning, Al-Qaeda terrorists crashed two commercial jetliners into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and then another into the Pentagon. And they had also hijacked a fourth plane, but because its passengers fought back against the hijackers, they crashed the plane into the Pennsylvania wilderness. Anyway, only a couple hours later, both World Trade Towers collapsed, killing nearly 3,000 Americans, and it replaced Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor as the deadliest foreign attack ever committed on American soil. Now President George W. Bush had entered office only a few months before this attack, and while his campaign promises focused mainly on domestic reforms, this attack significantly shifted his focus to foreign policy. And now let's consider the effects of this attack, and I'm going to give you two. First of all, shortly after the September 11th attack, Bush vowed to retaliate in what he called a war on terror. And to be clear, this was not a war against a specific country like the Vietnam War or the War of 1812 or whatever. It was a war against any country that harbored or encouraged terrorist activity. Now the immediate focus of the conflict was to capture and kill Osama Bin Laden, who had And long story short, by 2002, American forces had defeated the Taliban government, but were unable to capture Bin Laden, who was able to escape into Pakistan. And as a result, the fighting continued, and the war in Afghanistan ultimately lasted twenty years, just outranking Vietnam as America's longest international conflict. And then the second effect of the 9-11 attacks was another war in Iraq. So two years after starting the war in Afghanistan, Bush declared that the war on terror required expansion, and he set his sights on Iraq. Now recall from a previous video that George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush's father, had prosecuted a war in Iraq almost twenty years earlier after Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait in order to gain control over its oil. However, Hussein was allowed to remain in power after the conflict ended, and as a result, he ruled over his people as an oppressive and brutal dictator. And while Bush and his officials pointed out that such authoritarian tactics hindered the spread of democracy in the region, their true motivation was to secure access to Middle Eastern oil. And side note, that's essentially the main reason the U.S. is going to go to war in this Like, it's not the only reason, but it's certainly a big one. However, Bush actually had no compelling justification for starting another war with Iraq. Like, yeah, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy and all, but it wasn't like he was posing any real kind of threat to the United States. But Bush was just itching to start this war, and that's when he developed the Bush Doctrine. It said that the United States should strike preemptively if it was determined that another country threatened American safety. Now in case it's not clear, that was a massive departure from the international laws of war Like, under the old rules, if a guy was running at you with a baseball bat, then you would be entirely justified to give him a proper smackdown because the threat was very real. The Bush Doctrine, on the other hand, asserted the right of the United States to attack another country if the U.S. thought that that country might be a threat in the future. And that would be more like going to a baseball game and deciding that you're going to launch a ballistic missile at the guy stepping up to the plate because, you know, it's possible that he could run after you and attack you with that bat that he's holding. And so Bush declared without a single scrap of evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and therefore met the requirement for the Bush Doctrine Smackdown. However, American allies in the United Nations, wanting to prevent this conflict, demanded that Hussein allow UN inspectors to search Iraq for these WMDs. And to everyone's shock, Hussein agreed. And then to no one's shock, the inspectors found no evidence of WMDs. But that didn't matter much to Bush because he had already been gearing up for war. And so in 2003, American troops invaded Iraq and in only a few weeks had toppled Hussein's government, although Hussein himself escaped into hiding until he was captured later that year. However, while the military operation was quick and decisive, there seemed to be no plan for how to stabilize the country after its government was dismantled. And as a result, various Iraqi factions began fighting each other for power and fighting the Americans whom they viewed as intruders. And the result was another long and costly conflict that increased rather than decreased instability in the Middle East, all in service of protecting American oil interests. Alright, so that's what was going on in foreign policy land, but now let's consider the developments that occurred on the homefront as a result of the 9-11 attacks. So those terrorist attacks had taken everyone by surprise, not least the very intelligence agencies that ought to have connected the dots and seen it coming. Therefore, the Bush administration moved quickly to heighten security on the homefront in order to find any other terrorists that might be still among the population. And to that end, Bush initiated two big changes. First was the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001. So among other things, this law gave the federal government almost unlimited powers to surveil the American public's phones and emails and other personal records in order to uncover terrorist plots. Now to be clear, the law only allowed the government to collect metadata, which is to say every piece of information about a communication except for the content of the communication itself. And at first, many Americans registered very little complaint about their government legally spying on them. And that was largely because in the weeks and months after the 9-11 attack, public sentiment was united behind the idea of finding the terrorists and making sure that another 9-11 never happened again. And then second, in the wake of the attacks, Congress created a new executive cabinet agency, the Department of Homeland Security, whose mission was to develop a national strategy and policy for preventing future terrorist attacks. And it was the largest reorganization of the federal government in U.S. history since this new department was now the home of dozens of other smaller agencies. However, over time, the measures taken by the Bush administration to carry out the war on terror sparked some significant debate. For example, some Americans began raising the alarm at the extent of the government's surveillance of its own citizens under the PATRIOT Act. And when the extent of this data collection was leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, it sparked a heated debate about whether this kind of surveillance was a violation of Americans' Fourth Amendment right to privacy. And then the second example of the debates would be the various human rights violations that the administration justified under the war on terror. You see, while carrying out the war on terror, the Bush administration made a habit of capturing suspected terrorists and shipping them to an American-owned prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And because this prison was not located on U.S. soil, the Bush administration bypassed any notion of recognizing their right to the due process of law and legal counsel. Furthermore, the Bush administration took advantage of the murky geopolitical status of this prison in order to justify their policy of torturing inmates in order to gain information on other suspected terrorists. And once news broke about the inhumane conditions of the prison, some Americans and several multinational organizations put pressure on Bush to shut it down. However, this prison is still operational today and it has proved very difficult for successive presidents to close it, even if they oppose its continued operation. Okay, and finally, let's talk about a significant environmental challenge the U.S. has faced in the 20th century, and that would be climate change. So the fact that protecting oil interests had led to several wars was reason enough for a debate about the concerning relationship America had to foreign oil. However, at the start of the 21st century, another related reason presented itself, namely global warming. So by the year 2000, the fact that the planet was warming had made itself clear, and scientists largely concluded that this phenomenon was being caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil. And trying to figure out exactly how to respond to that crisis has become one of the most debated issues of the modern age. So the international community has recognized this problem and has come together to attempt to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. And the first major effort on that count was the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, in which 37 industrialized nations agreed to limit their carbon emissions. And then the second major effort was the Paris Agreement in 2015, which was looser in its requirements but included many more countries who committed to lowering their carbon emissions. However, the United States has gone in and out of this agreement, depending on the ideology of the current president. And that's kind of a big deal, since the U.S. is responsible for emitting between 20-30% of the total carbon contributing to climate change. And that's largely because the U.S. is home to a handful of powerful oil companies who successfully lobby the federal government to keep their products unregulated. Also, the cause of global warming itself has been the target of bitter ideological debates. For example, some groups of conservative Americans deny that climate change is a cause for concern because the science is wrong. You see, they claim that the increasing temperature is caused by a natural cycle of the earth that has come and gone many times, and therefore any legislative attempts to regulate emissions is tantamount to a rejection of free market economics and a return to New Deal liberalism. And that is a debate that, again, continues to this present day. However, here's where I tell you that even with all of these challenges, the United States has continued to be the world's leading superpower in the 21st century, and we'll just have to see where that goes. And that, my dear people, is the end of the curriculum. So let me just say that I count it an absolute privilege that you have allowed me a place in your life and your education. And I want you to know two things before we end. First, I am cheering you on as you go to sit for that national exam. And then second, no matter what happens, I am proud of you. You have worked so hard, and you deserve to know that there's at least one bald, bearded, gap-toothed man here in Atlanta that thinks you are pretty great. So good luck, I'll catch you on the flip-flop, Heimler out.