An Inquiry into The Nature of Terrorism
Since September 11, 2001, America has become cogently aware of a new global threat to its stability which has been termed terrorism. The source and nature of this threat is, however, far less clear. What might drive a person to hijack and fly an airliner into a building full of civilians is something foreign to our psychology. To Americans, it is madness, and a madness which begets violence against us and demands justice.
On the one hand, Americans have realized that peace and stability in part depends upon the very reaction to this threat. On the other hand, it has become clear that seeing things in terms of an “Axis of Evil,” wherein we can clearly draw the battle lines and say “these are our enemies,” and deal with them as such is an insufficient strategy. If it were so simple then Afghanistan could be abandoned shortly after its infrastructure was crippled. The ousting of Saddam Hussein, as an act of justice, could be left at that.
The conflict itself, as a full scale “War on Terror,” never fit into the clothing of justice alone. It was necessary for it to wear the clothing of a greater cause. Quickly after the reaction to the incident which took place on September 11th, it was reinterpreted as something more than a quest for justice. It was a quest to bring democracy. It became a quest to solve the problems which had allowed this threat against the U.S. to incubate in the first place. It was seemingly decided that what had driven these men to fly a plane into a building full of civilians was, then, a lack of democracy, and the true justice might then be to depose of these enemies of democracy, which, in their lack of it, had misunderstood the nature of American society as a threat to their way of life.
