George W. Bush launches Afghanistan War (jan 1, 2002 – jan 1, 2014)

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Even as Obama pursued an ambitious domestic agenda, he faced two inherited wars in the Middle East. Determined to end the occupation of Iraq, the president began to draw down troops in 2010, with the last convoy of U.S. soldiers departing in late 2011 after a costly nine-year war. That same year, in May, U.S. Special Forces located and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, where he had been hiding for many years, an action which won Obama nearly universal praise. His use of drone strikes to assassinate Al Qaeda leaders and other U.S. enemies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere proved more controversial — with some human rights advocates charging the president with violating international law. Despite a campaign promise to end the war in Afghanistan, the president deployed an additional 30,000 American troops there in 2009 to stem a reinvigorated Taliban. The surge temporarily stabilized the country, but long-term political and military stability proved elusive. Obama left office in 2017 with thousands of U.S. troops still in Afghanistan.

EXAM TIP
Compare the successes and failures of the Obama administration to the administration of Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, a host of events in the Middle East deepened the region’s volatility. In late 2010, a multinational political movement across the Middle East and North Africa roiled the politics of the Arab world. In a wave of popular demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen, autocratic regimes fell, while protests in other countries led to harsh crackdowns. Obama and the U.S. State Department cautiously supported the so-called Arab Spring uprisings but were unable to significantly shape events thereafter. In Syria, for instance, an Arab Spring insurgency matured into a brutal civil war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, nearly five million refugees, and the internal displacement of nearly six million Syrian citizens. The Islamic State, an ultraviolent, fundamentalist Sunni group that emerged in the chaos of war-torn Iraq, also plagued Syria. Starting in 2011, the extremists effectively seized control of portions of northern Iraq and northern Syria, establishing a harsh theocratic “caliphate.” Between 2001, when the war against the Taliban began in Afghanistan, and 2016, when the Syrian refugee crisis and the rise of the Islamic State dominated headlines, the United States learned again that making war was far easier than controlling the events that followed.

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