Vol. 14 No. 5 (May 2004), pp.312-315

THE POLITICS OF TERROR: THE U.S. RESPONSE TO 9/11, by William J. Crotty (ed).  Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003.  322pp.  Paper $24.00.  ISBN: 1-55553-577-1.

Reviewed by Torin Monahan, School of Justice Studies, Arizona State University.  Email: torin.monahan@asu.edu

How can the U.S. strike a balance between national security and civil liberties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks?  This is the primary question raised by this collected volume, and it is the common thread that links each of the chapters.  As the title implies, the focus is exclusively on the U.S. and specifically on the policymaking community’s response to the attacks (e.g., the USA PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Act, and presidential speeches).  The analysis, therefore, is directed toward “politics” in a somewhat traditional sense, whereby engagement with “the public” is provided through interpretations of survey responses concerning fear, security, rights, or presidential support.

THE POLITICS OF TERROR is divided into four main sections, entitled “Moral Dilemmas,” “The Public Response,” “Civil Liberties,” and “Institutions and Public Policy.”  Because of variation in authors’ political orientations, a productive (although non-explicit) dialogue emerges within each of the sections, encouraging reflection upon the complexity of the issues discussed.  With one exception, the writing in each of the chapters is well-crafted and should appeal to advanced undergraduate students or the interested public.

The highlight of this book is the superb first chapter, in which Stephen Nathanson guides readers through an insightful philosophical exploration of the definition of terrorism.  Arguing that unclear definitions of terrorism impair any attempts to contend with it, he advocates an impartial and symmetrical approach to the problem of definition.  This means that what counts as a terrorist act should not be predicated upon a person’s or group’s opposition to the West, to capitalism, or to secularism, and that actions performed by modern states, such as the U.S., can be terrorist too.  Nathanson’s definition of terrorism hinges upon the killing or injuring of innocent people with the goal of influencing those who make decisions for the group (p.10).  Rather than accepting attributions of innocence or guilt made by attackers or by the attacked, he proposes objective criteria for innocence, which include not being a public official or member of the military, lacking responsibility for the situation terrorists hope to change, and lacking power to respond to terrorists’ goals or demands (p.15).  While Nathanson’s definition has some faults, such as reliance on the subjective assessment of “responsibility” or its inability to account for ways that states like the U.S. can terrorize its own citizens, the definition does move the conversation beyond the dubious moral high ground of us/them dichotomies.

On the topic of patriotism, the chapter by [*313] Scott L. McLean delineates how patriotism is used for political ends while its potential for fostering civic engagement has been neglected by the Bush administration.  For instance, even with lip-service paid to community service needs, the Bush administration failed to create or fund the social infrastructure necessary for managing interested volunteers after 9/11; thus, many people were simply turned away.  McLean writes:

In any case, government would mostly play the role of cheerleader – not leader – in community service opportunities.  Bush’s idea of citizenship . . . was one where individuals regard themselves as private persons with primary obligations to family and profession.  Aiding those in need during a crisis is a compassionate reaction of a good individual, but not the common responsibility of a good citizenry. (p.81)

The chapters specifically oriented toward a discussion of civil liberties provide interesting background material on the history of rights violations, speculation on future court decisions, and surveys confirming public support for liberty trade-offs, but little in the way of analysis or critique.  Jerome M. Mileur and Ronald Story assert that liberties have always been restricted during times of war, and even if this current “war on terror” has no logical endpoint, restrictions should be expected.  Daniel Krislov prophesies that the courts will not consider or challenge the constitutionality of anti-terrorism policies because lawmakers were sufficiently cautious to avoid that scrutiny.  Evidently Krislov did not anticipate current Supreme Court hearings over the rights of non-citizen detainees at Guantanamo Bay or of citizens labeled “enemy combatants,” although knowledge of these cases has been readily available.  Finally, Lynn M. Kuzma presents survey data about how people perceive threats, showing that the public generally supports giving up some liberties for increased security.  She concludes, however, that public acceptance of these trade-offs is quickly waning.

The last section of the book provides a useful mapping of the vast organizational and political changes mandated by the USA PATRIOT and Homeland Security Acts.  William Crotty documents how in the volatile political climate following 9/11, Congress failed in its responsibility to deliberate over legislation and ceded unprecedented degrees of power to the President.  The creation of the Department of Homeland Security, in Bush’s words, is “the most extensive reorganization of the federal government in the past fifty years” (p.204), meaning since the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947.  And, whereas the chapter by Richard J. Powell applauds Bush’s mobilization of “political discipline” and a “vast rhetorical arsenal” (pp.258-9) to implement such changes, B. Guy Peters strives to put reorganization into a broader policy perspective:

If one viewed the issues posed by this reorganization simply in terms of human lives, it is clear that we have lost several thousand people from terrorism on American soil to date, but we lose many thousands from poverty or from inadequate health care for the poor every year.  Is it therefore desirable or prudent, from a policy perspective, to reorder government so entirely in order to meet this one perceived threat? (p.247) [*314]

He continues by saying that, of course, terrorism is seen as more of a threat than these other systemic deficiencies, but that the problem of agencies not working well together is not likely to be solved by reorganization on this scale.

There are several noticeable lacunae in THE POLITICS OF TERROR that require comment, and they each center on the issue of complicity.  First, any question of U.S. culpability for terrorist attacks is conspicuously absent or relegated to brief reductive passages pondering, “Why do they hate us?”  This question leads to responses such as “they” cannot abide our popular culture (p.49), our secularism (p.285), or – as a better answer – our military and financial support of Israel (p.285).  Or, perhaps worst of all, that “they” are unprepared for modernity (p.288).  These answers fail to address the history of direct U.S. support of dictatorial regimes or “terrorist” groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, and they fail to interrogate the role U.S.-driven global capitalism plays in creating conditions of dire inequality and oppression both outside and within our borders.  

Second, absent is any discussion about the complicity of the media in framing terrorist events or constructing public perceptions about them or about state policies.  It is not that the media are outside the scope of this project, because the chapter by John Kenneth White, for example, tacitly praises media behemoths such as Clear Channel Communications for censuring all potentially critical radio programming (e.g., all songs by the band Rage Against the Machine) in the weeks following the attacks (p.40).  In another chapter, Mileur and Story remark in passing that “[Bush’s] administration has not pressed aggressively for media control, in part because most newspapers and television outlets are already broadly supportive” of the administration’s policies (p.123).  This is presented as a statement of fact, not something to critique.  Yet, considering the weight that most of the authors lend toward public opinion surveys as data sources, it is surprising that media shaping of public opinion is not an issue analyzed here.

The major shortcoming of this book, however, rests with its uninterrogated assumption that liberties must be sacrificed in order to achieve security.  The history of U.S. wartime practices may be replete with examples of administrations restricting the civil liberties of citizens, as several of the authors illustrate, but that does not prove that such restrictions brought about greater security.  Was the country more secure because individuals labeled as “communist sympathizers” were detained during the cold war?  Was it more secure because police perpetrated violence against protesters during the Vietnam War?  I think that a case could be made that such violations of liberty bring about greater insecurity and unrest.  Unfortunately, this particular debate is not fostered here.  

Not only does the framing of a “trade-off” confine the book’s authors within a conceptual straight-jacket that occludes rich possibilities for envisioning the coexistence of security AND liberty, but it also reifies the popular belief that such a trade-off is both empirically accurate and inevitable.  In this way, the text is complicit in shutting down wider conversation about these issues.  Finally, [*315] in response to the more restrictive question about how to achieve a balance between national security and civil liberties, instead of workable answers, William Crotty concludes: “The hope is that the resilience of the nation’s bedrock values and its historic democratic commitments will prove to be the ultimate triumph post-9/11” (p.300).  I can only hope that this faith will be coupled with informed public debate and action.

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Copyright 2004 by the author, Torin Monahan.