“In late September [20] 2002, the White House published ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States,’ a document that codified the three principles President Bush had spelled out [on June 1, 2002] at West Point: preemption, regime change and American leadership. The publication of this document inaugurated a new era, a shift in perception about America’s global role comparable to the advent of the containment doctrine a half-century earlier. It transformed the war from a police action to round up the perpetrators of September 11 into a campaign to uproot tyranny and export democracy. It also transformed the tenets of a distinctly American internationalism into the official policy of the U.S. government.”
– Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War Over Iraq, Page 74