Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, that killed some three thousand people, the United States has been waging a global war on terror, with campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. In an outline of U.S. policy for the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in October 2001 and in the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush declared that the United States would spend whatever resources are necessary to win this war on terror. The outbreak of hostilities in the war against Iraq began on March 19, 2003, with a televised address to the nation in which Bush said that “we will accept no outcome but victory.” In January 2006, Bush said that the United States “will settle for nothing less than complete victory.”

Within several weeks of the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Saddam Hussein's military forces were decisively defeated, and U.S. forces began their occupation of Iraq. On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” and that “the United States and our allies have prevailed” in the war against Iraq. However, he emphasized that although “the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror,” the United States had not yet won the war on terror, and that “we do not know the day of final victory.” While many observers interpreted his words to mean that the United States had achieved victory, the question is how we should interpret this “victory.”