Introduction
Terrorism refers to the systematic use of violence to cause terror among civilians with the purpose of asserting demands and forcing the government to give in to those demands. Individuals involved in terror activity are called terrorists. The history of terrorism dates back to the French Revolution when words like 'terror', 'terrorist' and 'terrorism' were incorporated in the modern lexicon. However, in those days the acts of terror were executed by those in power, mostly through the man killing means of guillotine and not bombs. In the mid-19th century in the Unites States, the word 'terrorism' began to be associated with boycotts, strikes and the terror of the Civil war. It was not until late 19th century that the word 'terrorism' took a discrete form. In 1892, the anarchist Alexander Berkman after his attempted assassination of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick proclaimed vehemently that he had perpetrated the first act of terrorism in the United States (Beverly Gage, p 75). Berkmen's action resembles anonymous and organized terror attacks of modern day targeted at a mass of civilians. This purpose of this paper is to delve deep into the issue of terrorism in the United States by a detailed discussion on its historical roots, motives, methods, historical context and the common characteristics shared by the terrorists all across the globe.
Historical Roots
The first recorded event of terror occurred in the US back in 1622 on 22nd March on Friday with the attacks of the Powhatan Native Americans upon the Jamestown colony, resulting in the death of 30% of its white residents, including no less than 35 women and 30 children (J. Frederick Fausz). There were few sporadic events of insurgence and rebellions in the history of early United States, but after the American republic was created, the first dreadful terror organization to wreak havoc was "the white supremacist organization, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)" (Alejandro J. Beutel, p 3). In 1867 following the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan was founded by a group of Civil War veterans including Captain John C. Lester, John D. Kennedy, Richard R. Reed, Major James R. Crowe, Calvin Jones, and Frank O. McCord. Through the modus operandi of extreme violence, it tried to fulfill its objective of white supremacy and racial segregation. In the beginning, the targets of their rage and violence were African-Americans, the white Americans supporting the blacks and the federal government upholding the rights of the blacks. Subsequently, in the context of rapid social change it began targeting Jews, homosexuals, Catholics and immigrants (Anti-Defamation League). Due to some stringent anti-Klan laws and severe Federal crackdowns, KKK ceased to exist as a group and disbanded itself.
But soon a new peril in the form of anarchist movement showed up in the US. A group of Russians, Europeans and Americans motivated by the anarchist ideology of abolishing the government and entrenching the society on the principle of voluntary cooperation came to be known as anarchists who perpetrated a series of terror attacks in the United States in the late 19th century. Haymarket square bombing of 1886 brought the first wave of anarchist terrorism in the US which continued till 1927 until two Italian men named Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco were executed. The intermediate years between these two events witnessed a string of bombardments and murders including the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, a series of bombings targeting government officials that included attempted murder of the Attorney General in 1919, and the bombing of Wall Street in 1920 that claimed 30 lives. Following the mail bombings, the then Attorney General Mitchell Palmer decreed 'Palmer Raids' which resulted in the detention of thousands of people, deporting them and punishing a few with life-long imprisonment or death on the basis of petty evidence as was case of the execution of two Italian men (Alejandro J. Beutel, p 3). Eventually anarchist terrorism withered in America.
Beginning in 1960s to today, America faced an increase in terror attacks. From 1960 till the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of terrorist groups operated in the US including Symbionese Liberation Army, Black Liberation Army, Jewish Defense League, Puerto Rican militants, Al-Fuqra and several white supremacist groups. Beginning in 1990 to current day, most of the terror attacks that took place in the US were perpetrated by white nationalists and the radicals on the far Right. Though most of the attacks were averted, some were not including Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and World Trade Center attack in 1993 that claimed innumerable innocent lives.
Motives
The specific motives of terrorist organizations differ from one organization to another, but all the terrorist groups are motivated by one common purpose and that is to grab the attention of the government and assert their demands. The demands for political change in order to revolt against the ruling government have been reasons for numerous terror attacks. For example, the two main culprits behind Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols exploded a truck bomb of about 5,000 pounds in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in retaliation against the Federal government for their Waco Siege that resulted in the death of about 80 people two years before the bombing and the Ruby Ridge incident that led to the deaths of Randy Weaver's wife and son. The main objective behind the bombing was to inspire a rebel against the Federal government which according to Timothy was a tyrannical government.
Religion serves as another common motive for terrorism. The fanatics and religious extremist often resort to terrorism in order to propagate their religious ideologies associated with an attainment of political ends. In addition to religious ideals, racial prejudice also accounts for scores of terror acts. For example, Ku Klux Klan, the anti-Semitic white supremacist group was driven by the motives of white supremacy and racial segregation. They believed that only whites are deserving of civil rights. It not only opposes the civil right of African Americans, but the civil right of any minority section be that Jews, Catholics, gays and other ethnic groups which they believe don't share their religious ideals and race. Alongside religious and racial issues, political terrorism acts as the main impetus behind many terror attacks in the US. Some of the common causes of terrorism within the spectrum of political objectives include civil liberty defense, the environment and labor issues.
There are some acts of terrors committed in the US that are driven by a moment of insane impulses, a criminal or a recluse who have an abusive childhood commits terror attacks. For example, the Columbine High School massacre perpetrated by Harris and Dylan Klebold, who were students of the same school, was no less than a terror attack. The two spent over a year planning, acquiring firearms and building bombs. There are conflicts of opinion whether this act of shooting could be defined as terrorism or not due to the lack of political ideology, but I believe it was definitely an act of terrorism because the two aimed at expressing their anger against the society through their terror action that claimed 15 lives including their own.
Methods
Different methods are used in the execution of a terrorist attack. One of the most frequent methods employed by the terrorists to inflict maximum damage is bombing. Bombing is not a novel method being used by modern day terrorists. Long before the infamous bombing of Oklahoma City ripped through the US, there have been several terror incidents in the US involving bomb attacks, such as the bomb blast at Chicago's Haymarket Square in 1886 that left 11 dead and over 100 people injured. In 1920, a bomb was detonated by a group of anarchists in the Wall Street area of New York City, wounding hundreds of people and killing 40 (J. Farrar and S. James).
Bioterrorism which involves releasing toxic chemical or biological agents like bacteria or viruses intentionally into the atmosphere to kill and terrorize civilians is another method used by an unidentified terrorist group in the US. One week after the 9/11 attack, letters containing the germs of anthrax disease were dispatched to many news media offices and two Democratic senators of the US. The incident claimed 5 lives and infected 17 others (The FBI).
Kidnapping is another method terrorists use to assert their demands. Many a time terrorists demand the release of an imprisoned terrorist in exchange of their hostages. A classic example is the kidnapping incident of Patty Hearst, the daughter of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left-wing guerrilla group which demanded release of the imprisoned SLA members in exchange of Patty's release.
Assassination of influential or notable politicians, government leaders and diplomats is another technique used by the terrorists to achieve their motive. The assassination of the American Presidents Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald are examples how terrorists target an important government official in order to immobilize the government.
Aircraft hijacking is another technique terrorists all across the world often use for perpetrating terror actions. The most dreadful terror incident after Oklahoma City Bombing in the United States was the terror attack of September 2011 in which four flights were hijacked by the Al-Qaeda terrorists, which resulted in two of the hijacked aircrafts crashing into the World Trade Center killing thousands of people and the remaining two aircrafts crashing to the ground, killing all the passengers on board. The motives behind the attack was to kill as many as American civilians as possible to wage holy war against the United States.
Historical Context
One of the biggest terrorist attacks in the history of US is the September 2011 attack conducted by Al-Qaeda under the leadership of Bin Laden, the most notorious terrorist of all time. Bin Laden and the terrorist organizations under his patronage waged a holy war against the United States and their motive was to kill as many American citizens as possible. A close inspection into the background of this attack would reveal that these terrorists groups were the byproducts of US foreign policy. The decade long Soviet war in Afghanistan lasting from 1979 till 1989 gave birth to several ethnic rebel groups of Afghanistan who started collectively calling themselves as mujahedeen who believed that Islam is repressed by the West and announce jihad against the western superpowers. During the Soviet invasion, the US provided multitudes of weapons, spending millions of dollars, to the mujahedeen of Afghanistan in order to help them drive the Soviets out of their country. But when the Soviets left Afghanistan, the US didn't try to cull out the weapons from the citizenry or improve the ravaged condition of Afghanistan by helping the warring nation to come back to normal life. It was definitely not a responsibility of the US to restore normalcy in Afghanistan but by not doing that they left high tech weapons in the hands of few fundamentalists in a nation stricken by poverty and deprivation. This created an internal war in Afghanistan with few people ruling the roost with the help of those hi-tech weapons left behind by US soldiers. In next few years the radical Muslim fundamentalists who considered the west repressing their religion turned powerful and began jihad or the holy war against the United States. September 2011 bomb attack was a reflection of that holy war.
Another big terrorist attack that sent shockwaves through the US was the Oklahoma City Bombing. Timothy McVeigh, the main mastermind behind the attack told in his interview that during the Gulf War, he experienced how US bullied Iraq and how the wretched condition of Iraqis bred a feeling of hatred in him for the Federal government. His malicious feeling for the government was intensified by the Ruby Ridge incident in which a standoff between federal agents and Randy Weaver in 1992 resulted in the death of Randy Weaver's wife and son and the incident of Waco siege of 1993 in which the 51 days long conflict between FBI and Branch Davidian members resulted in the death of 80 people. These two incidents confirmed his feeling that the Federal government was an absolute bully and he wanted to put an end to this bullyism by his revolutionary act of Oklahoma bombing (CBS News).
Common Characteristics
Some common characteristics that have been noticed in the terror events of all across the world have been in the terror attacks in the US too. Planning a terror attack is one characteristic shared by all terrorists. Terrorist attacks are meticulously planned without any major loopholes ensuring their successful implementation. For example, the September 2011 attack was a result of 5 years of planning. While planning for a major attack, the terrorist groups first accumulate intelligence about their intended target, its defense program and vulnerabilities. Then they arrange weapons, transportation, communication devices, and escape routes for the team that will execute the terrorist mission. With all the preparations in place, they carry out the plan. The plans are hatched secretly away from the attention of public and government authorities. The terrorists also divide themselves into small groups so that if one group is captured the other groups can go on with their mission.
Most of the terrorists target civilians to provoke an atmosphere of terror. Other terrorist groups choose targets that epitomize authority such as banks, corporate offices, military bases, power plants, government offices, airports and aircrafts which are linked with established order. Mcveigh, for example, chose the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building as his target because it was a federal building with federal agents, who are representatives of the government, working inside.
Another common pattern noted in the act of terrorism all over the globe is that terrorists strike their attacks on particular days of significance and commemorative dates. Some terrorists groups make terror attempts in order to celebrate the anniversary of previous successful operations and the murdering of a noted individual linked to their specific conflict. For example, Oklahoma City Bombing took place on the anniversary date of Waco Siege.
Another common characteristic seen in the terror activities all across the globe is the selection of method and weapons to perpetrate the action. Bombings, kidnapping, assassination are some of the common modes used in killing by the terrorists. The bombs may be commercially produced explosives such as plastic explosives, TNT, black powder or commercially available materials turned into lethal explosives, such as ammonium nitrate combined with diesel fuel. Bombs are exploded using "time-delay detonators which rely on clocks, watches, and other timing devices, remote-control detonators which use radio or other electronic signals, command-wire detonators use a button which is pressed to trigger the explosion" (Citizendium). Automatic firearms including pistols, machine guns, snipers, AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle, M60 machine gun, rocket-propelled grenades are all weapons used by many terrorist groups.
Conclusion
The history of terrorism is an age old concept in the US with the James colony massacre of 1662 as first recorded event of terrorism in the soil of America. Starting from KKK, we see a lot of terrorist groups operating in the US in different phases of its history. Most of the terrorists groups are motivated by political ideology to make an impact on the government through their terror attacks. Some terrorist groups are motivated by racial and religious issues while few terrorists operate individually or with one or two more people in order to vent their anger against the society and the system. Terrorist also employ different sorts of modus operandi to commit terror attacks such bombing, bioterrorism, aircraft hijacking, assassination and kidnapping. All the terror activities that took place in the US have some major historical context to precipitate the actions. Some common characteristics shared by the terrorist groups all across the globe include planning, selection of targets, execution of terror attacks on some particular commemorative days and choice of weaponry and methods. Though lots of preventive measures have been undertaken by the US government in order to prevent future attacks of terrorism, still terror rages through the country from time to time as is apparent in the recent Boston marathon bombing. In order to solve the problem of terrorism, the US government should take into account all the factors contributing to its rising and make efforts to remove the problem from its roots.
Works Cited
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