Terror and Its Consequences:
Endings that Began September 11, 2001

Irving Louis Horowitz

      Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt distinguished professor emeritus at Rutgers University.

      The most treacherous act in social research is attempting to predict the universal consequences of a particular event. To do so presumes a causal chain easier off the tongue than on the ground. Yet, in all likelihood, this analytical process holds the most fascination for the wider public. With this caveat out of the way, I want to engage in this admittedly risky form of presumptive clairvoyance. Let me start with what everyone already recognizes: that the twenty-first century began with the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and not January 1, 2001. But what exactly does that mean? What makes that date unique, beyond the massive destruction occasioned and the disruption of normal patterns of human work and interaction? Are these long-range issues that can be subsumed under the phrase "fate of the nation; or simply a collective trauma fueled by military and civil uncertainty?" This is a speculation on the fate of our nation, one that is arguably now the central carrier of Western civilization. More pointedly, I would like to examine what has come to an end and what we can expect to follow in the wake of the terrorist massacres.

The End of the Sense of Invulnerability
      To start with, the shock accompanying the human carnage resulting from the suicide bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon stems from the fact that these are the first attacks by foreign forces on American soil since the War of 1812. While the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was undoubtedly bloody and a traumatic shock to the American people, Hawaii at the time was far away from the U.S. mainland, with territorial status, and the targets struck were all military facilities. While the method of attack at Pearl Harbor may have been unconventional, it was clear that Japan was waging war in the conventional sense. While it may have been savage and uncaring, in retrospect, the Japanese attack was precise, surgical, and deadly in its disabling impact. It distinguished between military and civil in ways that the current Islamic terror attacks failed to do.
      The atrocities of September 11, 2001 represent the global debut of a new brand of terrorism. The new terror is not driven by political goals, but rather by generalized animus. The purpose of the new terror is not even to make a political statement, but rather to kill and destroy for the sake of killing and destruction. The damage done is real enough-there are over 6,000 dead or missing in the World Trade Center buildings alone. By killing individuals at random, and on this scale, the terrorists mean to demonstrate that everyone is a potential victim anywhere and any time. The attacks also had a larger, symbolic target-America and her institutions. By bringing down the World Trade Center towers, destroying a portion of the Pentagon, and targeting either the Capitol or the White House, the terrorists of September 11, 2001 intended to strike at the core symbols of American society. In earlier work I spoke of the dramaturgical nature of Moslem extremist terrorism. That earlier concern has hardened into specific targets that represent economic and military might as well as political power.

The End of Mindless Multiculturalism
      The terrorist assaults were the handiwork of a peculiar group of "fifth columnists"-Moslem extremists who lived quietly for years among Americans in some cases, until they suddenly and unexpectedly executed violent acts of terrorism involving their own self-destruction. It is a tactic that has proved to be highly successful in places like Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, and other parts of Israel, although in these instances the suicide bombers have generally been younger and with less to lose. At a more abstract level, in seizing civil aircraft and converting them into guided missiles, the Islamites in our midst made us aware of their agenda. This act of kamikaze-like suicide went beyond the fanaticism of the Japanese by deliberately victimizing innocent civilians in military assaults.
      As a consequence, Arab Americans are seen to have distinguished themselves from previous immigrant groups to our shores. The key characteristic is that Islamites share isolation from the social and cultural mainstream-in everything from modes of education to styles of dress. Inevitably, they invite that which the national liberal consensus tells us we should avoid-"ethnic profiling." Practices that are found to be repugnant and unacceptable with respect to African Americans-and for good reason-become acceptable in the daily routines of public officials as well as private citizens. In this way in practice we make anticipatory judgments about entire groups and the notion of a "color-blind" America is dissolved in practice, while at the same time the FBI and local police reassert it in theory.
      This is a dualism unlikely to hold, especially as the "war on terrorism" evolves from an overseas operation to capture a single terrorist leader and becomes a long-term domestic campaign to safeguard America's citizenry. Suspicions of new immigrants, those least integrated into the mainstream, will be strongest. No doubt some of these obviously do pay allegiance to causes and crusades taking place in far away places. Accordingly, the second prognostication that I would venture is the national acceptance and institutionalization of ethnic profiling. Moslems will likely find themselves facing general surveillance and heightened scrutiny. If further atrocities occur, it is not inconceivable that they might suffer internment or even mass expulsion-especially those who are illegal aliens. The liberal ethos and the law will have little choice but to yield to a conservative clamor by the public for security, however misguided. Within America's Moslem communities, radical Islamites may be an infinitesimal minority, but a violent and vicious one that casts a huge and deadly shadow. In short, the issue will not be presented as the injustice of ethnic profiling, but rather the inevitability of ethnic profiling.

The End of Political Indifference
      For the past fifty years, the United States probably has been the least politicized society in the West. Voter turnout averages hovers between 30 and 50 percent, even for state and national elections. Participation in party activities has meant donations by the wealthy to office holders. Interest groups, many with little in terms of membership, play an undue role in influencing the political process. It has been observed that the events of September 11, 2001 have called forth a patriotic fervor that has not been seen since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. If terrorism is intended to create a ghostly fear in the minds of the citizenry, it may also serve to bind these third parties to the political process in ways unimaginable in times of "peace"-that is, before the recent terror bombings.
      The resurrection of the patriotism will doubtlessly have many unsavory elements, with vigilante attacks against innocents who appear to be Moslems or Arabs being the most obvious. It also threatens to elicit mass support for a suspension, temporary or permanent, of constitutional guarantees of individual civil liberties. And while one might properly claim that such actions give the terrorists a cheap victory, by negating the democratic nature of opposition to these groups, it is also true that these events have awakened a sense of national unity that is reflected in the very act of citizenship-of political participation. While one might, as I do, prefer a more quiescent scenario in which low participation is also a sign of health for the body politic, this is less likely in the future. One can look forward to mass politics on a scale not seen since the days of student protest of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s-and with a far broader base of public support. In short, political participation will increase, but the sight may not be orderly or even peaceful.

The End of National Integration
      Aiding and abetting this movement toward political participation may be a curious return to regionalization of life in America. This is a possible direct result of the identification of terrorism with air assaults and hijackings. Even before the terror bombings we witnessed the emergence of regional politics, especially in the South and in the Far West, with assertions of interests that are unique to a region. In the South, this takes the form of a return to agrarian traditions, an economy built on the harvest and the gold standard, and a resurrection of the symbols of separatism that thinly veil the struggle for secession from the United States. In the West, the issues are less emotively framed. But the unity of states West of the Rockies grounded in everything from the mythology of open spaces to limited energy resources, is already gaining ground, and is likely to pick up steam in post-terror bombing America. While the nation may empathize with New York and Washington, those far away from these centers of economic and political life may also feel safer.
      Regionalization may create a sense of local community at the expense of the larger society, and offer a sense of solidarity that moves away from solutions to social problems based on Washington, D.C. decisions. We may expect more Jesse Venturas-figures that emerge from outside the traditional political structure and utilize public alienation and cynicism to win public offices. To those groups who make their appeals for equity to the national government, such as the African Americans, this new turn toward regionalization can spell all sorts of new scenarios-from struggles for control of urban centers, to calls for solidarity and separatism based upon racial, religious or ethnic identification. That process, initiated in the 1920s by the Garveyites and fueled by growing black discontent in the Great Depression, could well become a unifying element in African American communities now divided along religious or class lines. In short, the very push toward nativism that may be a byproduct of these attacks may also be an instrument that subverts the nationalist impulses unleashed by the terror bombings.

The End of Civic Preeminence
      This is probably the most troubling, and arguably, least likely outcome. The strength of civil dominance in the political process is so deeply enshrined in the American system, that it is hard to see any overt challenge to that system by the military or an armed militia. But in Weimar Germany, it was also felt that there was little prospect for a totalitarian military coup. While the situation of America in the first decade of the new century is hardly the same as that of Germany in the 1920s, the fact is that even the most stable of democratic governments can be overthrown if popular discontent reaches a certain point.
      Indeed, the character of the military, the mobilization of the armed forces and its enlargement, has become a critical instrument in the "war against terrorism" whatever the actual power status of the military vis-a-vis the civil society. My own view is that a corollary to the rise of the patriotism is acceptance of use of the instruments of state power-the military and police-to organize the society in such a way as to eliminate or sharply curtail the threat of further terrorism. If an increase in authority to the armed forces or the state militia actually succeeds in restoring citizen confidence in the safety of air travel, for example, then the price of increased militarization of American society and its private enterprises (such as air carriers) might be viewed as quite tolerable.

The End of Maximum Privacy
      The new century was ushered in by a growing awareness of the issues of privacy versus publicity. The new electronic forms of communication and commerce have raised all sorts of questions of just what elements should be subject to public scrutiny. The consensus among investigators is that the scales had already tipped, and too much public information is now available about private citizens. The Internet has proven to be an instrument that opens up brave new worlds of communication, but it also exposes secretive old worlds of what was once thought to be privileged information. What was thought to be an instrument for making information on public officials more widespread has a boomerang attached to it, broadening the notion of the public to include just about every taxpayer who owns a computer.
      The terror assault came at just that moment in time when some sort of equilibrium between what is public and what is private seemed to have been reached by the political and judicial processes. Now that social equilibrium has been disturbed, perhaps forever. Individuals are willing to be searched, to go through all sorts of interrogations and delays, and to provide documentation of a sort hitherto considered unusual and even unacceptable. Indeed, in the wake of the terror assault, it is possible that each American citizen will be issued an identification card at birth, one that will augment the ubiquitous Social Security card. There is every indication that immigration patterns will tighten, and the free movement of people, even from friendly nations such as Canada and Mexico, will become far more difficult. Such a pattern will certainly appeal to nativist sentiments. It will also offend civil liberties advocates. When it comes to issues of life and death, those of the right to privacy and freedom of movement will appear trivial, or at least of secondary importance.

The End of Free Market Monetarist Capitalism?
      Overlooked in the rush of events following the terror assault is the inability of the Federal Reserve Board to shore up the stock market and prop up consumer confidence by reducing interest rates another half point-the ninth such reduction in the past twelve months. It should be apparent to all but the blind that the market mechanisms that work in a society built on stable equilibrium fail in a society of disequilibrium. The bombings simply highlighted tendencies already taking place in the economic marketplace. They could not be addressed directly, at least not easily, given the tremendous investment of the Republican Party in a free market unfettered by federal intervention or interference. Thus a political consensus, about economic matters, dearly desired by Democrats and Republicans alike, is a welcome consequence of a deadly assault on an essentially open society.
      As a result of congressional and executive branch cooperation, the federal government has guaranteed a "blank check" to New York City directly and will provide a package of guarantees to the airlines and related industries directly affected by the consequences of terrorism. The answer to Boeing layoffs, for example, may be a large contract to Lockheed (not the first time that that firm has been the beneficiary of federal support). Thus within two weeks after the terror bombings, Congress has already enacted a $40 billion dollar emergency spending bill, a $15 billion dollar emergency support for airlines. Most recently, the Federal Reserve has come forth with a $100 billion dollar "shot in the arm" that has bipartisan support-including the direct intervention of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and ranking Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee. What Democrats would have denounced in ordinary times as inflationary spending by Republicans and misplaced emphasis on big business at the expense of the poor has become an archaic relic of a dim, twentieth-century past.
      In crisis situations, institutions will trump ideology-at least in a rational "model"-and the Bush administration is nothing if not rational. The administration is able to proceed in lock-step with the Congress to provide a state capitalist solution to a free-falling market economy. In the long term, the result may be the Japanization of America-a search for economic solutions based on a huge amount of government intervention-which would be simply unthinkable and certainly undoable without the crisis of the terror assaults. As a consequence, the long-run goal is not simply a strategy to combat terrorism, but a tactic for saving a free market in a free fall. That the free market will be beholden to the bureaucratic state is a problem to be faced in a post-terrorist environment. Then again, similar controversies have been argued since the birth of the New Deal in 1933.
      Taken, as a whole, American society will be a far different place in the twenty-first century than it was in the twentieth century. The struggle for a free society may yield to a harder struggle to avoid lapsing into a despotic or uneven authoritarian society. As we consider through these seven "outcomes" it is evident that the quanta of speculative scenarios is infinite. For we know much more about the decline in a feeling of invulnerability through a sheer act of terror than we do about the shift from civil to military authority in forestalling such vulnerability. In all, this is not a pretty picture. But as is so often the case, infusion of an unanticipated event, such as terror bombing, has as much to do with the real shaping of the future as the natural history of institutions. Terror on the magnitude the United States witnessed and absorbed on September 11, 2001 is a defining moment in time. But events that were compressed into one hour will clearly have consequences for American society stretching over many years and in many domains.

Postscript on Politics
      In the months that have elapsed since the terror bombings in New York and the District of Columbia, a huge change in the political complex of the American nation has taken place. To begin with, the events of September 11, 2001 have not, as the cynics would have it, been forgotten or lost in the swirl of other news, but rather have been enshrined in the national consciousness, much like July 4, 1776 and December 7, 1941. Displays of patriotic fervor have translated into large contributions for victims of the bombings, overwhelming support for military action against the incubation grounds of the terrorists, and a strong sense of resolve not to permit the bombings or anthrax scare to disrupt the norms of everyday life.
      The new consensus has also led to calls for more stringent immigration regulations, and tougher regulations with respect to security in transportation and communications. A quasi-wartime footing has been accepted as a necessary price to pay to restore everyday life. For better or worse, concern for public safety has trumped concerns about possible erosion in private liberties. Whether this is a short-term shift or a long-term trend remains to be seen.
      Less problematic in this new consensus is the marginalization of the political extremes. The totalitarian Left and the anti-Statist Right are reduced to fighting rearguard actions against "striking out at the known and the unknown poor peoples of Central Asia and the Middle East" as June Jordan has it. The domestic sources of terror typified by the Weatherman Underground in the 1960s and the neo-Nazi posses of the l990s are now seen as part and parcel of the same anti-democratic efforts to unhinge the West, and the United States in particular. The anti-Semitism fertile at both extremes may increase the volatility of the extremist groups, but it has the effect of further isolating them from mainstream American values. The overwhelming sense of the moment is agreement on overriding values on the part of the major political parties. This development clearly unnerves the marginal sectors in each party. Interest group agendas have been reduced to decidedly secondary importance in the public consciousness, further serving to marginalize the extremists. If this new consensus leads to a new seriousness about the place of politics in the life of the nation, then foreign terrorists and their domestic apologists will have succeeded in strengthening exactly that which they aimed to destroy: a democratic society with an alert public sensibility.