Response

Abstract

The four thoughtful responses to my article (Post, this issue) each respond from the perspective of the commentator and necessarily encompass a wide range of viewpoints. I found particularly instructive the different themes to which the authors responded. The main body of my writing on the psychology of terrorism has heretofore been published in journals and books concerned with terrorism, and the breadth of responses from scholars concerned with peace studies is striking. First, let me hasten to interject that the testimony was not intended to convey understanding of the broad phenomenon of terrorism and terrorist psychology. The assigned task was more focused. Given the dreadful events of the September 11, 2001, attacks, there was widespread concern that these were the opening volleys in an ever more destructive campaign of terrorist violence that would encompass weapons of mass destruction. Almost all of the writing in the arena of military strategy on the growing threat from weapons of mass destruction terrorism has concerned the inevitability of such attacks. It is not, as Secretary of Defense Cohen dolefully opined, a matter of whether such attacks might occur, but when. However, much of the analysis has been concerned only with the question of our open society's vulnerabilities and what terrorists were capable of doing and what they might do, disregarding terrorist motivations. These analyses left unasked, and unanswered, the question of why would terrorists commit such acts, and, even more importantly, why wouldn't they. It was my assigned role to address this question. In so doing, I was also trying to unpack the label "terrorism," and emphasize that what might be an incentive for some terrorists would be a disincentive for others.