On October 7, 2001, President George W. Bush announced the U.S. military had begun strikes on al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The speech came less than a month after al Qaeda hijackers commandeered four commercial airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. and a Pennsylvania field, killing thousands.
The military action marked the start of a nearly 20 year war in the region that claimed the lives of 2, 461 American personnel and a wider global campaign that became known as the War on Terror. “Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader,” Bush said. “Every nation has a choice to make. …If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers, themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.”
Here is Bush’s full address as he delivered it on October 7, 2001.
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