From 9/11 to 2011: The ‘War on Terror’ and the Onward March of Executive Power?

Over a decade ago, 9/11 became the iconic event in US and UK politics. The atrocities in New York and Washington represented not only a new type of terrorist phenomenon but also one that signaled new aggressive assertions of executive power by the Bush administration and the Blair government at the expense of Congress and Parliament, and new dangers to the rule of law and protection of civil liberties (Owens, 2010; Shephard, 2010). Both President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted the imprimatura of a global ‘war on terror’ (Owens and Dumbrell, 2008, p. 2). In the United States, the Bush administration worked with Congress to formulate and implement revised legal definitions of terrorism; new search, arrest and surveillance powers; and to legislate huge increases in federal spending on the military, law enforcement, surveillance, database management, border control, capital control, and intelligence capacities. Claiming ‘inherent’ and ‘plenary’ powers, Bush administration officials also effectively authorized and organized state kidnapping of alleged terrorists both in the US and abroad (’extraordinary rendition’), interned suspects in military facilities in the US and abroad without legal redress, and sanctioned abuse and torture of detainees by US personnel, private contractors and foreign governments.