In February of this year Joseph Andrew Stack, a 53-year-old software engineer, flew a single-engine plane into an office building in Texas. To the shock of many in the Middle East, the White House released a statement in reaction to the attack that said the attack was not terrorism, but an isolated act.
The declaration that this was not a terrorist incident left many in this region bitterly wondering if the White House would have released the same statement if Stack was an Arab and/or a Muslim.
That terrorism is perpetrated by “others,” or often specifically Arabs and Muslims, is an idea commonly held in the West. In America — the leader of the ‘War on Terror’ for the past nine years — this is especially true.
As Michael Fellman, professor of history emeritus at Simon Fraser University, argues in his new book ‘In the Name of God and Country’ — “Americans prefer to see terrorism as external to the ‘American way.’” But as Fellman deftly illustrates, this is far from the historical truth.
In this lively book, Fellman shows how terrorism has in fact been “intrinsic to the formation of modern American society.” To articulate this argument, he takes five cases of terrorism that occurred in 19th century America. Through these cases Fellman develops a convincing argument that terrorism “colored many of the powerful and contradictory qualities of American state formation during its most crucial phase.”
Fellman states in the book that “from the beginning of the American state (and before), terrorism has pervaded American war making, social transformation and political development, obliterating many conventional fine distinctions of morality, including those between combatants and noncombatants.”
In the first example, Fellman takes the abolitionist and terrorist John Brown. A white American, John Brown had “the perfect combination of Christian holy manliness, American revolutionary zeal and abolitionist righteousness.”
The author illustrates how, in his fight against slavery, Brown committed outrageous acts of violence against noncombatants and innocents that caused deep concern even within his own family. But his ghastly acts for his noble cause appeared to work as he spread fear throughout the white pro-slavery South.
While Fellman focuses on terrorism within US history, lessons are also learnt about the nature of terrorism in general. He makes two general distinctions of terrorism, one revolutionary and the other reactionary, engaged in by both non-state and state actors. It is these two types of terrorism that can become locked in a vicious circle.
“Terrorism provokes terrorism in a cyclical and reciprocal manner — the War on Terror as a concept is falsely one-sided.” These sort of carefully thought out conclusions will no doubt win Fellman few friends in mainstream America. Nor will his uncovering of historical lessons that show how “terrorism can best be understood as a shared process that includes ‘us’ not merely as innocent victims but as participants, even if we did not initiate combat.”
Fellman will likely be brushed aside as an apologist for terrorists despite his clear condemnation of terrorism throughout the book. The typical knee jerk reaction to terrorist acts — to condemn rather than seek to understand — means that such a response to a book that attempts to engage the moral complexities of terrorism is to be expected.
This type of reaction, however, is one of the main warnings running through the heart of ‘In the Name of God and Country.’ To successfully combat terrorism, reactionary counterterrorism is not the solution. But as Fellman shows so well, history is sometimes a tragically broken record.
