Scott Lucas: The manufacture of fear? US politics both before and after 9-11

Roundup: Historians' Take

"The chief costs of terrorism derive not from the damage inflicted by the terrorists, but what those attacked do to themselves and others in response. That is, the harm of terrorism mostly arises from the fear and from the often hasty, ill-considered, and overwrought reaction (or overreaction) it characteristically, and often calculatedly, inspires in its victims."―John Mueller1

I would like to begin with two incidents, one from the perspective of the academic, one (with apologies in advance) from a much more personal standpoint. A few weeks ago my mother, who has been concerned for more than twenty years that I am cut off here in Britain from what is going on in the United States, forwarded a letter to me that has been widely circulated on the Internet:





Well, I don't. I don't care at all. I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.





I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights. In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care.




And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled"Koran" and other times"Quran." Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and—you guessed it—I don't care! ! ! ! !

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your e-mail friends.




Almost 60 years ago, when the foe of America was not radical Islamists but Communists, President Harry Truman hosted a meeting with Congressional representatives. The Truman administration, having been told by Britain that it could no longer provide aid to Greece or Turkey, faced a challenge: how could it persuade the American public and Congress to send hundreds of millions of dollars to those two Mediterranean countries? The advice to the Democratic president from Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican leader in the Senate, was blunt: make a speech to “scare the hell” out of the American people.3 Two weeks later, the president went before a joint session of Congress and issued what would become known as the Truman Doctrine: “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”4

Of course, there are differences between the two cases. One is the action of “official” executive political networks, using the method of formal communication to justify policy; the other is that of private individuals taking advantage of the technological shift and acceleration brought by the Internet to disseminate an urgent message. In both cases, however, the purpose of the discussions is the “mobilisation of fear.” Notions of the “culture of fear” are far from new,5 but I think they can be applied effectively to the reconsideration of policymaking, specifically the making of U.S. foreign policy, in both historical and contemporary cases. I would put two general hypotheses:

1. Scholarly study of U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War has been so focused on objective explanations of strategy, geopolitics, and, most important, “national security” that it has ignored the subjective construction and projection of that policy. Provocatively stated, the Soviet Union served not as much as an actual nightmare as a constructed nightmare to justify the projection of American power around the world.

2. Contemporary U.S. foreign policy, like its 1950s predecessor, did not respond to fear with plans for “security”; rather, it has sought to channel and even stoke fear to bolster implementation of a predetermined policy. Specifically and provocatively stated, the Bush administration did not stage the tragedy of 11 September 2001, but within hours of the event it began to consider how to use a War on Terror to implement plans for regime change in Iraq....

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