Although I am generally supportive of the way in which the Bush Administration has conducted the war against the Islamic fascists over the past three years, I have never been comfortable with the Administration’s characterization of the war as the “War on Terror.” Not only does that moniker obscure the real enemy — radical Islamic fascism — but its vagueness risks inclusion of legitimate rebel movements against tyrannical regimes. I mean, really — would the United States be siding with the Iranian or North Korean governments if rebel movements in those countries began to use tactics to undermine those tyrannical regimes similar to those that are used by Islamic fascists against America and Israel?
Dr. Philip Jenkins is a prolific author and an outstanding professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University. He is best known for his recent books The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) and The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), which are outstanding works on the changing nature of Christianity in the world. The Next Christiandom explores the emergence of Third World countries as the future demographic and cultural center of global Christianity, and The New Anti-Catholicism examines how modern political correctness toward minority groups has not deterred major media outlets from casting the Catholic Church and its teachings in the worst possible light.
However, Professor Jenkins is also an expert on the concept of terror, and his new book Images of Terror: What We Can and Can?t Know about Terrorism (Aldine de Gruyter, New York 2003) explores the social construction of terrorism as a concept and problem. In this review of Images of Terror, reviewer Daniel McCarthy notes that Professor Jenkins asks the salient question: What makes a particular incident an example of terrorism, rather than a conventional crime? Although a generic definition of terrorism is possible to develop, the application of that definition to a particular event is much more difficult as a variety of social forces and media interpretations shape our understanding of the event:

[A]s a new understanding of the problem [of terrorism] takes hold, older interpretations may be forgotten entirely and even retroactively discredited. The interpretation that was plausible in the 1980s became, under the influence of a changing ideological climate, a thing that only crackpots believed in the 1990s. This, says Jenkins, is what happened to the theories of those who warned of the dangers of Islamic terrorism during the Clinton years. In the 1980s, when terrorism was understood as a phenomenon connected to outside dangers?to the Cold War and the Iran-Iraq War, for example?such warnings might have been taken seriously. In the 1990s, however, terrorism increasingly came to be understood as something associated with domestic far-right militants, and those who talked too much about Islamic terrorism risked being dismissed as racists or Islamophobes. After 9/11, the prevailing understanding changed again, and people who may have sounded like cranks five years earlier were now experts on a real and obvious danger.

Indeed, as Professor Jenkins points out, the concept of terror is neither new nor particularly unusual in American history. However, the social and political forces that shape our understanding of terror events make it seem that way:

[W]hile the images of terror shift, the reality of terror may remain constant. Terrorism in United States is certainly not a recent development. Jenkins provides a chart enumerating more than forty-nine major acts of terrorism in the United States between 1939 and 2001; he notes, however, that despite this long history of terrorism, news media would often react to a major terrorist strike within the country as if it were the first time terror had come to the United States. The media, however, are not alone in their forgetfulness and revisionism. Jenkins argues that intelligence agencies and government departments also change the way terrorism is understood, prompted by changing diplomatic and political realities.

As one example, Professor Jenkins points out how the government’s handling of the information that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta probably met with Iraqi intelligence agent in the Czech Republic in early 2001 reflects the conflicting interests within the U.S. government at the time:

Czech intelligence originally claimed that [Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agent in the Czech Republic in early 2001], but the Czech government later disavowed that report. Might the government have had other reasons for discrediting the story? An Iraqi connection to 9/11, no matter how tentative, would have been cause for war, something that Jenkins says the U.S. State Department was eager to avoid at the time.

Professor Jenkins maintains that we can reach a better understanding of terrorism and its implications by asking specific questions that undermine the political or social twists that a societal force may attempt to place on a particular terroristic event:

There may be things we can never know about terrorism, certainly about specific acts. In general, however, consumers of news and information can adopt strategies to arrive at the clearest understanding possible. First, says Jenkins, readers must ask, ?How do we know this?? (p. 193). They must evaluate the sources?and the sources’ sources?carefully. Second, they must ?realize that claims have consequences? (p. 193), asking cui bono while considering also how a certain piece of information may harm the interests of various actors. Finally, ?the greatest weapon for the critical consumer of terrorism claims is memory? (p. 194). Images of Terror as a whole is concerned with that third point: the purpose of a social constructivist analysis, after all, is to show that things have not always been understood the way they now are and that other interpretations are possible. Memory provides some context and some grounds for hope in the effort to understand terrorism.

Thus, the “War on Terror” paints with a broad brush where a more measured stroke is needed. The sooner that we understand that the war is against radical Islamic fascists who seek state power to effectuate totalitarian control similar to what occurred in Iran in 1979 and in Afghanistan in the 1990’s, then the quicker we will be able to develop the military and political policies necessary to defeat these tyrannical forces against progress.