"TRY for a moment to throw away your foaming at the mouth party loyalties... just listen to these points and respond rationally...

1) We were attacked by evil people on sept. 11th... in the aftermath we gained the support of most the world. They supported our just reaction and we could get them to help us in any effort we wanted to annihilate terrorism."
Ok so this is the common and accepted myth. But really how much actually support was associated with this. Let put it this way, say 5,000 Chinese get killed in some sweatshop fire, and say there is a lot media attention worldwide regarding this event- lots live footage, burning people running out of the building, etc. Everyone is talking about it, few people are saying those sweatshop people were just stupid and deserved to die. Most people are sympathic and some are calling on strong actions need to be done. Is this "strong support"?
Or did that guy that stood in front of the Chinese tank, get "strong support".
Now, I'm not saying that the countries in the world should sent billions of dollars to the victims of the this terrible act of 911- I'm not saying that everyone in the world should have been supportive. I'm just saying that 911 was simply a big media event- lots of people talk about it, perhaps it caused lots of people to think about it. 911 was for the world was simply a very successful terror act, it was a consequential event, it was as though "everyone" was involved in a car accident- you got lots of people rubbernecking, the traffic slowed down, people thought car accidents are bad, isn't that "over there a bad thing", poor things, I better drive more carefully, etc.
BUT I don't think you can say the world was supportive. The American extreme Left was moblized. "Oh, no, we can't let a war happen as a result of this." "Let's protest, let's stop the war in Afghanistan". And Europe? Oh, Bush is a bad guy because he didn't "somehow" make a group of Senators support Kyoto which would done more damage to America than 911.

So, how about a real recap:

1] President Bush was elected as a compassive conservative. The Dems were furious that they lost the election. The Dems were upset that they no longer controlled Congress. Socialism was discredited. Clinton said the era of big govt was over. Kyoto was dead, Clinton knew it, but left it to a slow death. Bush put it out of it's misery. Bush wanted to support missile defense, something started in Clinton's administration, but blocked from further development by a treaty. Bush withdrew from this treaty, which require a 6 months warning period in order to legally abide by the agreement.

2] On a clear blue sky morning, 19 wackjobs highjacked 4 airline planes. they flew two into the World Trade Center, one into Pentagon, and the other plane was forced by the passengers to fly into the ground instead of getting to it's target. All commerical planes in the US were grounded. The extent of this attack was unknown, but what was clear was that America was at a state of war with some yet unknown enemy. After this attack it was determined that no nation had actually attack us, but that terrorist groups which were allowed to operate in nation states, and that exact relation to the soveriegn power of these states was unknown.
Hence, the Bush Doctrine:
"In his address to the nation on the evening of Sept. 11, Bush decides to include a tough new passage about punishing those who harbor terrorists. He announces that the U.S. will "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html

Or: "The term initially referred to the policy formulation stated by President Bush immediately after the attacks that the U.S. would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them". The immediate application of this policy was the invasion of Afghanistan in early October 2001 after the Taliban-controlled government of Afghanistan refused to hand over al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden without being shown proof that he was responsible for September 11 attacks. This policy implied that any nation refusing to cooperate with American efforts to attack terrorists would be considered an enemy state. On September 20, 2001, in an televised address to a joint session of Congress, Bush summed up this policy with the words, "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine
This a MAJOR shift in American policy. Before this terror activity was a grey area, because the general rationale was that because democratic political speech was silenced by dictorial regimes, terrorism was seen as a means of obtaining "free speech". Terror attacks against free countries was seen as means of getting these free countries to put pressure the dictorial regimes. This can only be understood in the context of the Cold war with all the various compromises made in order to thwart the Soviets from subverting various regimes. [I'm not claiming that this was a particularly rational strategy, but it was the practical result that came mostly from a kind of denial of the "harsh reality"- we were living in a hopeless world in which we were faced with enemy which had thousands of nuclear weapons targeted at us, and that the only solution was to "somehow" contain this enemy- and few thought that this situation would change or improve].
What this shift in American policy implies is that America is going to actively work towards transforming the world into democratic countries and thereby not allow the excuse that terrorism is needed to change political realities. It doesn't mean we will overthrow dictorial regimes, but we will not tolerate terror groups within these regimes engaging in act of war against other nations. It also signals that we will not be supportive of *any* kind of covert war- we would instead do things that would encourage dialogue between an armed opposition and the established government.