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The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again

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Overview

In The Lessons of Terror, novelist and military historian Caleb Carr examines terrorism throughout history and the roots of our present crisis and reaches a provocative set of conclusions: the practice of targeting enemy civilians is as old as warfare itself; it has always failed as a military and political tactic; and despite the dramatic increases in its scope and range of weapons, it will continue to fail in the future.

International terrorism--the victimization of unarmed civilians in an attempt to affect their support for the government that leads them--is a phrase with which Americans have become all too familiar recently. Yet while at first glance terrorism seems a relatively modern phenomenon, Carr illustrates that it has been a constant of military history. In ancient times, warring armies raped and slaughtered civilians and gratuitously destroyed property, homes, and cities; in the Middle Ages, evangelical Muslims and Christian crusaders spread their faiths by the sword; and in the early modern era, such celebrated kings as Louis XIV revealed a taste for victimizing noncombatants for political purposes.

Editorial Reviews

Novelist and military historian Carr (The Alienist, etc.) penned this brief history of terrorism as a corrective to the widespread perception spread by ill-informed journalists and politicians that the September 11 attacks were unique and unprecedented. Carr argues from the start that terrorism must be viewed in terms of "military history, rather than political science or sociology," and that the refusal to label terrorists as soldiers, rather than criminals, is a mistake. Underlying Carr's argument is the view that a repugnant bloodthirstiness arises when one civilization, no matter how advanced, encounters another. Accordingly, as Western civilization spread throughout the 17th and 18th centuries via imperialism, and Europe's seemingly more disciplined armies encountered strange peoples such as the Aztecs, Native Americans and south Asian Indians the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants became commonplace. No liberal, Carr zooms in on the history of the U.S. and looks at how terror tactics are fundamental to U.S. military efforts. Such tactics, he shows, were first established in the Civil War, culminated with the firebombing of Germany and Japan during WWII, and reappeared later during the Vietnam War. He traces the manner in which politicians and intellectuals have sought to justify and then curtail attacks on civilians throughout history. Only occasionally dry or repetitive, this often fascinating, accessible tome skillfully contends that the terrorizing of civilians has a long and controversial history but, as an inferior method, is prone to failure; it is rooted as much in human nature as it is in the need for military expediency. (On-sale: Jan. 29) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Caleb Carr

Caleb Carr, a lifetime resident of New York, was born in 1955 and grew up on the Lower East Side. His father was an editor and close friend to famous Beat Generation writers, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Although Carr was personally exposed to their style of writing and Bohemian lifestyles, he chose to take his own work in a different direction. Where the Beat writers wrote purely from expression and feelings, Caleb Carr's works are diligently researched and known for their historical accuracy. Caleb Carr developed a love of history at a young age, acquiring a keen interest in military history while attending a Quaker high school. This interest led him to major in history at Kenyon College and NYU. Notable works by Caleb Carr are The Alienist, which was on the New York Times' bestseller list for 24 weeks; The Devil Soldier; and Angel of Darkness. In addition to writing fiction, Carr is a contributing editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. 030

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Additional Info

Imprint

Random House

Filesize

383.71 KB

Number of Pages

320

eBook ISBN

9781588362056

Excerpt from: The Lessons of Terror by Caleb Carr

CHAPTER ONE
A CATASTROPHE, NOT A CURE

Long before the deliberate military targeting of civilians as a method of affecting the political behavior of nations and leaders came to be called terrorism, the tactic had a host of other names. From the time of the Roman republic to the late eighteenth century, for example, the phrase that was most often used was destructive war. The Romans themselves often used the phrase punitive war, although strictly speaking punitive expeditions and raids were only a part of destructive war. For while many Roman military campaigns were indeed undertaken as punishment for treachery or rebellion, other destructive actions sprang out of the simple desire to impress newly conquered peoples with the fearsome might of Rome, and thereby (or so it was hoped) undercut any support for indigenous leaders. In addition, there was a pressing need to allow the famous Roman legions, who were infamously underpaid, to plunder and rape as a reward for their almost inhuman steadiness in the heat of battle. The example of Rome incorporates nearly every possible permutation of warfare against civilians. In this as in so many things, antiquity's greatest state provided a remarkably complete set of precedents for many later Western republics and empires.

The Romans knew only one way to fight - with relentless yet disciplined ferocity - but they eventually devised several ways to deal with the peace that ensued. The first and most successful was inclusive in nature: the peoples of conquered provinces could, if they agreed to abide by Roman authority and law, aspire to become citizens of the republic (and later the empire). Indeed, some new subjects, particularly merchants and other civic leaders, could achieve the status quite quickly. Even slaves could aspire to citizenship, for early on the Romans had devised a remarkable system of manumission, providing multiple avenues by which slaves could escape the hopelessness of unending bondage (and the tendency toward rebellion that hopelessness often breeds) by attempting to earn, buy, or be granted first freedom and then actual citizenship. Freedmen played an important part in Roman history (more than one emperor was saved by a loyal freedman); and on the whole, these complementary policies - granting citizenship to conquered peoples and offering slaves the hope of manumission - may safely be called the central foundation on which the near millennium of Roman hegemony rested.

But like so many empires and great powers that followed them, the Romans also engaged in more avaricious, less benevolent policies that many times came close to undoing all the security and stability built up by their genius. First among these was a pronounced taste for revenge against enemies who were perceived as intractable or treacherous - the most famous example of such mortal enemies being the Carthaginian empire of the late third century b.c. and its leader, Hannibal. The long years of struggle against Hannibal - whose raids and campaigns throughout Italy bred both bloodthirsty hatred and a powerful sense of vulnerability in his opponents - eventually led the Romans, when they finally did occupy Carthage more than fifty years later, to not only sack but utterly destroy the city. And although they soon built their own urban center atop the ruins, the experience gave apparent validation to an already unfortunate, even fatal, tendency in both the Roman military and its masters in the Senate.