New Kind of War: Breaking the Rules

Abstract

President Bush recognized after the 9/11 terrorist attacks the importance of forceful military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, both from a political standpoint and as a powerful message to America’s foes and friends. Bush told the American people that the conflict would be without battlefields or beachheads, involving a series of actions against terrorist organizations and their supporters. He predicted: “This will be a different kind of conflict against a different kind of enemy.”¹ President Bush acknowledged later that the war on terrorism “has a multiple of fronts.”²