The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism

By Jeffrey D. Simon

Book Overview

The World Trade Center bombing was only one more chapter in a long history of terrorist acts against the United States. The story told here, reaching back to the founding days of the Republic, is both instructive and alarming. Simon uncovers the dynamics of a deadly conflict that affects all of us. His in-depth interviews with terrorists and their victims, with reporters, government officials, and others bring to life a tale of presidents and terrorists, media and society, all entangled in the dramas of international violence. The Terrorist Trap traces the government response to terrorism from the days of Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary pirates to the confrontation of George Bush and Saddam Hussein. It explores the terrorist trap: the psychological, political, and social elements that make terrorism unlike any other conflict. With the end of the Cold War and the return of American hostages from Lebanon, many believed that terrorism was over. But Simon shows how terrorism grows out of political, economic, and social grievances that can never be fully resolved. Living with terrorism will be an inescapable part of life in the post-Cold War environment. Simon calls on officials to move away from the useless rhetoric of defeating terrorism and to focus instead on achievable goals in combatting this global problem.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253352495
• ISBN13: 9780253352491
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.5" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Hostages of Hostage Crises

Jeffrey Simon has written a great deal on terrorism so he is an expert. He bases this inciteful and readable book on numerous interviews of government officials, former hostages and terrorists giving him a first hand view.Simon tells the history of terrorism in America making several points. Terrorism is an endless conflict and is bound to grow. Second the US president plays a key role in the effect of terrorism on the Unites States. Thirdly is the interrelationship between terrorism and technology. Simon begins with the hostage taking by the Barbary pirates. He continues with various hostage taking situations in Algeria, and the hostage situations during Eisenhower's presidency. Here he demonstrates how Eisenhower tried to keep the situation from getting out of hand and educating the public that the situations were different. Then he discusses the many hijacking situations during Kennedy's presidency and the efforts Kennedy went to keep the hijacking situations from overshadowing more important efforts in foreign policy.Simon describes the two hostage situations during Johnson's presidency, in the Congo and the taking of the USS Pueblo. In neither situation, did Johnson take it personal, or let the crisis effect more important things like his foreign policy. During Nixon's presidency the PFLP hijacked four airliners and kept them in the Jordan desert. After releasing some hostages, they blew up the aircraft. Eventually all the hostages were released unharmed. Throughout this hostage episode, Nixon kept calm and did not let the situation effect his foreign policy, even though he definitely did not ignore the situation. Jimmy Carter had several hostage situations, but none was as disastrous for him as the Iran hostage situation, when Iran rebels captured and held American hostages for 444 days. Unlike most situations, not only did the new Iranian government not help regain the hostages, but encouraged the terrorists, using them to gain power. Carter made the mistake of allowing the hostage situation to engulf everything he did, keeping it on the minds of the American people the entire time, and illustrating his own weakness.After Reagan was elected he immediately vowed to take a more militant approach to terrorists, but gradually found this public avowed approach to be more difficult than he thought. This was a time of common terrorist activity, especially in Lebanon. Both Carter and Reagan made the mistake of meeting the relatives of hostages. This dragged them emotionally into worrying about the hostages. But only Reagan made deals with terrorists to gain release of hostages, directly opposite of a vow Reagan made earlier. The emotional investment and attempts to make a deal made the terrorists realize the value of what they had and gave them more reason to keep the hostages. Trading for the hostages only made the terrorists take more hostages to gain weapons, so dealing with terrorists was counter productive for the administration.George Bush

The best study of terrorism I've read so far...

After reading "Terror and Taboo", "Fighting Terrorism" and "When the Eagle Screams" I was beginning to think that terrorism was too complex of a subject for anyone to write a reasonably complete and unbiased study of it. This book convinced me that it is possible. Simon starts out by quickly covering the history of terrorism; showing that it has been a problem for hundreds of years. Covering the last 40 years in much greater detail, he explains how terrorism has evolved to the present. One area he fails to cover adequately is why the United States is so often a target. However, he does a very good job of describing how different presidents have responded to terrorist threats. Simon shows how the president's emotional response can influence the terrorist to prolong an event such as the hostages in Iran. As a related topic he writes about how the media can influence terrorist events.Looking at how technology has changed terrorist threats in the past, he makes some interesting predictions for the future of terrorism as well.Overall this is a very worthwhile read.