As President Bush followed through on his promise to begin a "war on terrorism" this week, the implications of being a citizen in a country at war have hit Americans nationwide.
But despite the recent shock of actually beginning a counterattack, many agree that we have been a country at war ever since Bush's initial proclamation several weeks ago.
The high levels of patriotism, the president's sky-rocketing approval ratings and the increasing tensions and fears seen across the country since Sept. 11 are all part of a wartime mind-set, psychologists say.
"I think people saw us at war clearly on Sept. 11," Rutgers University Sociology Professor Lee Clarke said. "The violence on the television didn't look like anything except an attack. Part of what goes into those kinds of conceptions is how our officials talk about it, and President Bush and his advisors immediately started talking about it as an act of war."
"I don't think it matters [that we are now actively attacking targets], because people were already in a mind-set of war," Clarke added. "Americans were already feeling besieged, under attack. In a mental sense we were already at war."
Students said that they were not surprised at the strikes this weekend, but instead saw them as the logical consequences of the terrorist acts.
But at the same time, some said that the continuing warfare reminded them that the attacks at home may not be over. It is not easy to forget when there are National Guardsmen stationed in airports, bridges, train stations and tunnels, and increased security at virtually all public assemblies. In New York, even undercover police were told to wear uniforms as a deterrent.
"It made it harder to hear what was going on this weekend because it really brought everything back," College senior Suzanne Campbell said. "It made me realize once again that things weren't just automatically going to get better right away. It's going to be a rocky road for a while before things get better."
Psychologists say that Americans are distressed as well as unsure how to perceive the situation, largely because nothing in history has prepared them for the current events.
"People who weren't directly involved are more upset than I've seen with any other disaster," said Carol North, a psychiatry professor at Washington University in St. Louis. North conducted studies of post-traumatic stress disorder following the attack.
"This disaster is unlike any other in scope and magnitude, and in how heinous it was, and in its threat to the nation's security," North said. "We're in uncharted water here."
North estimated that the number of people with post-traumatic stress disorder is in the tens of thousands, while hundreds of thousands were affected less directly.
And experts said that American military actions will likely shake people even more, as they await future attacks and even more violent retaliations.
"It's a double edged sword.... People are both empowered and sobered," University of New Hampshire Sociology Professor Ted Kirkpatrick said. "People feel empowered by the response.... At the same time people are sobered by the prospect that this might ignite retaliatory acts."
And while more Americans than ever -- eight out of 10 according to a Gallup poll -- now expect future attacks, support for the president remains at an all-time high.
Psychologists said that this uniform support is a typical reaction to adversity -- which means both an increase in flag waving and possibly increased interest in working toward the public good.
"If you want to bring a group together, having some sort of external threat is a way to do it," Penn Psychology Professor Melanie Greene said. "We've seen it with a rise in patriotism, and hopefully we'll see it expressed in good ways like the rise in blood donations, rather than in bad ways like racial prejudices."
Kirkpatrick calls this unity and reciprocal appreciation among Americans an increase of social capital, and said that this sort of communal good will has been on the rise throughout the 1990s, as the crime rate has simultaneously dropped. But, he added, the Sept. 11 attacks have been a catalyst to increase the strength of this bond not only within the United States but also in the global community.
"There was uniform agreement between the two parties as to the course of action... and globally, across national boarders and traditional enemies," he said.
And images of Osama bin Laden filling television screens across the United States seemed to provide just that type of catalyst for unity, though some psychologists are unsure as to whether Bush's support stems solely from actual consensus, or also from a distressed population's need for unity.
"Certainly in political psychology there's a crowd-around-the-flag effect -- when a country goes to war there's a push to support the leaders and administrators," Greene said.
Several students on Penn's Democratic-leaning campus agreed that the Republican president was performing adequately, and felt that the government and military were able to protect them.
"I think that all these years building up a defense is finally paying off," College junior Dwight Swaney said. "There's really nothing to worry about. I can wake up in the morning and not feel threatened."
But the question for the coming months may be whether this unanimous support for and satisfaction with the government will continue, even as the government has created new positions like an Office of Homeland Security and recalled retired Army and intelligence workers to service.
According to Rutgers Professor Emeritus of Psychology Milton Schwebel, the wave of support will only last as long as the success of military actions can justify it.
"It is a kind of way of getting the rage out of their systems, but the problem is that new generations of terrorists will arise," Schwebel said. "If military strikes are effective and they are able to catch bin Laden, then I think the support will continue. But if this drags on, then I think the support will fade dramatically."
And some sociologists add that the government, already on shaky ground, would be subject to plummeting support should another large attack occur.
"A lot of people feel that the government didn't do its job," Clarke said. "Something as massive as the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- how could they not have known anything? Should something like that happen again, people would respond quite differently.... Popular outrage would go through the roof, outrage at terrorists and outrage at the government."
And, he adds, even if Americans perceive military counterattacks as successful, disappointment in what was perceived as a government intelligence failure will likely not be forgotten.
"There's the sense of being invaded from without, and we want to have the sense that we're doing something about that problem first," Clarke said. "The congressional hearings will come, the finger pointing has already begun.... Somebody always has to take the heat."
Yesterday, as President Bush publicly scolded congressmen for speaking about confidential information regarding possible future attacks, it seemed that the sense of uninterrupted unity was already starting to break.
