The Historical Context of Terrorism and Our Next Steps

The Historical Context of Terrorism and Our Next Steps

As the horrific tragedy of September 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.