Terrorism, U.S. (Domestic)

Systematic assaults within the United States for the purposes of creating fear and influencing government policy. Terrorist acts may consist of kidnapping, bombing, murder, attacks with chemical or biological [Page 711]weapons, blackmail or any number of other types of activities meant to coerce by causing, or threatening to cause, harm. There is a long history of terrorism carried out on U.S. territory; however, the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001, focused an unprecedented level of public attention on terrorism. Since that time, U.S. foreign policy has been specifically focused on fighting the war on terrorism.

Defining Terrorism

One of the problems with describing domestic terrorism is deciding what terrorism is. Terrorism is typically portrayed in the media and popular culture as the strategy of a weak, marginalized minority seeking to impose its beliefs on a wider population. Terrorist activities are covert and isolated because the interests represented are not shared by the majority of the world's inhabitants.

If the question is tactics and interests, however, then it is also possible to understand the founding of the United States as a terrorist act. At the time of the American Revolution, the Continental Army represented desires in conflict with those of the large Loyalist population, upsetting the British colonial system. As far as military strategy was concerned, the Continental Army frequently employed guerrilla tactics to compensate for the advantages of the professional British troops, which the latter derived from representing an established government with a sizable treasury.

Additionally, there are critics who argue that the United States is itself the most powerful terrorist regime in existence today. Examples cited to substantiate this view include anticommunist activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Central America during the 1980s and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. The latter has been referred to by some critics as the greatest terrorist act in human history. Citing these examples, then, it is possible to say that the identity of a terrorist can be defined as dependent upon who is being terrorized.

Whatever position one takes on the question of terrorism and the identity of the terrorist, terrorist activities conducted within the United States can, for practical purposes, be described as acts by individuals opposed to the United States or to U.S. government policy. Though current concerns with terrorism are centered on Islam and the activities of Muslims, terrorists throughout U.S. history have represented a variety of causes and interests. These have ranged from abolitionism, anarchism, libertarianism, socialism, and communism, to anticapitalism and opposition to U.S. military activities overseas.

Terrorism in the United States before 9/11

The question of slavery was the source of a number of violent incidents within the United States, even before the outbreak of the Civil War. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 meant that new states entering the Union were allowed to decide whether or not slavery would be legal within their borders. This made these states grounds for conflict between proand antislavery groups. The conflict grew so violent that the terms bleeding or bloody Kansas have been adopted to describe the sequence of violent events that took place between 1854 and 1856. The activities of both sides may also be described as terrorist, in that they involved violence and intimidation in order to influence a political outcome.

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