Vol. 13 No. 11 (November 2003)

IMAGES OF TERROR: WHAT WE CAN AND CAN'T KNOW ABOUT TERRORISM, by Philip Jenkins. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2003. 194pp. Paperback 24.95. ISBN: 0-202-30679-8.    

Reviewed by Stephen A. Simon, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland. ssimon@gvpt.umd.edu

Since the late 1970s, the U.S. government’s official position on Iraq’s level of involvement in international terrorism has undergone a number of dramatic shifts which cannot be explained by contemporaneous changes in Iraq’s actual ties to terrorist activities. On the domestic front, despite hundreds of violent attacks against abortion clinics by anti-abortion groups since the late 1970s, the FBI did not classify such violence as terrorism until the mid-1990s. And anti-Castro and Puerto Rican nationalist groups repeatedly engaging in terrorism have not entered the public’s consciousness as terrorist menaces to anywhere near the same degree as Middle Eastern groups relying on similar tactics. According to Philip Jenkins, author of IMAGES OF TERROR, the explanation for these apparent puzzles lies largely in the social construction of terrorism—the institutional dynamics and political processes which shape generally accepted interpretations of terrorist incidents.

In this concise and crisply written work, Jenkins, who is a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University, examines issues relating to terrorism from the perspective that political problems are socially constructed. (He has previously written on the social construction of other societal problems, including serial murder and child abuse.) The focus is on how common understandings of problems are shaped by the interactions of politicians, bureaucracies, interests groups, and members of the media, each pursuing their own personal and institutional interests. By uncovering biases and tendencies that are largely built into the institutions responsible for framing political problems, Jenkins argues for a healthy skepticism in considering the version of events pronounced by public officials and publicized by the media.

Pointing to the conduct of past investigations, Jenkins notes, for example, that American foreign policy interests can easily influence the investigative directions which law enforcement agencies pursue most energetically. The FBI has reasons not to steer inquiries in directions likely to implicate countries with which the Administration is eagerly seeking to improve relations. Law enforcement also tends to favor accounts which depoliticize the motives of those engaged in large-scale acts of violence, particularly explanations emphasizing the unstable mental state and isolation of the perpetrators. It is more difficult to criticize law enforcement for failing to prevent the unpredictable acts of a crazy person than the acts of organizations whose motives and tactics are well-known to authorities.

The media, Jenkins argues, tend to publicize official accounts without exposing the built-in biases likely to influence the development of those accounts. Due to the secrecy surrounding counter-terrorism, and the extremely limited number of potential sources, journalists seeking to maintain access to highly placed authorities can ill afford to offend. Moreover, writers who stray from orthodoxy may subject themselves to ridicule if their views are discredited (as an example, Jenkins notes the negative publicity Pierre Salinger received following the thorough rejection of his theory that TWA flight 800 was destroyed by a U.S. navy missile.) Fear of being labeled as a crank, conspiracy theorist, or bigot may also dissuade journalists from pursuing certain angles which run contrary to the currently prevailing wisdom.

As particular understandings of terrorist events and organizations crystallize in the public consciousness as unquestioned fact, they are also frequently perpetuated by depictions in television shows, movies and other forms of popular culture. The cycle is self-reinforcing as the media tends to concentrate on stories likely to resonate with the public's existing perceptions of terrorism. Jenkins analogizes these self-sustaining dynamics to the Kuhnian portrayal of the sciences, with the dominant paradigm stretching to accommodate apparent contradictions until eventually discarded for a new account.

To minimize potential misinterpretations, Jenkins is careful to make clear that his social constructionism is not meant to suggest that terrorism is not a real and serious problem demanding decisive action. Moreover, the author does not issue sweeping indictments of particular institutions or policymakers. Rather, he is interested in demonstrating historical continuities in the processes through which opinions are formed about terrorism. Indeed, what makes the book's description of institutional dynamics so compelling is that it does not require one to ascribe evil motives or conspiratorial machinations to the actors involved. Since Jenkins also strives to be even-handed in describing partisan battles, and does not advocate particular anti-terrorist policies, the book should be useful and congenial to readers with diverse perspectives on terrorism and the best means of combating it.

The politics of anti-terrorism begin with the problem of definition. In the midst of the U.S. response to 9/11, both military and legislative, the tremendous stakes involved in attaching the “terrorist” label to a particular cause, organization or foreign state have perhaps never been more apparent. The difficulties entailed in determining when the “terrorist” designation is appropriate, however, remain maddeningly complex. While Jenkins argues for the utility of the State Department definition of terrorism (which emphasizes political motivation combined with the targeting of noncombatants), he notes that agreement on a technical definition would not dissolve the slew of conceptual difficulties which inevitably arise. Among them—how should we classify organizations which primarily act politically or militarily, but on rare occasions engage in terrorism, or organizations that have engaged in terrorism in the recent past, but appear no longer to do so? Moreover, even if it is clear that a particular organization should be classified as terrorist, the question remains to what extent the label should be applied to those associated with its members. Terrorist organizations are commonly embedded within broader social networks encompassing many groups and individuals devoted to the same cause though not directly involved in acts of violence.

Assessing possible links between terrorist organizations and foreign states – an issue of obvious importance in the present political context – is further complicated by a number of factors, including the common practices of intelligence agencies. Governments, for instance, frequently attempt to infiltrate terrorist organizations, and, in order to hedge bets and obtain information about possible terrorist threats, to establish communications with guerrillas and terrorist groups fighting on both sides of civil wars in other countries, as the U.S. itself did in Algeria during the 1950s. Identifying which contacts between states and terrorist organizations indicate active cooperation is no easy task.

Jenkins, who wrote the book after the war in Afghanistan but before the war in Iraq, devotes an entire chapter to "Iraq and State Terrorism," describing both the difficulties involved in proving a foreign government's direct involvement in terrorism and the wide array of factors that influence official analyses. In discussing U.S. investigations of Iraqi links to major terrorist acts, for example, he states "Whatever the real story of these incidents (and that may be unknowable) it looks as if the investigations were shaped by political and diplomatic factors, rather than by any objective quest for truth" (p.174). Interestingly, the author was referring to the U.S. government's efforts at times, based on the diplomatic imperatives of the moment, to downplay the possibility of Iraqi involvement. The Administration's strenuous efforts currently to link Iraq with 9-11 provide a striking illustration of the author's central theme.

At a broader level, of course, the question of when to attach the "terrorist" label entails the philosophical problems suggested by the oft-repeated observation that one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. In the chapter on "The American Politics of Terrorism," Jenkins provides an engaging account of the contrasting world views that influence the manner in which major parties approach the problem of terrorism. In short, conservatives have tended to focus on terrorist threats posed by a network of external organizations (especially those linked to communist or Muslim states), while liberals have placed greater emphasis on internal threats (including right-wing militias and violent anti-anti-abortion groups) or external organizations associated with extreme right-wing movements. The difference is powerfully illustrated by the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981; conservatives posited a plot masterminded by the KGB, and liberals looked to blame certain financiers tied to Nazi exiles. The impact of politics on construction of the terrorism problem is also reflected in the attitude of the Republican and Democratic parties towards terrorism linked to the anti-Castro and Puerto Rican nationalist movements. Both parties have had to tread cautiously to avoid offending segments of the electorate, who, while not condoning terrorism, might nevertheless be offended by overly aggressive denunciation of those fighting for a cause with which they identify. Through examination of these and other examples, Jenkins demonstrates the extent to which public policy, discourse and perception regarding terrorism have been shaped by domestic political considerations.

The author is effective in supporting his principal claims, but the book may also be read as a basic introduction to the motives and tactics of terrorism, and the imperatives, techniques and risks involved in counter-terrorism campaigns. A number of topics sketched as background for understanding the construction of terrorism make for worthwhile reading in their own right. Jenkins discusses, among other things, typical cell structures of terrorist organizations, the use of deception by both terrorists and counter-terrorist agents, the potential complications of infiltrating terrorist organizations, and the ways in which terrorists have used books and films to propagate their ideas and techniques. Regardless of one's political or academic interests, this is riveting stuff.

More importantly, it serves as highly useful background for those interested in the connections between civil liberties and the politics of terrorism. The term is so emotionally powerful in connoting evil that those identified as terrorist threats may be viewed as falling outside of the formal protections and moral considerations applied even to criminals and hostile military forces. More concretely, the definition of terrorism has far-reaching legal and policy implications, including the permissible scope of surveillance by law enforcement and the treatment of those captured by U.S. military forces. The "terrorist" designation also significantly influences the allocation of federal resources; the author notes, for example, that the FBI did not begin investigating anti-abortion violence until it was classified as terrorism in the mid-1990s.

In many ways, the book makes more specific the special difficulties involved in weighing security versus liberty in the context of anti-terrorism. In addition to providing reasons to be skeptical of official pronouncements, the work also describes the peculiar challenges of combating terrorism, that produce tension within familiar categories and standards of civil liberties jurisprudence. Jenkins does not argue for a particular resolution of this difficult tension but illuminates many of the considerations that should be a part of any thorough analysis. In sum, IMAGES OF TERROR offers a powerful argument about the social construction of the terrorism problem, primers useful for those interested in terrorism and its legal implications, and a generally fascinating read.

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Copyright 2003 by the author, Stephen A. Simon.