“The deliberate and deadly attacks, which were carried out yesterday against our country, were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war” (Bush, Act of War Statement). This is the statement George W. Bush made after two planes flew in to the Twin Towers on the 11th of September in 2001. The 9/11 terror attacks still live vividly in memory of people inside and outside the United States. President Bush declared the attacks “acts of war” and thus declaring war on terrorists. The measures taken after 9/11would have great impact on the citizens of the United States and their daily lives but there was not much resistance, they felt it was necessary for their own safety. One of the most important measures taken was the creating of the department of Homeland Security. Randolph Bourne argues in his essay “The State” that war tends to encourage an oppressive state (Bourne). This is not only true for the war he was writing about, the First World War, but also for the war on terror. This is why the terror attacks on the 11th of September in 2001 create room for the state to become more oppressive. In this essay I will argue that the notion of Randolph Bourne that “war tends to encourage an oppressive state is true for the United States government after the terror attacks on 9/11 and expresses this oppressiveness through the creation of the department of Homeland Security.
First of all, war in general tends to make a state, like the United States, more oppressive towards the freedoms of its citizens . To prove this phenomena Randolph Bourne argues in his essay “The State” that in times of war people are dealing more with the state, and when in times of peace the people are forgetting about the authority of the state because they are only dealing with the government. Furthermore, he argues that through this dealing with the state, the state becomes more oppressive towards its citizens. Randolph Bourne explains that “The State is the country acting as a political unit, it is the group acting as a repository of force, determiner of law, arbiter of justice” and that “Government on the other hand is synonymous with neither State nor Nation. It is the machinery by which the nation, organized as a State, carries out its State functions” (Bourne). So war leads to people shifting their attention from active enforcement of the rules to the political unit creating the rules which is the state. In this perspective of looking at the state Randolph Bourne argues that war leads to patriotism and faith in the state. This is because in times of war the state is creating rules and measures which have the goal to fight an enemy that is not only an enemy of the State but also of its citizens. Randolph Bourne writes that in times of war “Patriotism becomes the dominant feeling, and produces immediately that intense and hopeless confusion between the relations which the individual bears and should bear towards the society of which he is a part.” In other words war leads to more trust in the state and country. So war results in eyes shifting from governmental authority towards state authority and results in the State becoming more oppressive. People expect that the state takes measures in preventing terrible things to happen. By oppressive Randolph Bourne means that the state becomes more oppressive is that the state is more heavy-handed towards its citizens. He argues that in times of war the state is constricting in the freedoms of its citizens (Bourne).