Terrorism: The historical context and the present crisis

By Martin Miller and Ylana Miller

As the horrific tragedy of Sept. 11 settles into permanent corridors of our conscious life, our reactions as a society are manifold. There is shock, grief, anger and other emotions that we have not fully understood or found words to describe. As we search for explanations, our sages in government, the media and the academy try to help us articulate what we have experienced. We have been told that our innocence is gone, that the third world war has begun and that we are confronting a new and more lethal form of terrorism than the world has ever seen.

There is no doubt that our life as a nation will be altered by the destruction of that day. The thousands of lost lives cannot be restored, and their loss cannot be explained to those left without them. Fear will become a presence that increased security can never really dispel. Sacrifices will be made if our government chooses to seek retribution by war, as seems now to be the case.

We are urged to resume normal life, as both a healing mechanism and a tactic in the war against terrorism. Sports events resume and we will cheer for another kind of victory, movie theaters will again draw crowds to view digitalized specters of violence, mayhem and terrorism, and our daily routines of earning a living, providing food for our families, and seeking temporary escape in front of televisions, at bars and in restaurants with friends will go on. The firebomb that brought down the World Trade Center will be a memory.

In historical perspective, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are not really new; they are part of an evolutionary pattern that continues to metastasize into the social fabric of the Western world. Modern terrorism began in a democracy: In 1793, the French government, after four years of experimenting with the problems of establishing a democratic republic, inaugurated a self-proclaimed "reign of terror" in which tens of thousands of citizens were victimized and executed as "enemies of the revolution." Terror from below began with the Italian Carbonari, small cells of Italian patriots who killed French officers during the occupation of Europe under Napoleon. In 1849, Karl Heinzen wrote the first manifesto on modern terrorism in which he justified the killing of "the barbarians" in government as the only means of ending the injustice and brutality of monarchical rule.

A critical moment in the evolution of terrorism began with the assassination of Emperor Alexander II of Russia in 1881. A wave of assassinations followed, the consequences of which have led to the dilemma we face today. Until the 1880s, the combat between the state and terrorists challenging its legitimacy was confined to specific areas and individuals, as attempts were made on the lives of leaders in Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Britain and the United States.

The justification for later political violence was the ideology of anarchism. Governments began their own acts of terror, as in the case of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in 1887 when seven innocent editors of an anarchist newspaper were executed with the support of the public and the media for the killings of several policemen at a labor rally. The state and the terrorist, locked in an interdependent relationship, have been resorting to acts of violence to achieve their ends up to the present moment.

Then, the enemy of the bombers was the nation-state, which, after the unification of Germany and Italy in 1871, seemed to have created a threatening Leviathan about which Heinzen had earlier warned. Governments responded with new security measures, immigration quotas, deportation laws and sweeping powers to combat the threat of "nihilists and anarchists," who were never clearly identified. For civil society, the terror was a scourge that seemed to have no end, no predictability and from which no one was safe.

The most recent upsurge of terrorism was the intensive combat that took place "from Berkeley to Berlin" and beyond during the 1960s and 1970s. The bombings seemed once again to have no limits. The Baader-Meinhoff Group in West Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy and the Weathermen in the United States became the subject of increased media attention with every violent "action" taken against the symbols of the state and its "ruling classes." Governments again responded as American cities were patrolled by tanks and the National Guard, and universities, for the first time, permitted a permanent police presence on campus grounds. During this time, terrorists expanded the zone of combat even farther by introducing airline highjackings.

Again, as in the past, terrorist movements ultimately were eliminated by a combination of state action and a loss of public support for their cause. We live today, however, with the next stage of dealing with the problems that lie behind the unacceptable violence. Contrary to some arguments, history has not come to an end. In fact, history tells us that those who resort to terrorism are acting to seek change in the political arena and in this case, their challenge faithfully mirrors the globalization phenomenon which has widened the Western economic arena but limited control over its resources in complex ways. Yet terrorist action, by inflicting damage and generating rage, has its greatest impact when our hurt gets in the way of our will to understand.

The result is a cycle of violence which sacrifices long-term goals to short-term relief. Terrorist actions of the scale with which we are dealing today are not the work of a few mindless and crazy individuals or groups. An effective defense will require analysis not only of the networks which recruit members but equally of the political world in which they operate and the reasons that they succeed in generating broader popular identification with the rage they express.

We might begin by recognizing the extraordinary planning, sources of motivation and intended goals that went into the attack which devastated us. If we are to find ways of protecting ourselves, we need to take seriously those who oppose us. It is past time for us to acknowledge that the role of being the superpower, with all its prerogatives, comes with the imperative of anticipating the responses we engender, intended or not. We cannot escape the anger we have and will create; we can, however, learn that our failure to listen all too often costs us the international support we will need to be productive in our efforts at maintaining both security and our liberties. Only if we rethink our place in the framework of the cultural complexities of an interdependent world, with its multiplicity of potential centers and conflicts, can we hope to succeed.