According to the author of the nonfiction book, The Afghanistan Papers, when did George W. Bush’s political fortunes change?

George W. Bush’s early approval ratings in office were quite dismal. 9/11 changed his political fortunes entirely and allowed him to pursue war first in Afghanistan and then Iraq, which had been the goal of the neo-conservative clique in Washington from which he emerged and to which his family’s political and business stakes were tied. In office, Bush was a much-lampooned figure by those outside the mainstream right wing of US politics. He often made buffoonish public pronouncements and garbled his words in a style that seemed to approach self-mockery. To his political credit, this distracted from much the deleterious and cruel policies of his administration. Bush is often blamed for the enormous loss of life in Iraq following the US invasion. MIT’s human cost of war project approximated there were up to 1.3 million excess deaths from the invasion, putting Bush on par with some of the most gruesome mass-murderers of the twenty-first century.