Charles Krauthammer first used the phrase in June 2001 to describe the Bush Administration's "unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol." After the &lt;a href="9/11"&gt;9/11&lt;/a&gt; attack, the phrase described the policy that the United States had the right to secure itself against countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups, which was used to justify the 2001 war in Afghanistan. The Bush Doctrine became strongly associated with the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.