Editing Bush Doctrine (section)

===Democratic regime change===
In several speeches between late 2001 and 2002, Bush expanded on his view of the U.S. foreign policy and global intervention, declaring that the United States should actively support democratic governments around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the threat of terrorism, and that the nation had to act unilaterally in its own security interests, without approval of international bodies like the [[United Nations]].<ref name=Time_Allen_20070502/><ref name="NationalReview_Levin_20060816" /><ref name="USAtoday_Page_20030317" /> This represented a departure from the Cold War policies of [[Deterrence theory|deterrence]] and [[containment]] under the [[Truman Doctrine]] and post–Cold War philosophies such as the [[Powell Doctrine]] and the [[Clinton Doctrine]].

In his 2003 [[State of the Union|State of the Union Address]], Bush declared:<ref name="union28jan03">{{cite news |url=https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/01/print/20030128-19.html |title=President Delivers "State of the Union"  |publisher=[[The White House]] |first=George W. |last=Bush |author-link=George W. Bush |date=January 28, 2003|access-date=2008-09-19}}</ref>

{{quote|Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.}}

After his second inauguration, in a January 2006 speech at the [[National Defense University (Washington, D.C.)|National Defense University]], Bush said: "The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom."

[[Neoconservatism|Neoconservatives]] and the Bush Doctrine held that the hatred for the West and the United States particularly exists not because of actions perpetrated by the U.S., but rather because the countries from which terrorists emerge are in social disarray and do not experience the freedom that is an intrinsic part of democracy.<ref name="kaufmandef"/><ref name="infowaridea"/> The Bush Doctrine holds that enemies of the U.S. use terrorism as a war of ideology against the nation. The responsibility of the United States is to protect itself by [[Democracy promotion by the United States|promoting democracy]] where the terrorists are located so as to undermine the basis for terrorist activities.<ref name="kaufmandef"/><ref name="infowaridea"/> Elections in [[Egypt]], [[Lebanon]], and [[Palestine]] happened as a result of this initiative in the sense that the [[Muslim Brotherhood]], [[Hezbollah]], and [[Hamas]] were allowed to participate in it.