Shocks and Responses:

1992–Present Shocks and Responses:

1992–Present 32

CONTENTS

■A U.S. military convoy travels from Kabul to southern Afghanistan; the

photo was taken by Second Lieutenant Chris Vongsawat.

849

It didn’t happen. The terrorist attack of September 11,

2001, which virtually no one predicted, shattered hopes

for peace. Within two years, American soldiers were fight-

ing fierce battles in Afghanistan and Iraq. By the end of

the decade, over 5,000 U.S. servicemen and women would

be dead and many thousands more wounded.

By then, too, an economic earthquake had nearly

toppled the nation’s major financial institutions. By late

2008 political and economic leaders were spending tril-

lions to prop up banks, investment houses, and insurance

firms that “were too big to fail.” The federal deficit for

the decade approached $4 trillion.

More bad news was to come. In early 2010 an oil rig

owned by British Petroleum blew up, killing eleven men

who had been working on the rig and releasing millions

of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of

miles of coastal wetlands and beaches and untold num-

bers of water birds, shrimp and fish were fouled with oil.

President Obama called it the nation’s worst environ-

mental disaster ever.

By then, Timemagazine had already pronounced

these years “The Decade from Hell.” But no one had any

inkling of this in 1992.■

■A New Face: Bill Clinton

■The Election of 1992

■A New Start: Clinton

as President

■Emergence of the

Republican Majority

■The Election of 1996

■Clinton Impeached

■Clinton’s Legacy

■The Economic Boom and

the Internet

■The 2000 Election: George W.

Bush Wins by One Vote

■The New Terrorism

■September 11, 2001

■America Fights Back: War in

Afghanistan

■The Second Iraq War

■2004: Bush Wins a

Second Term

■Crime: Good News and Bad

■Hurricane Katrina

■Iraq Insurgency and

Bush’s “Surge”

■2008: McCain v. Obama

■Financial Meltdown

■“Yes We Can”: Obama

Elected President

■Obama as President

■Health Care Reform

■Immigration Reform

■Environmental Concerns and

Disaster in the Gulf

■Afghanistan, Again

■The Persistent Past and

Imponderable Future

■Debating the Past:

Do Historians Ever Get

It Right?

■American Lives:

Four Heroes

HeartheAudio Chapter 32 at http://www.myhistorylab.com