ABSTRACT
ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, AT 8:30 P.M. EDT, A GRAVE PRESIDENT George W. Bush addressed a shocked nation from the Oval Office. At first, he called that day’s devastating attacks on American soil by transnational terrorists “acts of mass murder.” But toward the end of his short speech, he declared, “America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism.”1 Contrary to the reference to crime at the outset, the war analogy was not meant as a rhetorical exclamation mark. Not law enforcement, but the use of military force became the centerpiece of Washington’s post-9/11 response to transnational terrorism and threats that the administration linked to this kind of political violence. Robert Dalby observed that after 9/11 there was “the immediate assumption that the struggle against terror was a matter best prosecuted as a matter of warfare rather than by diplomacy and police action.”2
