ABSTRACT
In the first confusing days after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush declared a war on terror. Many of us heard this declaration as stirring rhetoric to rally the nation. We understood it as a declaration that the President would direct a strong response against those responsible. We had heard this sort of rhetoric before when the nation faced powerful challenges-from illegal drugs and chronic poverty. Many of us understood President Bush’s declaration of war to refer once again to the determined, persistent struggle to overcome a social blight-this time terrorism. We did not understand it as the kind of war Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared after the attack at Pearl Harbor. Indeed, how could we have understood it any other way? When President Bush made his declaration, he did not even know who had carried out the attacks.
