Killing For A Cause. - Review - book review

The Ultimate Terrorists
Jessica Stern
Harvard University Press, $22.95, 214 pp.

Inside Terrorism
Bruce Hoffman
Columbia University Press, $24.95, 288 pp.

In the decade of the nineties, terrorists took the lives of American military personnel and civilians in a night club in Berlin, in barracks in Saudi Arabia, embassies in Africa, the World Trade Center in New York, and a federal building in Oklahoma City. These deaths received media attention in this country. They are the tip of an iceberg.

Jessica Stern records the growing number of terrorist attacks around the world since the 1970s, mounting in the first half of the '90s to 27,078 incidents, which caused 51,797 deaths and even more injuries. It is a serious and dangerous trend. How dangerous? Where does the trajectory extend? What defenses are possible and feasible? Both Stern and Bruce Hoffman stress the necessity and the difficulty of coping with these questions now.

It is a truism to say that terrorism has a bad name today. How could it be otherwise? But it was not always so. The term itself first gained wide modern acceptance after the French Revolution as the new government attempted to establish order during a period of near anarchy. Far from being directed against a government-as we generally expect it to be-the regime de la terreur was an instrument wielded by the state against those who opposed the revolution and longed for the ancien regime. Hoffman quotes Robespierre, the revolutionary leader: "Terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, and inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue." As we know, this emanation of virtue would in time cause Robespierre and his followers to lose their heads under the severe and inflexible blade of the guillotine. There would be little point in recalling this except that it prefigures contemporary terrorism. As Hoffman states: "The terrorist is fundamentally an altruist." That is, he does not act for personal gain: he is serving a cause. He believes he is acting virtuously for the good of some particular constituency. Without a cause, he is not a terrorist.

The books by Stern and Hoffman are complementary, agreeing on most major issues, but Hoffman offers the closer analysis of terrorism. He makes immediately clear, however, that one of the difficulties in discussing terrorism is that of definition. What is the particular combination of variables-what kinds of acts, intentions, agents, or targets-that sets acts of terrorism apart from other acts of violence? For these elements have shifted over the years, lending to terrorism a different form at different times, in different places.

During the nineteenth century, terrorists developed the concept of "propaganda by violence." Violence could do, they reasoned, what many conferences, many words had failed to do. These terrorists carefully targeted political leaders they saw as representatives of corrupt, oppressive societies. At the same time they regretted taking any human life and attempted to avoid injuring anyone other than the target. During this period, terrorism became closely associated with revolution, a linkage that still exists in the minds of many people. In the early decades of the twentieth century, however, terror was adopted by totalitarian governments-Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist Russia-to repress their opponents and intimidate their own citizens. As Hermann Goring wrote to his "fellow Germans" in 1933: "I don't have to worry about justice; my mission is only to destroy and intimidate." In following decades, terror became a prominent feature of military dictatorships in Latin American countries. Hoffman distinguishes: Internal violent acts sanctioned by those already in power are "generally termed 'terror' in order to distinguish that phenomenon from 'terrorism,' which is understood to be violence committed by nonstate entities."

With such distinctions in place he is ready to offer a definition of terrorism-in which each term is crucial-as "the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change." Consonant with this definition is Brian Jenkins's observation that terrorists do not want to alienate those whom they wish to influence, hence their concern to limit damage. "Terrorists want a lot of people watching and a lot of people listening and not a lot of people dead."

While questioning whether terrorists do act with deliberation, whether they really engage in cost-benefit analysis, Stern quotes Thomas Schelling: "Despite the high ratio of damage and grief to the resources required for a terrorist act, terrorism has proved to be a remarkably ineffectual means to accomplishing anything." And it is easy to point to the demise of a number of terrorist groups that have gradually faded from the political scene without accomplishing their purposes. The Baader-Meinhof Group of Germany and the Red Brigades of Italy come to mind. Why would other groups wish to follow their example?

These are reassuring observations, but there are others that are not, and I think they are weightier. For example, Algeria, Kenya, Cyprus, and Israel all won independence partly through the aid of terrorism. Ineffectual? Groups bent on "national liberation" could well look to them for guidance. In fact the Palestinians did. In a short time, the terrorist acts of the Palestinian Liberation Organization did what years of international lobbying had failed to accomplish: they focused world attention on the Palestinian people and their plight. (Definition again: Yassir Arafat insisted on a distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters, the latter seeking freedom, liberty, and a just cause. No need to say where he placed the PLO. Today other groups would like to make the same exchange of labels.)

More disturbing are these growing phenomena: the part played by religion-inspired groups, cults, and political extremists, and the extension of terrorism beyond the borders of the nationals' own country. The newer activists have little interest in limiting the damage they do. In some instances the reverse will be true. The bombing of the World Trade Center is a case in point. Investigators believe that Islamic extremists intended to bring one of the twin towers down so that it would severely damage the other and to release poisonous gas into the area, killing many thousands.

Another example is the release of deadly nerve gas into the Japanese subway system by Aum Shinrikyo, a religious sect. Stern is particularly strong on describing the variety of weapons of mass destruction- nuclear, chemical, and biological-now available to such terrorists, and the relative ease of international travel that allows them to strike where they will. She rightly calls for preparatory measures and outlines a possible course of preventive action. She does sometimes weaken her strong arguments by an excessive reliance on "probably could" and "might," the latter term appearing eleven times on one page alone. Nor are her secondary sources always reliable. For instance, she cites a supposed statistic that during World War II between 75 and 80 percent of riflemen refused to fire at an exposed enemy, a "statistic" first put forth by General S.L.A. Marshall but subsequently disproved. But these are minor flaws in a strong and chilling argument.

"Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers." This grim prediction comes not from Stern or Hoffman but from a report issued by a federal advisory commission in late September. It follows from preceding findings that the greatest present threat to American security is posed not by a conventional conflict but by terrorist attacks for which we are currently unprepared. In mid- October, in a rare unanimous vote, the Security Council of the UN agreed to unite in a common defense against terrorism. Representatives of the council forcefully rejected the contention that because some terrorist acts are labeled political or said to be in a "just cause" they are less than reprehensible.

These government actions underscore the value of these two books, which occasionally overlap and sometimes differ. Each is a distinct and forceful call for more intensive national concern about terrorist attacks-possibly catastrophic-and for preventive measures to forestall them.

James Finn is a member of the board of World without War Council.

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