“This would develop more non-lethal capabilities, in which we could handle a [terrorist threat] without casualties,” he says.

A Pledge of Allegiance?

While flags and “United We Stand” signs proliferated in the weeks after Sept. 11 last year, public policy experts say that America’s patriotic reaction is shifting.

Amid repeated media attention to actions designed to combat terrorism by the government since Sept. 11, the American public has increasingly begun to question the curtailing of some civil liberties, according to David Little, Dunphy professor of the practice in religion, ethnicity and international conflict at Harvard Divinity School.

Little says the war on terrorism’s difference from wars throughout U.S. history have caused this short-lived peak in military and religious support.

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and even through the early stages of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, Americans carried “a sense of patriotism and support for an assertive military,” Little says.

“Immediately after the attacks there was a sense that America had been deeply wounded and had a right to retaliate,” he says. “There wasn’t much thought about the limits and restraints within which we should retaliate.”

But the long periods of virtual silence on the war’s progress and a lack of continued attacks has caused the public to lose interest in the battles—both those behind closed doors and half a world away.

“It’s difficult for the government to sustain that sense of moral outrage that is typical of the war experience,” he says.

Similarly, it is questionable whether the promises of increased civic participation made after the attacks have translated into action, says Thomas H. Sander, executive director of the Kennedy School’s Saguaro Seminar, who is in the process of measuring the impact of Sept. 11 on civic engagement.

He says that, historically, disasters have caused temporary increases in civil engagement, but “how long these surges last depends on the severity of what happened.”

One notable exception, Sander says, is World War II, which “ushered in far more civic engagement than generations before or after.”

Sander says current studies—looking to see whether the Sept. 11 response follows the rule or the exception—indicate that any surge in civic engagement was only temporary, although polls show that those under age 18 are taking on more civic duties.

“Nationwide polling of those 18 and older initially showed a big rise in civic attitude and trust of the government, with no big change in civic behavior,” he says. “But by March there was some decline in trust of the government.”

With the attacks one year in the past, Little says the hawkish attitude has faded and shifted into a concern about civil liberties.