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12 - Managing the Fear of Terrorism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2011

By
Brian Forst
Edited by
Brian Forst ,
Jack R. Greene  and
James P. Lynch
Brian Forst
Affiliation:
American University, Washington DC
Jack R. Greene
Affiliation:
Northeastern University, Boston
James P. Lynch
Affiliation:
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
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Summary

It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again.

– Vice President Dick Cheney (2004)

I approved this message: “I want to look into my daughter's eyes and know that she is safe, and that is why I am voting for John Kerry.”

– Senator John Kerry (2004)

THE PROBLEM OF FEAR IN THE ERA OF TERRORISM

Prior to September 11, 2001, people in the United States were especially fearful of rapists and robbers, airplane crashes and cancer, hurricanes and sharks. On that day, and for years afterward, terrorism became Public Fear Number One. Although the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building were sensational events, they did not shake ordinary citizens to their core, as did the 2001 attack. Two great oceans had insulated the United States from serious acts of violence by foreign sources, and its citizens were protected by the strongest military on earth. The jet hijacking and suicide bombings that killed nearly 3,000 people, brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and inflicted major damage on the Pentagon in Washington raised fear in the United States to a new level entirely.

Type
Chapter
Information
Criminologists on Terrorism and Homeland Security , pp. 273 - 299
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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