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The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians
Military historian Caleb Carr’s groundbreaking work anticipated America’s current debates on preemptive military action against terrorist sponsor states, reorganization of the American intelligence system, and the treatment of terrorists as soldiers in supranational armies rather than as criminals. Carr’s authoritative exploration demonstrates that the practice of terrorism, employed by national armies as well as extremists since the days of ancient Rome, is ultimately self-defeating. Far from prompting submission, it stiffens enemy resolve and never leads to long-lasting success.
Controversial on its initial publication in 2002, The Lessons of Terror has been repeatedly validated by subsequent events. Carr’s analysis of individual terrorist acts, and particularly of the history of the Middle East conflict, is fundamental to a deep understanding of the roots of terrorism as well as the steps and reforms that must be taken if the continuing threat of terrorist behavior is to be met effectively today and, finally, eradicated tomorrow.
Controversial on its initial publication in 2002, The Lessons of Terror has been repeatedly validated by subsequent events. Carr’s analysis of individual terrorist acts, and particularly of the history of the Middle East conflict, is fundamental to a deep understanding of the roots of terrorism as well as the steps and reforms that must be taken if the continuing threat of terrorist behavior is to be met effectively today and, finally, eradicated tomorrow.
302 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Caleb Carr
42 books3,557 followersCaleb Carr was an American novelist and military historian. The son of Lucien Carr, a former UPI editor and a key Beat generation figure, he was born in Manhattan and lived for much of his life on the Lower East Side. He attended Kenyon College and New York University, earning a B.A. in military and diplomatic history. He was a contributing editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History and wrote frequently on military and political affairs.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
July 22, 2009
Caleb Carr's analysis of the workings of terrorism, which he wrote after the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan but before the invasion of Iraq, is clear, well organized, and compelling. He makes an eloquent case for seeing terrorism as counterproductive as well as immoral, whether practiced by groups like Al Qaeda or by nations either in the course of fighting wars or in the ways the CIA and KGB have used it at times. The book explains the idea of limited war, as seen in actions that attack only military targets and/or the political leaders of the enemy, and offers examples like Frederick the Great, who fought a number of wars with minimal military casualties (on either side) and even fewer civilians killed or wounded; that king achieved these results by relying on maneuvering his opponents into positions from which they could see that Frederick was sure to win if pitched battles were fought, leading them to surrender. As Carr points out, this is basically the approach described by Sun Tzu in The Art of War and by Liddell Hart in Strategy.
Studying the practices and results of strategies based on terrorizing enemies, with examples from groups like Al Qaeda and the PLO to insurgencies to regular military forces targeting civilians, he points out that these methods end up generating hostility and stiffer resistance rather than intimidated surrender.
I'd have given this book five stars except for a significant point I believe the author got wrong. He states categorically that an international terrorist group like Al Qaeda cannot exist or function without a host government somewhere providing support, i.e. sanctuary, training, weapons, and funding. That view is in error - terrorist groups are also able to base themselves and function in and from failed states, governments lacking the strength to prevent the terrorists from using their nations' territories for havens and training and obtaining funding from many sources including individual supporters around the world. The last few decades have seen this happening in places like Somalia, Afghanistan, and potentially in Iraq if its government can't control its territories, borders, and people once the U.S. military and other foreign forces leave.
Still, this is a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in these issues.
Studying the practices and results of strategies based on terrorizing enemies, with examples from groups like Al Qaeda and the PLO to insurgencies to regular military forces targeting civilians, he points out that these methods end up generating hostility and stiffer resistance rather than intimidated surrender.
I'd have given this book five stars except for a significant point I believe the author got wrong. He states categorically that an international terrorist group like Al Qaeda cannot exist or function without a host government somewhere providing support, i.e. sanctuary, training, weapons, and funding. That view is in error - terrorist groups are also able to base themselves and function in and from failed states, governments lacking the strength to prevent the terrorists from using their nations' territories for havens and training and obtaining funding from many sources including individual supporters around the world. The last few decades have seen this happening in places like Somalia, Afghanistan, and potentially in Iraq if its government can't control its territories, borders, and people once the U.S. military and other foreign forces leave.
Still, this is a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in these issues.
October 4, 2018
Originally purchased for me by my wife as joke after my post-9/11 "terrified by everything that could possibly go wrong" reaction, I decided to finally read it as I have been getting more into military books, religiously reading news magazines, and feeling at least mildly learned in the fields of global politics.
Although this provides a nice summary of the wars of the past 2000 years, there are two main thoughts I am left with, 1 of which the format of the book helps create: the whole book is 255 pages and Carr is trying to provide an overview to all of the military involvements since the Roman Empire. This inevitably leads to passages that are incredibly brief, gloss over issues that require much more depth, and rely on dismissive and summative sentences that could very well be argued and debated in a separate book this size or bigger. We have a 30-page chapter that covers from the end of WWI, though WWII, touch on the move to containing Stalin, and end with Vietnam. So we’re talking 7-8 pages on each of these huge sections of history where Carr summarizes causes and results that might be debated a lot more than he gives credit. (I also thought his sentence structure was very complex, full of sentences that went on for half a page and contained plenty of terms and phrasing that, frankly, made reading a bit difficult. There were sections I had to reread and pretty much maxed out at 20 pages a day due to the rigidity of the syntax and heavy-handedness of his tone. I could go on, but just thought I'd throw that in here... it's not extremely accessible...)
My other main thought is that this whole book is supposed to be about how warfare against civilians has always failed and will always fail, but I personally started to feel like each era he was discussing detailed how these methods were used but that these methods moved the offending authority into or kept them in power. Warfare against civilians will always fail, but how long did it succeed? The Roman Empire? It succeeded quite a long time. The Napoleonic Wars? Lennin and Stalin’s Russia? Yes, they all failed eventually (and I’m not DEFENDING them), but for people who are oppressed, tribes that have no state, ethnicities that feel they have no say in global politics – wouldn’t they all trade their current situations for a 40-50 year era of control? These acts created the recognition we give them to this day. Would anyone know Yasir Arafat’s name if he didn’t do what he did? Again, I’m not defending what he did, but he took a loosely collated group of Arabs and created a unified group that fought for a cause and received recognition and attention for their concerns. The PLO was a well-known organization for quite some time. Did it ultimately fail? Yes. But what did they have before? Did they succeed in converting those civilians they were attacking? Of course not. (Even knowing that the cause will eventually fail, do you think Bin Ladin would take those odds to at least gain whatever recognition, create whatever movement he could for 10-20 years? He did. He’s dead now, but what he did created a power and a movement that wasn’t there before.) Perhaps the greater realization is that NO PEOPLE will be converted to their attackers’ perspectives, whether the use of civilian warfare or simple military warfare is used. Who wants to be attacked or conquered AT ALL? Even if civilians aren’t the “targets,” is a population not still opposed to the attackers if the deaths are classified as “collateral damage” rather than a terrorist “targeting of civilians?” Carr lauds the 1986 attack against Libya and Ghaddafi as an incredible success; and it’s interesting to read this now after we see how such things as Iraq and the Arab Spring have played out. Was it such a great move in 1986 against Libya? We minimized civilian damage, relied on military precision, but didn’t we create 20 years of anti-US attitudes in Libya? (All those pictures of Ghaddafi in front of the statue with a fist clasping a US plane?) Carr simultaneously advocates precision-oriented operations to target military and political assassinations to create change (and not to target civilians), but then he rants and raves against the CIA and how they have sponsored coups and trained revolutionaries. Regardless of personal feelings whether these CIA actions are for the betterment of national security or not, wouldn’t you think Carr would be in favor of these coups as examples of exactly what he’s talking about? And how could we just eliminate the CIA? Yes, they are not perfect, they missed the fall of the Soviets (a pretty big thing, true) and others, but what’s the alternative? Not have intelligence agents working on the ground? Come on.
I thought it was really interesting to read the single page where he mentioned the “new” Predator drone, hyped to be the new tool in limited, precise warfare, avoiding civilian deaths and carrying out such assassinations and targeted killings that he seems to be in favor of; and now, ten years later, we are in the epicenter of the debate on drones: have we eliminated civilian casualties? Are the peoples of Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan not still raging at these methods? Do they feel we are eliminating civilian deaths? It’d be interesting to see what he has to say about drones now. (Maybe I’ll Google it and see if he has said anything…) He also ends be declaring that we need to make sure of who we are fighting against. Isn’t that the whole problem since WWII? Isn’t that the nature of guerilla warfare, to ditch the uniform, hide among the people, pop up and disappear? How is a nation supposed to not attack civilians when it can’t tell who is civilian and who is taking up arms? Or terrorists who shoot and then run into a building populated with families, women, and children? (I remember a passage in Black Hawk Down that depicts the “bad guys” laying on the pavement, shooting at the U.S. forces, but with 5-10 women and children sitting on top of and all around him…) He doesn’t want the CIA to send in operatives to overthrow organizations, he wants to assassinate leaders (but I’m guessing without using the CIA), and he wants to take down a guerilla movement without killing civilians. I’m not advocating anything here, but I’m just saying: it’s Carr’s book and he doesn’t really seem to be giving any answers. His one “answer” – the Predator – we have seen isn’t really an answer that fits his idea of success. But what has worked? Sherman’s march to the see worked in ending the Civil War. The bombs in Japan worked in ending WWII. The Roman Empire’s policy with civilians worked for hundreds of years.
I thought the book was decent in that it was a comprehensive albeit brief summary of the world’s history of warfare, and it was interesting to see how one conflict led to and effected another. There was much I was unfamiliar with, and it was interesting to see Carr tie the pieces together, showing how the American Civil War displayed tactics that France borrowed, which led to the Napoleonic Era, which led to the WWI Era, which led to…. and so on. I just don’t know if his thesis here is really provable. Civilian attacks and deaths should obviously be limited, but can they be completely helped? Won’t a nation’s people be against the conqueror regardless? I’m obviously not advocating in favor of terrorism, but there’s a reason they say “War is Hell.” Countries at war are going to kill people. Savage methods have sometimes “worked.” If your whole thesis hinges on whether the civilization will retaliate and hold grudges, and they probably will either way, I don’t see what there is to prove other than war is hell, most of the time the people of the civilization suffer, and grudges will be held and retaliation attempted.
Although this provides a nice summary of the wars of the past 2000 years, there are two main thoughts I am left with, 1 of which the format of the book helps create: the whole book is 255 pages and Carr is trying to provide an overview to all of the military involvements since the Roman Empire. This inevitably leads to passages that are incredibly brief, gloss over issues that require much more depth, and rely on dismissive and summative sentences that could very well be argued and debated in a separate book this size or bigger. We have a 30-page chapter that covers from the end of WWI, though WWII, touch on the move to containing Stalin, and end with Vietnam. So we’re talking 7-8 pages on each of these huge sections of history where Carr summarizes causes and results that might be debated a lot more than he gives credit. (I also thought his sentence structure was very complex, full of sentences that went on for half a page and contained plenty of terms and phrasing that, frankly, made reading a bit difficult. There were sections I had to reread and pretty much maxed out at 20 pages a day due to the rigidity of the syntax and heavy-handedness of his tone. I could go on, but just thought I'd throw that in here... it's not extremely accessible...)
My other main thought is that this whole book is supposed to be about how warfare against civilians has always failed and will always fail, but I personally started to feel like each era he was discussing detailed how these methods were used but that these methods moved the offending authority into or kept them in power. Warfare against civilians will always fail, but how long did it succeed? The Roman Empire? It succeeded quite a long time. The Napoleonic Wars? Lennin and Stalin’s Russia? Yes, they all failed eventually (and I’m not DEFENDING them), but for people who are oppressed, tribes that have no state, ethnicities that feel they have no say in global politics – wouldn’t they all trade their current situations for a 40-50 year era of control? These acts created the recognition we give them to this day. Would anyone know Yasir Arafat’s name if he didn’t do what he did? Again, I’m not defending what he did, but he took a loosely collated group of Arabs and created a unified group that fought for a cause and received recognition and attention for their concerns. The PLO was a well-known organization for quite some time. Did it ultimately fail? Yes. But what did they have before? Did they succeed in converting those civilians they were attacking? Of course not. (Even knowing that the cause will eventually fail, do you think Bin Ladin would take those odds to at least gain whatever recognition, create whatever movement he could for 10-20 years? He did. He’s dead now, but what he did created a power and a movement that wasn’t there before.) Perhaps the greater realization is that NO PEOPLE will be converted to their attackers’ perspectives, whether the use of civilian warfare or simple military warfare is used. Who wants to be attacked or conquered AT ALL? Even if civilians aren’t the “targets,” is a population not still opposed to the attackers if the deaths are classified as “collateral damage” rather than a terrorist “targeting of civilians?” Carr lauds the 1986 attack against Libya and Ghaddafi as an incredible success; and it’s interesting to read this now after we see how such things as Iraq and the Arab Spring have played out. Was it such a great move in 1986 against Libya? We minimized civilian damage, relied on military precision, but didn’t we create 20 years of anti-US attitudes in Libya? (All those pictures of Ghaddafi in front of the statue with a fist clasping a US plane?) Carr simultaneously advocates precision-oriented operations to target military and political assassinations to create change (and not to target civilians), but then he rants and raves against the CIA and how they have sponsored coups and trained revolutionaries. Regardless of personal feelings whether these CIA actions are for the betterment of national security or not, wouldn’t you think Carr would be in favor of these coups as examples of exactly what he’s talking about? And how could we just eliminate the CIA? Yes, they are not perfect, they missed the fall of the Soviets (a pretty big thing, true) and others, but what’s the alternative? Not have intelligence agents working on the ground? Come on.
I thought it was really interesting to read the single page where he mentioned the “new” Predator drone, hyped to be the new tool in limited, precise warfare, avoiding civilian deaths and carrying out such assassinations and targeted killings that he seems to be in favor of; and now, ten years later, we are in the epicenter of the debate on drones: have we eliminated civilian casualties? Are the peoples of Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan not still raging at these methods? Do they feel we are eliminating civilian deaths? It’d be interesting to see what he has to say about drones now. (Maybe I’ll Google it and see if he has said anything…) He also ends be declaring that we need to make sure of who we are fighting against. Isn’t that the whole problem since WWII? Isn’t that the nature of guerilla warfare, to ditch the uniform, hide among the people, pop up and disappear? How is a nation supposed to not attack civilians when it can’t tell who is civilian and who is taking up arms? Or terrorists who shoot and then run into a building populated with families, women, and children? (I remember a passage in Black Hawk Down that depicts the “bad guys” laying on the pavement, shooting at the U.S. forces, but with 5-10 women and children sitting on top of and all around him…) He doesn’t want the CIA to send in operatives to overthrow organizations, he wants to assassinate leaders (but I’m guessing without using the CIA), and he wants to take down a guerilla movement without killing civilians. I’m not advocating anything here, but I’m just saying: it’s Carr’s book and he doesn’t really seem to be giving any answers. His one “answer” – the Predator – we have seen isn’t really an answer that fits his idea of success. But what has worked? Sherman’s march to the see worked in ending the Civil War. The bombs in Japan worked in ending WWII. The Roman Empire’s policy with civilians worked for hundreds of years.
I thought the book was decent in that it was a comprehensive albeit brief summary of the world’s history of warfare, and it was interesting to see how one conflict led to and effected another. There was much I was unfamiliar with, and it was interesting to see Carr tie the pieces together, showing how the American Civil War displayed tactics that France borrowed, which led to the Napoleonic Era, which led to the WWI Era, which led to…. and so on. I just don’t know if his thesis here is really provable. Civilian attacks and deaths should obviously be limited, but can they be completely helped? Won’t a nation’s people be against the conqueror regardless? I’m obviously not advocating in favor of terrorism, but there’s a reason they say “War is Hell.” Countries at war are going to kill people. Savage methods have sometimes “worked.” If your whole thesis hinges on whether the civilization will retaliate and hold grudges, and they probably will either way, I don’t see what there is to prove other than war is hell, most of the time the people of the civilization suffer, and grudges will be held and retaliation attempted.
August 16, 2014
This book had an overall concise and full of accounts of how terror has evolved (there was even talk that nothing changed over time just our ways of killing mass number of people with a push of a button). While I like how Carr went a bit wider than just focusing on how America rose to stardom (granted, a lot of their power was achieved through warfare), I did not like how some sentences seemed to go on forever, often containing bunch of clunky smart-sounding words that left me confused. Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“It is absolutely true that terrorism—like piracy, slavery, and genocide in their heydays—must first and foremost be vigorously opposed on the military level; yet its final eradication will come, as has been said, only when all nations and groups perceive it to be failed tactic, a perception that can be achieved fully only when we accept history’s vivid demonstration that at one time or another all nations and peoples have employed behaviors that were terrorist, and seen their moral and political authority eroded because of it.”
“Like Rome, and Ottoman and Mughal were empires that did not reach dizzying heights because of their brutality; they reached them despite it, and their eventual decay and collapse were hastened in no small measure because of their identification as ruthless, repressive regimes, and because of the vengeful willingness of many of their own citizens to participate in their toppling.”
Carr also talked about the British colonies and their response to Britain as well as their retaliation against the, both in the US as well as in the Middle East. There was also a talk about Civil War and how many times, instead of finding a way to take over a place, the soldiers resorted to using heavy artillery against other soldiers and civilians, resulting in so much damage that could not only been prevented but also solved in a peaceful way if the sides chose to talk it out. Carr also mentioned that many countries are stubborn but not as stubborn as the US who despite fighting many wars, failed to realize that in order to fight terrorism, you can NOT use terrorism as a counter attack. Having failed to recognize this from the result of the Second World War and the Vietnam War, as well as the Gulf War, the US have repeatedly paved roads in destruction and numerous airstrike bombings, resulting in preventable loss of lives.
While I don’t pretend to understand everything written in the book, it is nonetheless an interesting read. Terror has evolved throughout time. It has changed empires, countries, states, religions, and interactions in such a way that it created a whole world of power and endless competition. One thing that I think it did not change is the brutality of conflicts. Wars are bad but they always seemed to leave behind countless number of dead people and destruction on a massive scale. I think that is still true today. During wars, we kill a lot of people, sometimes solders and many times innocent civilians caught in a web of political struggle and corruption. Carr mentioned some people who tried to argue that wars can be fought on a less violent scale, sparing lives of many people, yet they were mostly laughed at for their absurd claims. Will the wars change in the future? Yes, but they will be just as bloody and will not be fought by rifles and hand grenades, but with atomic bombs and laser guided precision bombings. Seeing how religion plays a big part in conflicts, I believe it truly will be the downfall of the men.
P.S. This book is a bit outdated so it does not have up to date info on the Iraq war, but still, it is a short, quick read about tactics and strategies used throughout time to shape and gain stardom and power.
November 10, 2010
There were several very good things about this book. First, Carr gives a very concise, readable history of terror through the ages, the growth and ultimate descent into incompetence of the US intelligence establishment (the story of James Forrestal was a new one on me) and I could note no overt bias in terms of one political party or theory over any other...though I'm not so sure about Carr and American "Exceptionalism." Sometimes it seems like he believed it, other times not.
Now the bad thing: I submit that this work is not an attempt to impartially lay out all the historical facts, fall how they may, and then draw conclusions. I believe Carr started from the thesis that terrorism never worked in the long run and never will work as a tool of policy against civilians, and then ignored anything that didn't fit the thesis. Like the reigns of Stalin and Mao, both of whom slaughtered millions and died in bed. Or Pol Pot. Who was not overthrown due to any or all of his acts of terror (20% of the population was eliminated, supposedly), but was forcibly removed via invasion from Vietnam.
And quite frankly this procrustean approach to history left a sour taste in my mouth. This is polemic, this is revisionism. What it ain't is objective history.
Since the book is ten years old I don't fault him for his praise of Rumsfeld, but I'm not sure how a military doctrine like "shock and awe" is not going to (a) kill a lot of civilians and (b) leave a gigantic mess in its wake. However, Rumsfeld had received some positive press about bringing the armed forces into the "21st century," and anyone making noises about changing things at the Pentagon deserved at least a chance.
Now the bad thing: I submit that this work is not an attempt to impartially lay out all the historical facts, fall how they may, and then draw conclusions. I believe Carr started from the thesis that terrorism never worked in the long run and never will work as a tool of policy against civilians, and then ignored anything that didn't fit the thesis. Like the reigns of Stalin and Mao, both of whom slaughtered millions and died in bed. Or Pol Pot. Who was not overthrown due to any or all of his acts of terror (20% of the population was eliminated, supposedly), but was forcibly removed via invasion from Vietnam.
And quite frankly this procrustean approach to history left a sour taste in my mouth. This is polemic, this is revisionism. What it ain't is objective history.
Since the book is ten years old I don't fault him for his praise of Rumsfeld, but I'm not sure how a military doctrine like "shock and awe" is not going to (a) kill a lot of civilians and (b) leave a gigantic mess in its wake. However, Rumsfeld had received some positive press about bringing the armed forces into the "21st century," and anyone making noises about changing things at the Pentagon deserved at least a chance.
June 19, 2016
The beginning of this book is tough. I did not enjoy it. The author makes a point, then spends to long making the same point over and over.
The middle of the book is good, except that when the author gets to Clausewitz, he tears him apart. The author points out that Clausewitz was NOT a progressive war type. I disagree. Clausewitz made it clear matching political goals to military goals at best is one and the same; and those who do are often successful.
The end of the book is terrible. It seems the author is bias politically and that shows at the end chapters.
If you are new to the study of war, do not read this! You will be left with misguiding impressions. If you are into the study of war, and have been but do not know much about terrorism as warfare, you should read this.
If you are advanced and know something of terror as a warfare, skip it.
The middle of the book is good, except that when the author gets to Clausewitz, he tears him apart. The author points out that Clausewitz was NOT a progressive war type. I disagree. Clausewitz made it clear matching political goals to military goals at best is one and the same; and those who do are often successful.
The end of the book is terrible. It seems the author is bias politically and that shows at the end chapters.
If you are new to the study of war, do not read this! You will be left with misguiding impressions. If you are into the study of war, and have been but do not know much about terrorism as warfare, you should read this.
If you are advanced and know something of terror as a warfare, skip it.
December 25, 2010
This essay-length book argues that warfare against civilians always fails because the civilian community (tribe, nation, civilization) strike back at the warriors, given enough time. As The eXile's War Nerd (John Dolan) correctly asks on Amazon.com, what about the American Indians? Warfare against them succeeded admirably. Strategic bombing in World War II may or may not have been useless, but the Germans and the Japanese did not strike back at the Allies because of it. I am not a specialist in military history, but Carr's examples seemed cherry-picked to me.
October 10, 2008
This book is about the proper response to terrorism and, although it makes some interesting points, it is riddled with historical distortions and flawed arguments. It was also written before the invasion of Iraq and makes a case for invading Iraq which, of course, events have subsequently rebutted completely. Anyway, while I like his writing style, LOT is about 50% longer than it should be.
December 12, 2020
This book is based on the indefensible idea that it is possible to wage a war in which only bad people get hurt. There has never been a war in human history in which people, especially innocent people, were not killed. War is how man proves he is truly separated from God. Carr does nothing to disprove this.
July 8, 2018
I was familiar with Caleb Carr, having read a number of his books---"The Alienist" and "The Angel of Death" were as good as any historical fiction I've ever read, and murder mysteries to boot---and knew he was a military historian from seeing him as a "talking head" on Ken Burns documentaries. This book was very informative, especially since I know virtually nothing about military history. It was written for people like me, not in technical jargon, but language anyone can understand.
For starters, I couldn't have given a good, concise definition of "terrorism"; now I can: it is violence directed at civilian populations. He emphasizes that this is a military action, and we are at war. It requires a military response. Diplomacy and arguments about why it happened, and even whether it is justified, are pointless. We (and any country or government which is the victim of terrorism) are at war, period. The only way to win such wars is to fight limited battles, not engage in total war, and to use pre-emptive strikes. That kind of surprised me, but he says that it puts the terrorists on the same footing they put their victims on: a constant state of unease, not knowing when or where or how the next attack will come. The other main point he makes is that terrorism should never be returned in kind because that will always backfire, as it did for us in Afghanistan. We trained and armed people who were marginal at best, because we were "fighting the Russians". Once they got rid of the Russians, they turned on us. Osama Ben Laden was one of them. Carr goes back in history to Roman times and forward to the present day, citing historical examples to back up what he says. And what he says seems logical and correct, to me at least.
Now here is the corker, and I would never have expected it: Trump's actions in dealing with the terrorists turns out to be exactly what Carr says must be done. Who'd a thunk it? He never said that, of course, but readers of this book will likely draw some conclusions. I must say I felt a little bit better about our situation, and that of the rest of the world, after I read this. Just knowing there are actions that can be taken that have worked in the past is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is a very scary and long road ahead of us I'm afraid, but this gave me hope I didn't have before.
For starters, I couldn't have given a good, concise definition of "terrorism"; now I can: it is violence directed at civilian populations. He emphasizes that this is a military action, and we are at war. It requires a military response. Diplomacy and arguments about why it happened, and even whether it is justified, are pointless. We (and any country or government which is the victim of terrorism) are at war, period. The only way to win such wars is to fight limited battles, not engage in total war, and to use pre-emptive strikes. That kind of surprised me, but he says that it puts the terrorists on the same footing they put their victims on: a constant state of unease, not knowing when or where or how the next attack will come. The other main point he makes is that terrorism should never be returned in kind because that will always backfire, as it did for us in Afghanistan. We trained and armed people who were marginal at best, because we were "fighting the Russians". Once they got rid of the Russians, they turned on us. Osama Ben Laden was one of them. Carr goes back in history to Roman times and forward to the present day, citing historical examples to back up what he says. And what he says seems logical and correct, to me at least.
Now here is the corker, and I would never have expected it: Trump's actions in dealing with the terrorists turns out to be exactly what Carr says must be done. Who'd a thunk it? He never said that, of course, but readers of this book will likely draw some conclusions. I must say I felt a little bit better about our situation, and that of the rest of the world, after I read this. Just knowing there are actions that can be taken that have worked in the past is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is a very scary and long road ahead of us I'm afraid, but this gave me hope I didn't have before.
November 14, 2018
This book is basically the Obama doctrine of preserving American empire. Carr calls for offensive war by way of expanded use of drones, special forces, and assassinations. Carr wants to limit the CIA's contribution to these foreign policies, just as Obama did so he would have more oversight of the strikes. None of the consequences (blow back, power vacuums, new more radical terrorist leadership)for these actions are discussed or mentioned. In doing so, he erroneously claims Reagan's military strike of Libya adhered to article 51 of the UN charter. This is patently false, as numerous UN panels have repeated.
The exact text of article 51 reads, “right of individual or collective self-defense” against “armed attack…until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” Apart from these exceptions, member states “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force.” Therefore Reagan's action was actually a VIOLATION of international law.
Moving on to the assassinations, ironically, the US under Obama tried this in Libya. What happened? Massive blow back by way of Tuareg fighters leaving Libya, invading Mali, and ushering countless amounts of terrorist groups in the region.
Drone strikes, ignoring it's likely violation of the UN charter, are often inaccurate and fuel resentment among the populations. Something Carr says drone strikes would avoid. American's reliance on domestic actors with ulterior motives has only exacerbated civilian deaths by way of American drone. The potential expansion of drone use among the international community (and terrorists) were never considered by Carr. Unfortunately, we are living with those consequences now.
Beyond these reforms for Western styles of war, Carr repeatedly claims that 'indigenous varieties of destructive war opened the way for European manipulation and abuse...Fighting beside and against native soldiers who knew nothing of such systematic ideas, Europeans more often that not reverted to behaviors that still lay just beneath the civilized veneer of enlightenment conduct.'
'European newcomers, who knew only that they had never personally witnessed such depths of bloody indulgence among their own people. Deeply traumatized by what they saw and experienced whites learned quickly to match or exceed Indian outrages.'
'The Indians tended to be very capricious allies, ready to desert at the smallest slight or perceived insult - a fact that, in conjunction with their taste for slaughtering civilians, led such exceptional unusually ethical British leaders in America as General James Wolfe to regard them with gravest suspicions and distance to limit their deployment'
"It should have come as no surprise, then, that when the American Revolution broke out more than a decade after the conclusion of the French and Indian War, there were signs that the North American breed of destructive war was to to play a strong part in the conflict. "
It is not that the U.S. has done no wrong but rather, the narrative is that indigenous populations sullied the otherwise flawed, yet with time, the only progressive actors of war on the planet. This indigenous poisoning directly contributed to mass atrocities committed by Westerners against the indigenous people. The poisoning was so potent that it carried through the Civil War and into WWI.
No African tribes are examined beyond saying that Africans share blame in transcontinental slavery. Additionally indigenous political systems and theories of war were never discussed or mentioned. Indigenous and African populations were mentioned primary to demonstrate that they committed violence never before seen, and subsequent counterproductive indigenous like violence was committed by Westerners in response. Again, Westerners adopted war strategies of the natives to their own detriment.
Other claims such as who the primary agents of violence were (often suggesting or stating it was the indigenous populations) or the Soviet Union, without, in general, offering any death tolls. The author admits the US has committed terrorism but it is not characterized as a terrorist state such as the Soviet Union. Interestingly, although this is prior to 9/11, contemporary Saudi Arabian terrorist sponsorship is omitted.
All in all the point of terrorism as being counterproductive is correct but glaring omissions, inaccuracies, and the idea that America as a flawed yet reasonable empire that should be free to act free of the international community/UN is license to commit suicide in the age of nuclear weaponry.
The exact text of article 51 reads, “right of individual or collective self-defense” against “armed attack…until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” Apart from these exceptions, member states “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force.” Therefore Reagan's action was actually a VIOLATION of international law.
Moving on to the assassinations, ironically, the US under Obama tried this in Libya. What happened? Massive blow back by way of Tuareg fighters leaving Libya, invading Mali, and ushering countless amounts of terrorist groups in the region.
Drone strikes, ignoring it's likely violation of the UN charter, are often inaccurate and fuel resentment among the populations. Something Carr says drone strikes would avoid. American's reliance on domestic actors with ulterior motives has only exacerbated civilian deaths by way of American drone. The potential expansion of drone use among the international community (and terrorists) were never considered by Carr. Unfortunately, we are living with those consequences now.
Beyond these reforms for Western styles of war, Carr repeatedly claims that 'indigenous varieties of destructive war opened the way for European manipulation and abuse...Fighting beside and against native soldiers who knew nothing of such systematic ideas, Europeans more often that not reverted to behaviors that still lay just beneath the civilized veneer of enlightenment conduct.'
'European newcomers, who knew only that they had never personally witnessed such depths of bloody indulgence among their own people. Deeply traumatized by what they saw and experienced whites learned quickly to match or exceed Indian outrages.'
'The Indians tended to be very capricious allies, ready to desert at the smallest slight or perceived insult - a fact that, in conjunction with their taste for slaughtering civilians, led such exceptional unusually ethical British leaders in America as General James Wolfe to regard them with gravest suspicions and distance to limit their deployment'
"It should have come as no surprise, then, that when the American Revolution broke out more than a decade after the conclusion of the French and Indian War, there were signs that the North American breed of destructive war was to to play a strong part in the conflict. "
It is not that the U.S. has done no wrong but rather, the narrative is that indigenous populations sullied the otherwise flawed, yet with time, the only progressive actors of war on the planet. This indigenous poisoning directly contributed to mass atrocities committed by Westerners against the indigenous people. The poisoning was so potent that it carried through the Civil War and into WWI.
No African tribes are examined beyond saying that Africans share blame in transcontinental slavery. Additionally indigenous political systems and theories of war were never discussed or mentioned. Indigenous and African populations were mentioned primary to demonstrate that they committed violence never before seen, and subsequent counterproductive indigenous like violence was committed by Westerners in response. Again, Westerners adopted war strategies of the natives to their own detriment.
Other claims such as who the primary agents of violence were (often suggesting or stating it was the indigenous populations) or the Soviet Union, without, in general, offering any death tolls. The author admits the US has committed terrorism but it is not characterized as a terrorist state such as the Soviet Union. Interestingly, although this is prior to 9/11, contemporary Saudi Arabian terrorist sponsorship is omitted.
All in all the point of terrorism as being counterproductive is correct but glaring omissions, inaccuracies, and the idea that America as a flawed yet reasonable empire that should be free to act free of the international community/UN is license to commit suicide in the age of nuclear weaponry.
July 2, 2016
Carr is a much better novelist than analyst. I will try to update this review later, but a few thoughts for now:
1. He advocates assassination as an effective state policy while amazingly failing to acknowledge that assassination-as-state-policy creates the same dangers to its sponsors as the state-sponsored terrorism he denounces.
2. His implied definition of "failure" is so vague as to be useless. What does it mean it mean to say the Roman Empire's ferocious punishment of civilians in warfare failed, eventually, over 400 years? He asserts, without persuasive evidence or analysis, that the Romans succeeded in spite of, not because of, their deliberate targeting of civilians. Perhaps, but more evidence and analysis is needed. In any case, 400+ years is an awfully long time for a policy to "fail."
3. His analysis is overly state-centered and fails to take into account the understandable (if debateable) turn to terrorism by those individuals and groups facing vastly assymetrical balances of power. Would, for instance, Carr consider America's pre-civil war slave owners to be civilians or more akin to soldiers of an enslaving army? If they were civilians by his definition (and I think he would deem them as such), then any attempt at forceful resistance to plantation authorities by slaves would have to be called terrorism and deemed abhorrent behavior in Carr's framework.
1. He advocates assassination as an effective state policy while amazingly failing to acknowledge that assassination-as-state-policy creates the same dangers to its sponsors as the state-sponsored terrorism he denounces.
2. His implied definition of "failure" is so vague as to be useless. What does it mean it mean to say the Roman Empire's ferocious punishment of civilians in warfare failed, eventually, over 400 years? He asserts, without persuasive evidence or analysis, that the Romans succeeded in spite of, not because of, their deliberate targeting of civilians. Perhaps, but more evidence and analysis is needed. In any case, 400+ years is an awfully long time for a policy to "fail."
3. His analysis is overly state-centered and fails to take into account the understandable (if debateable) turn to terrorism by those individuals and groups facing vastly assymetrical balances of power. Would, for instance, Carr consider America's pre-civil war slave owners to be civilians or more akin to soldiers of an enslaving army? If they were civilians by his definition (and I think he would deem them as such), then any attempt at forceful resistance to plantation authorities by slaves would have to be called terrorism and deemed abhorrent behavior in Carr's framework.
May 14, 2021
Caleb Carr, a military historian and author of two excellent works of fiction, THE ALIENIST and its sequel THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS, turns his attention to the issue of international terrorism in the aftermath of the attacks on U.S. soil on September 11, 2001.
This dense little book was penned in 2002, when the lessons learned on 9/11 were still fresh in the author’s mind, and you can feel his emotional trauma as he scatters stinging rebukes throughout the text.
The prologue alone has more juicy tidbits than most books contain from cover to cover. For example, Carr implies that the U.S. was mistaken to seek approval from the U.N. and the international community before waging war against Al Qaeda. He also asserts that terrorism, warfare against civilians to influence a specific political outcome, has never worked and by nature can never work.
CHAPTER ONE describes the rebellion of Arminius of Germania, whose forces routed the legions of the Roman Empire during the massacre at Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D. Rome retaliated with aggressively brutal measures of their own, which led to generations of Germans growing up to hate all things Roman. Carr theorizes that the Roman Empire gradually became more comfortable with the idea of targeting civilians as a method of spreading terror to undermine political cohesion and accrue wealth, and even though it led to the empire’s downfall, the ideas persisted throughout the centuries right up to today. The vehicle for this flourishing of terrorism was the world’s two dominant religions, Christianity and Islam.
CHAPTER TWO covers the Crusades and the reasons they were prosecuted. Both Christian and Muslim leaders used the decades of conflict as a method of appeasing their war-hungry hordes of soldiers and mercenary armies.
CHAPTER THREE encompasses the wars of the Reformation period, beginning with the Hundred Years’ War and ending with the Thirty Years’ War. Carr also describes the English pirates of the period, whose plundering of Spanish treasure ships in the New World was just another form of terrorism for political gain, seeing as how the buccaneers were covertly backed by the British admiralty. He even briefly touches upon the Spanish Inquisition.
CHAPTER FOUR explains that in the 1600’s, civilian wartime casualties finally began to decline in England under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell due to an emphasis on strict military discipline, as well as the wearing of distinctive matching uniforms, the purpose of which was not so much to delineate the opposing combatants as to separate them from civilian attire and thus reducing the number of accidental deaths. The reigns of Louis XIV in France and the Ottoman Empire are also discussed, as are the conflicts between the brutal indigenous peoples of the Americas and the equally-brutal European invaders. Carr ends the chapter with a discussion of the underrated philosopher Thomas Hobbes and his theory of the Leviathan of War, which he described as a “Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defense.” In a nutshell, this means that a ruler or faction can claim legitimacy only by demonstrating the ability to enforce the laws of the land and guarantee security to its people.
CHAPTER FIVE is highlighted by a discussion of Frederick the Great of Prussia, who led an impressive series of military successes in the 1700’s by utilizing “limited war,” which calls for smaller strategic skirmishes, reduced civilian casualties, and pillaging and foraging forbidden. The soldiers under his command were so severely disciplined that in some cases they were not even allowed to visit the latrine unattended. Carr believes that emulating Frederick’s tactics—limited conflicts tied to specific political goals, avoiding unnecessary civilian bloodshed, and a reliance on bold offensive actions to resolve dangerous situations before they escalated to barbarism—offers the best hope for prosecuting modern warfare, particularly the war against terrorism.
CHAPTER SIX delves deeper into state-sponsored terrorism during the 1700’s, from the English pirates and the Dutch East India Company through political upheavals in China, India, Russia and Turkey right up to the American Revolution in 1776. Regarding the fledgling nation’s Declaration of Independence, the author states the obvious, but it still deserves to be mentioned clearly and often—it is essentially a racist document, a terrorism-friendly text that declares all men equal while at the same time allowing the continued bondage of black men and women, condoning a destructive war against the native population, and offering few if any rights to women.
The sixth chapter also has a brief mention of pirate queen Mrs. Cheng, who I had never heard of before. At the height of her career in the South China Sea, she was in command of up to 1,800 sailing ships and 80,000 fighting men.
CHAPTER SEVEN talks about the reign of Napoleon in France and the small resistance movements that blossomed in Spain and Portugal, giving rise to the term guerilla warfare, which literally means “little wars,” taken from the word guerra, or war. In response to the ultimately doomed French Empire, the Prussian career soldier Karl von Clausewitz penned a treatise named On War, which Carr calls “the most influential book on the nature and uses of military violence ever written.” However, this is not a ringing endorsement, as it advocates total war and total destruction of the enemy, and over the next two hundred years armies around the world used the text as justification for any number of horrible atrocities.
The seventh chapter concludes with a dissertation on the American Civil War, wherein the author declares Union general William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating March to the Sea in Georgia in 1864 to be “the most brilliantly conceived and executed single campaign in all of American military history.”
CHAPTER EIGHT discusses the anarchist movement of the late 1800’s and how scholars often mistakenly equate them with modern terrorists. The main difference is that the anarchists were not state-sponsored by any nation of significance. Carr then rattles off a number of global conflicts that pitted violent and expansionist Western regimes against fledgling and technologically-inferior nation-states: Great Britain vs. Afghanistan, Great Britain vs. the Zulus of South Africa, Great Britain vs. The Sudan, the U.S. vs. the Philippines, France vs. Algeria. These imperial wars of conquest were the impetus for the current predicament with radicalized Muslim extremists.
The eighth chapter concludes with a lengthy discussion of World War I. The author blames Winston Churchill for the sinking of the Lusitania to drag the U.S. kicking and screaming into the conflict, which Carr states was “an event that Churchill could scarcely have done more to facilitate if he had been steering the ship himself.”
CHAPTER NINE focuses on World War II, which Carr states is “now generally and correctly seen as nothing more than a continuation of the first.” He heaps praise upon the Nazi battle strategy of “blitzkrieg” or lightning war, which was prosecuted by the employment of combat’s two newest phenomena—fast-moving armored divisions and tactical air support. Then Carr rightly declares that the two most fundamentally terrorist nations in the history of the world are both from this period: Germany under Adolf Hitler and the U.S.S.R. overseen by the nearly-as-evil Josef Stalin. The good old U.S.A. was a close third, as evidenced by such terrorist attacks on civilian populations as Doolittle’s Tokyo raid, the fire-bombing of Dresden, and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The ninth chapter next presents a withering rebuke of the National Security Act of 1947, which created the three arms of America’s modern-day national security apparatus: The Department of Defense, the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. The Agency’s many missteps, including mulitple failed assassination attempts and the Bay of Pigs missile crisis, prove that America was more than willing to fight terror with terror. This situation reached its crescendo during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. bombing of civilian targets resulted not in capitulation but rather an increased resolve and determination to defy the invaders and eventually an ignoble defeat for the mighty U.S. military machine. However, the author neglects to mention the fifty-year reign of the FBI’s paranoid-in-chief, J. Edgar Hoover, who aided and abetted the C.I.A. in spirit if not with actual material support while perpetrating his own brand of abuses upon the American citizens by ignoring the CIA’s follies and farragoes both domestically and overseas.
CHAPTER TEN is the first time that the author’s narrative travels backwards in time instead of forwards to expound upon some of the most successful state-sponsored terrorist organizations. In Ireland, it was the Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army under the command of Michael Collins. The Irgun and Stern Gang in Israel were the organizing bodies that the Jews used to facilitate immigration by vile methods up to and including bombings and murder. And the Palestinian Liberation Front under Yasir Arafat returned Israel’s terrorism in kind, attacking not only Jewish civilian targets but also gunning for any country that sided with the new nation.
In the book's epilogue, Carr finally gets to the business of discussing the United States’ best path forward in dealing with terrorists in the wake of 9/11, and since Ground Zero was still a smoking ruin when this book was written, it is all still theory and conjecture. His position is that in order to win the “war on terror,” American needs to switch from the tactic it has used ever since the Civil War, that of overwhelming force in long wars of attrition, and utilize a new strategy of quick surgical strikes and limited civilian casualties, much like the Nazis’ blitzkrieg and the Allied response during the liberation of France.
Carr also strongly recommends the use of unmanned Predator drones, and that is exactly what happened within the next few years, but the outcome was little different than previous massive bombing raids with conventional aircraft—the drones took out the military targets just fine, but there was still an abundance of civilian casualties, which led to resentment in our opponents and stiffened their resolve. The author also suggests the elimination of all covert operations by U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, possibly abolishing the agency altogether. This last idea seems a bit far-fetched, and I don’t recall any serious talk about getting rid of the C.I.A. at the time this book was written.
This dense little book was penned in 2002, when the lessons learned on 9/11 were still fresh in the author’s mind, and you can feel his emotional trauma as he scatters stinging rebukes throughout the text.
The prologue alone has more juicy tidbits than most books contain from cover to cover. For example, Carr implies that the U.S. was mistaken to seek approval from the U.N. and the international community before waging war against Al Qaeda. He also asserts that terrorism, warfare against civilians to influence a specific political outcome, has never worked and by nature can never work.
CHAPTER ONE describes the rebellion of Arminius of Germania, whose forces routed the legions of the Roman Empire during the massacre at Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D. Rome retaliated with aggressively brutal measures of their own, which led to generations of Germans growing up to hate all things Roman. Carr theorizes that the Roman Empire gradually became more comfortable with the idea of targeting civilians as a method of spreading terror to undermine political cohesion and accrue wealth, and even though it led to the empire’s downfall, the ideas persisted throughout the centuries right up to today. The vehicle for this flourishing of terrorism was the world’s two dominant religions, Christianity and Islam.
CHAPTER TWO covers the Crusades and the reasons they were prosecuted. Both Christian and Muslim leaders used the decades of conflict as a method of appeasing their war-hungry hordes of soldiers and mercenary armies.
CHAPTER THREE encompasses the wars of the Reformation period, beginning with the Hundred Years’ War and ending with the Thirty Years’ War. Carr also describes the English pirates of the period, whose plundering of Spanish treasure ships in the New World was just another form of terrorism for political gain, seeing as how the buccaneers were covertly backed by the British admiralty. He even briefly touches upon the Spanish Inquisition.
CHAPTER FOUR explains that in the 1600’s, civilian wartime casualties finally began to decline in England under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell due to an emphasis on strict military discipline, as well as the wearing of distinctive matching uniforms, the purpose of which was not so much to delineate the opposing combatants as to separate them from civilian attire and thus reducing the number of accidental deaths. The reigns of Louis XIV in France and the Ottoman Empire are also discussed, as are the conflicts between the brutal indigenous peoples of the Americas and the equally-brutal European invaders. Carr ends the chapter with a discussion of the underrated philosopher Thomas Hobbes and his theory of the Leviathan of War, which he described as a “Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defense.” In a nutshell, this means that a ruler or faction can claim legitimacy only by demonstrating the ability to enforce the laws of the land and guarantee security to its people.
CHAPTER FIVE is highlighted by a discussion of Frederick the Great of Prussia, who led an impressive series of military successes in the 1700’s by utilizing “limited war,” which calls for smaller strategic skirmishes, reduced civilian casualties, and pillaging and foraging forbidden. The soldiers under his command were so severely disciplined that in some cases they were not even allowed to visit the latrine unattended. Carr believes that emulating Frederick’s tactics—limited conflicts tied to specific political goals, avoiding unnecessary civilian bloodshed, and a reliance on bold offensive actions to resolve dangerous situations before they escalated to barbarism—offers the best hope for prosecuting modern warfare, particularly the war against terrorism.
CHAPTER SIX delves deeper into state-sponsored terrorism during the 1700’s, from the English pirates and the Dutch East India Company through political upheavals in China, India, Russia and Turkey right up to the American Revolution in 1776. Regarding the fledgling nation’s Declaration of Independence, the author states the obvious, but it still deserves to be mentioned clearly and often—it is essentially a racist document, a terrorism-friendly text that declares all men equal while at the same time allowing the continued bondage of black men and women, condoning a destructive war against the native population, and offering few if any rights to women.
The sixth chapter also has a brief mention of pirate queen Mrs. Cheng, who I had never heard of before. At the height of her career in the South China Sea, she was in command of up to 1,800 sailing ships and 80,000 fighting men.
CHAPTER SEVEN talks about the reign of Napoleon in France and the small resistance movements that blossomed in Spain and Portugal, giving rise to the term guerilla warfare, which literally means “little wars,” taken from the word guerra, or war. In response to the ultimately doomed French Empire, the Prussian career soldier Karl von Clausewitz penned a treatise named On War, which Carr calls “the most influential book on the nature and uses of military violence ever written.” However, this is not a ringing endorsement, as it advocates total war and total destruction of the enemy, and over the next two hundred years armies around the world used the text as justification for any number of horrible atrocities.
The seventh chapter concludes with a dissertation on the American Civil War, wherein the author declares Union general William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating March to the Sea in Georgia in 1864 to be “the most brilliantly conceived and executed single campaign in all of American military history.”
CHAPTER EIGHT discusses the anarchist movement of the late 1800’s and how scholars often mistakenly equate them with modern terrorists. The main difference is that the anarchists were not state-sponsored by any nation of significance. Carr then rattles off a number of global conflicts that pitted violent and expansionist Western regimes against fledgling and technologically-inferior nation-states: Great Britain vs. Afghanistan, Great Britain vs. the Zulus of South Africa, Great Britain vs. The Sudan, the U.S. vs. the Philippines, France vs. Algeria. These imperial wars of conquest were the impetus for the current predicament with radicalized Muslim extremists.
The eighth chapter concludes with a lengthy discussion of World War I. The author blames Winston Churchill for the sinking of the Lusitania to drag the U.S. kicking and screaming into the conflict, which Carr states was “an event that Churchill could scarcely have done more to facilitate if he had been steering the ship himself.”
CHAPTER NINE focuses on World War II, which Carr states is “now generally and correctly seen as nothing more than a continuation of the first.” He heaps praise upon the Nazi battle strategy of “blitzkrieg” or lightning war, which was prosecuted by the employment of combat’s two newest phenomena—fast-moving armored divisions and tactical air support. Then Carr rightly declares that the two most fundamentally terrorist nations in the history of the world are both from this period: Germany under Adolf Hitler and the U.S.S.R. overseen by the nearly-as-evil Josef Stalin. The good old U.S.A. was a close third, as evidenced by such terrorist attacks on civilian populations as Doolittle’s Tokyo raid, the fire-bombing of Dresden, and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The ninth chapter next presents a withering rebuke of the National Security Act of 1947, which created the three arms of America’s modern-day national security apparatus: The Department of Defense, the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. The Agency’s many missteps, including mulitple failed assassination attempts and the Bay of Pigs missile crisis, prove that America was more than willing to fight terror with terror. This situation reached its crescendo during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. bombing of civilian targets resulted not in capitulation but rather an increased resolve and determination to defy the invaders and eventually an ignoble defeat for the mighty U.S. military machine. However, the author neglects to mention the fifty-year reign of the FBI’s paranoid-in-chief, J. Edgar Hoover, who aided and abetted the C.I.A. in spirit if not with actual material support while perpetrating his own brand of abuses upon the American citizens by ignoring the CIA’s follies and farragoes both domestically and overseas.
CHAPTER TEN is the first time that the author’s narrative travels backwards in time instead of forwards to expound upon some of the most successful state-sponsored terrorist organizations. In Ireland, it was the Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army under the command of Michael Collins. The Irgun and Stern Gang in Israel were the organizing bodies that the Jews used to facilitate immigration by vile methods up to and including bombings and murder. And the Palestinian Liberation Front under Yasir Arafat returned Israel’s terrorism in kind, attacking not only Jewish civilian targets but also gunning for any country that sided with the new nation.
In the book's epilogue, Carr finally gets to the business of discussing the United States’ best path forward in dealing with terrorists in the wake of 9/11, and since Ground Zero was still a smoking ruin when this book was written, it is all still theory and conjecture. His position is that in order to win the “war on terror,” American needs to switch from the tactic it has used ever since the Civil War, that of overwhelming force in long wars of attrition, and utilize a new strategy of quick surgical strikes and limited civilian casualties, much like the Nazis’ blitzkrieg and the Allied response during the liberation of France.
Carr also strongly recommends the use of unmanned Predator drones, and that is exactly what happened within the next few years, but the outcome was little different than previous massive bombing raids with conventional aircraft—the drones took out the military targets just fine, but there was still an abundance of civilian casualties, which led to resentment in our opponents and stiffened their resolve. The author also suggests the elimination of all covert operations by U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, possibly abolishing the agency altogether. This last idea seems a bit far-fetched, and I don’t recall any serious talk about getting rid of the C.I.A. at the time this book was written.
June 12, 2023
I was nine when the planes hit the Two Towers.
Old enough to be interested in politics- to understand the US had some kind of role in the greater world, but certainly not old enough to understand foreign policy. I wanted to see the world, but I only knew that there were places different than here. I certainly didn't know there were organizations who would want to harm civilians. "Terrorism" wasn't a word in my vocabulary.
I've spent quite a lot of time in the last twenty years trying to understand that word. And that's why I picked up this book. The slimness didn't hurt (there is a similarly-titled book at my Mom's house, but that one's at least 300 pages). And I learned the merits of limited war- the reasons why it was invented and why terrorism failed in the ages prior to the 20th century.
The argument Carr makes isn't moral- it's logistical. Countries who practice limited war (choose targets for specific military value and limit civilian casualties) will win because of military discipline and the economical value of such a war. Whereas, those who practice a form of total war that is unconcerned with civilian casualties, or worse, sees them as an objective, will loose because terrorism does not create a docile opponent and it weakens the state in the eyes of its allies.
I also like the idea that injustice in war is determine not by the merit of the war's objectives, but how the war is waged.
The problem came when Carr mentioned "unconditional surrender". Another two words I couldn't quite wrap my brain around, so I took a detour to Google Scholar. And here was my undoing because in researching "unconditional surrender", I also got more insight into one of Carr's villains: Carl von Clausewitz. While Carr views him as a proponent of total war - a war on all people, combatant or none- the paper gave me one of my best understanding on the concept of war in general. Particularly on how it ends. And when I returned to Carr, his critiques of Clausewitz just didn't jive with the actual theories Clausewitz espoused.
And then we get to the 20th century... Whether or not I agree with Truman's decision to drop nukes on Japan, I think Carr's description was uncharitable and failed to take in the socio-political ramifications of both the Japanese will to fight and the cost of a land war by reducing the acts to simple terrorism.
Then came Irish independence. Carr had the misfortune (or perhaps it's my misfortune, since Carr has no idea who I am) of being read only a week after I had watched a three-episode documentary on Irish independence, so I knew that the idea that Ireland could have had Free State status in 1914 was a little precious.
But maybe it was a one-off? Maybe he just need one more example for some reason and didn't do enough research? Well, the next topic was Israel/Palestine, so I'd certainly know how strong or weak Carr's argument was soon.
I'm not going to go point by point on his terrible assessment of the Israeli War for Independence, the Palestinian National Movement or the terrorism in that region during the 20th century. Carr got facts downright wrong, he ignores important context, or hell, just causes of the conflict. But I will include one point - the point that got me writing in capital letters. Carr thinks that the terrorism in Palestine following 1939 was just, you know, what the Jews did. Because they didn't have a state yet. Not (and this is not a justification) because the British had just drastically reduced immigration to Palestine WHILE A MASSIVE GENOCIDE OF JEWS WAS OCCURRING IN EUROPE!
And so yet again, an author I might have thought knowledgeable reveals his poor research skills when discussing the Middle East. Ironic because Carr advocates for a limited type of war throughout this book - a type of warfare that Israel is actually a really good modern example of.
But I did learn something. I know more now than I did last month. So you, Mr. Carr, gets a 2.
Old enough to be interested in politics- to understand the US had some kind of role in the greater world, but certainly not old enough to understand foreign policy. I wanted to see the world, but I only knew that there were places different than here. I certainly didn't know there were organizations who would want to harm civilians. "Terrorism" wasn't a word in my vocabulary.
I've spent quite a lot of time in the last twenty years trying to understand that word. And that's why I picked up this book. The slimness didn't hurt (there is a similarly-titled book at my Mom's house, but that one's at least 300 pages). And I learned the merits of limited war- the reasons why it was invented and why terrorism failed in the ages prior to the 20th century.
The argument Carr makes isn't moral- it's logistical. Countries who practice limited war (choose targets for specific military value and limit civilian casualties) will win because of military discipline and the economical value of such a war. Whereas, those who practice a form of total war that is unconcerned with civilian casualties, or worse, sees them as an objective, will loose because terrorism does not create a docile opponent and it weakens the state in the eyes of its allies.
I also like the idea that injustice in war is determine not by the merit of the war's objectives, but how the war is waged.
The problem came when Carr mentioned "unconditional surrender". Another two words I couldn't quite wrap my brain around, so I took a detour to Google Scholar. And here was my undoing because in researching "unconditional surrender", I also got more insight into one of Carr's villains: Carl von Clausewitz. While Carr views him as a proponent of total war - a war on all people, combatant or none- the paper gave me one of my best understanding on the concept of war in general. Particularly on how it ends. And when I returned to Carr, his critiques of Clausewitz just didn't jive with the actual theories Clausewitz espoused.
And then we get to the 20th century... Whether or not I agree with Truman's decision to drop nukes on Japan, I think Carr's description was uncharitable and failed to take in the socio-political ramifications of both the Japanese will to fight and the cost of a land war by reducing the acts to simple terrorism.
Then came Irish independence. Carr had the misfortune (or perhaps it's my misfortune, since Carr has no idea who I am) of being read only a week after I had watched a three-episode documentary on Irish independence, so I knew that the idea that Ireland could have had Free State status in 1914 was a little precious.
But maybe it was a one-off? Maybe he just need one more example for some reason and didn't do enough research? Well, the next topic was Israel/Palestine, so I'd certainly know how strong or weak Carr's argument was soon.
I'm not going to go point by point on his terrible assessment of the Israeli War for Independence, the Palestinian National Movement or the terrorism in that region during the 20th century. Carr got facts downright wrong, he ignores important context, or hell, just causes of the conflict. But I will include one point - the point that got me writing in capital letters. Carr thinks that the terrorism in Palestine following 1939 was just, you know, what the Jews did. Because they didn't have a state yet. Not (and this is not a justification) because the British had just drastically reduced immigration to Palestine WHILE A MASSIVE GENOCIDE OF JEWS WAS OCCURRING IN EUROPE!
And so yet again, an author I might have thought knowledgeable reveals his poor research skills when discussing the Middle East. Ironic because Carr advocates for a limited type of war throughout this book - a type of warfare that Israel is actually a really good modern example of.
But I did learn something. I know more now than I did last month. So you, Mr. Carr, gets a 2.
December 7, 2017
This was a definite split decision.
While the various points the author raised were interesting and valid the scathing abusive vitriol he spewed so freely upon organizations (CIA) and individuals--including the deceased, effectively reduced the academic validity and legitimacy of his writing.
Academically speaking I was appalled at his rude and obnoxious tirades. This was a shame given that many of the points he raised had merit.
Expressions such as "...arrogant, operations happy denizens of Langley Virginia," were totally uncalled for and reflect poorly upon this so-called academician. Speaking of which Carr found it very easy to criticize those who placed life and limb on the line while seated in an arm chair of academic comfort; a comfort provided by others.
He hold the CIA personally responsible for having abandoned Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal...What else were they to do? Nation building?
The major problem with his criticism throughout the entire work is the fact that he tends to adopt an overly simplistic approach to complex international relations.
To his credit he appears to hate everyone with equal passion.
He may believe himself witty and trendsetting, but I personally find that he comes off as an obnoxious boor who thinks himself omniscient. He makes trivial generalizations based upon little more than speculation and resorts to escapism and half measures couched in neo-Kantian utopianism.
Perhaps his greatest flaw lies therein: He places the blame for modern day terrorism squarely upon the doorstep of Westernized industrial capitalism. Again, this is far too simplistic an approach which fails to consider the complexity of international relations.
He also lauds Donald Rumsfeld, a questionable adulation at best given his past track record.
There are many instances of run on sentences that could have been far more concise.
Finally, consider the following nasty and entirely unnecessary comment concerning James Forrestal the first US Secretary of Defense:
"...It soon became clear to most people who knew and worked with Forrestal that his extreme fears were in fact a tale told if not by an idiot, then at least by a very disturbed man...he was persuaded to enter Bethesda Naval Hospital, where, after brooding over the state of the world and his place in it, he one night threw himself out of an upper story window."
While the facts are certainly true the way in which they were delivered was, mean-spirited and petty and reflect poorly upon the author.
In summary there were some valid points and good ideas...however these tend to go astray in the tempest of his misguided anger.
While the various points the author raised were interesting and valid the scathing abusive vitriol he spewed so freely upon organizations (CIA) and individuals--including the deceased, effectively reduced the academic validity and legitimacy of his writing.
Academically speaking I was appalled at his rude and obnoxious tirades. This was a shame given that many of the points he raised had merit.
Expressions such as "...arrogant, operations happy denizens of Langley Virginia," were totally uncalled for and reflect poorly upon this so-called academician. Speaking of which Carr found it very easy to criticize those who placed life and limb on the line while seated in an arm chair of academic comfort; a comfort provided by others.
He hold the CIA personally responsible for having abandoned Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal...What else were they to do? Nation building?
The major problem with his criticism throughout the entire work is the fact that he tends to adopt an overly simplistic approach to complex international relations.
To his credit he appears to hate everyone with equal passion.
He may believe himself witty and trendsetting, but I personally find that he comes off as an obnoxious boor who thinks himself omniscient. He makes trivial generalizations based upon little more than speculation and resorts to escapism and half measures couched in neo-Kantian utopianism.
Perhaps his greatest flaw lies therein: He places the blame for modern day terrorism squarely upon the doorstep of Westernized industrial capitalism. Again, this is far too simplistic an approach which fails to consider the complexity of international relations.
He also lauds Donald Rumsfeld, a questionable adulation at best given his past track record.
There are many instances of run on sentences that could have been far more concise.
Finally, consider the following nasty and entirely unnecessary comment concerning James Forrestal the first US Secretary of Defense:
"...It soon became clear to most people who knew and worked with Forrestal that his extreme fears were in fact a tale told if not by an idiot, then at least by a very disturbed man...he was persuaded to enter Bethesda Naval Hospital, where, after brooding over the state of the world and his place in it, he one night threw himself out of an upper story window."
While the facts are certainly true the way in which they were delivered was, mean-spirited and petty and reflect poorly upon the author.
In summary there were some valid points and good ideas...however these tend to go astray in the tempest of his misguided anger.
December 28, 2022
As any serious student of history knows and is well documented in this book, waging war on civilians is almost always counterproductive. In the modern world since the advent of aerial carpet bombing of population centers, the mass killing of non-combatants has never led to a capitulation. The first such instance was the Allied bombing of Europe in World War II, which did almost nothing to end the will of the Germans to keep fighting. It took a successful land invasion to force the surrender.
In the American war in Vietnam, the United States dropped approximately 8 million tons of bombs on Indochina compared to approximately 4 million on Europe in World War II. Again, to no measurable effect. In the Vietnam War, the hawks constantly screamed, “Bomb them back to the stone age!” The North Vietnamese won.
It is not well known, but in the Korean War, the United States carpet bombed all the population centers in North Korea, again to no effect. Other than to provide a reminder to the people what ruthlessness the U. S. is capable of. North Korea survived the war and is still a nation.
There is a more recent example, and that is the Second Gulf War. Before the land invasion, the U. S. political and military leaders proudly proclaimed their policy of “shock and awe” against Iraq. They constantly boasted that their initial attack would be so overwhelming that all opposition would quickly cease. While the coalition forces easily moved over land to occupy Iraq, there was no pacification of the country, with a long-standing brutal war that was a combination of a guerilla and civil war. U. S. forces finally withdrew, leaving the situation worse than when they entered. Coalition forces also dropped a massive amount of munitions on Afghanistan, again to no effect on the willingness of the opposition to keep fighting. The ousted Taliban are once again in power.
As Carr states so very clearly and accurately, killing the civilians never works, yet modern militaries have never learned this lesson. The historical record back to the Roman Legions is used as evidence to demonstrate the truth of this thesis. In this matter, the leaders are so enamored of their expensive weapons that they refuse to learn the obvious lesson of history, indiscriminate killing does not work.
As a postscript of modern times, the Russian military is systematically reducing the cities of Ukraine to rubble, yet there has not been the slightest wavering of the Ukrainian people in continuing the fight. In fact, it has increased their determination to win the war. Demonstrating that the disease is not restricted to the American military and political leaders.
In the American war in Vietnam, the United States dropped approximately 8 million tons of bombs on Indochina compared to approximately 4 million on Europe in World War II. Again, to no measurable effect. In the Vietnam War, the hawks constantly screamed, “Bomb them back to the stone age!” The North Vietnamese won.
It is not well known, but in the Korean War, the United States carpet bombed all the population centers in North Korea, again to no effect. Other than to provide a reminder to the people what ruthlessness the U. S. is capable of. North Korea survived the war and is still a nation.
There is a more recent example, and that is the Second Gulf War. Before the land invasion, the U. S. political and military leaders proudly proclaimed their policy of “shock and awe” against Iraq. They constantly boasted that their initial attack would be so overwhelming that all opposition would quickly cease. While the coalition forces easily moved over land to occupy Iraq, there was no pacification of the country, with a long-standing brutal war that was a combination of a guerilla and civil war. U. S. forces finally withdrew, leaving the situation worse than when they entered. Coalition forces also dropped a massive amount of munitions on Afghanistan, again to no effect on the willingness of the opposition to keep fighting. The ousted Taliban are once again in power.
As Carr states so very clearly and accurately, killing the civilians never works, yet modern militaries have never learned this lesson. The historical record back to the Roman Legions is used as evidence to demonstrate the truth of this thesis. In this matter, the leaders are so enamored of their expensive weapons that they refuse to learn the obvious lesson of history, indiscriminate killing does not work.
As a postscript of modern times, the Russian military is systematically reducing the cities of Ukraine to rubble, yet there has not been the slightest wavering of the Ukrainian people in continuing the fight. In fact, it has increased their determination to win the war. Demonstrating that the disease is not restricted to the American military and political leaders.
November 1, 2018
This book is a look at the concept of terrorism through the eyes of military history. According to the author, terrorism, which he defines as the use of deliberate warfare against civilians, has been a feature of military conflict almost as long as there have been armies to conflict. And for about the same amount of time, the use of warfare against civilians has generally led, not to the faster or more complete success of those waging such warfare but to a stiffening of the resistance against them, causing their victories to be slower and/or more costly, or sometimes leading to their ultimate defeat.
This is the process that led ultimately to the fall of the Roman Empire, working against other, earlier practices that had allowed the Romans to successfully expand their empire and conquer most of the world they knew. It is also a process that has led to the rise of so many intractable resentments that lie simmering just beneath the surface in so many places around the world just waiting for the slightest provocation to flame out into open violence or warfare again. It has led to things like the continuing hostilities in Ireland or the troubles in the Middle East that refer back to the time of the Crusades and before when both sides practiced total war against each other.
The United States is not by any means blameless in this type of war. Indeed, most of our wars have been of this type, from the Indian Wars to the Civil War to Vietnam. Modern weapons only make this type of war more the norm than anything, and the weapons of mass destruction are, of course, the worst of all.
Against this tradition, the author points out the newer tactic of modern progressive war – a type of war with far fewer actual historical examples. It turns out that the idea of Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, that we thought was so terrible is warfare of this type. The idea here is to advance quickly to the military or political objective without stopping to try to wipe the opposing army off the face of the earth or kill off the entire civilian population.
But the author insists that, if we are to make any progress in the world, and not inspire more retaliatory terrorism, we need to change the focus of our military activities. Among the changes he recommends are a refusal to target civilians, increased use of trained groups such as the special forces to achieve limited, focused objectives, and the elimination of the often counter-productive operations of the CIA.
This was a library book.
This is the process that led ultimately to the fall of the Roman Empire, working against other, earlier practices that had allowed the Romans to successfully expand their empire and conquer most of the world they knew. It is also a process that has led to the rise of so many intractable resentments that lie simmering just beneath the surface in so many places around the world just waiting for the slightest provocation to flame out into open violence or warfare again. It has led to things like the continuing hostilities in Ireland or the troubles in the Middle East that refer back to the time of the Crusades and before when both sides practiced total war against each other.
The United States is not by any means blameless in this type of war. Indeed, most of our wars have been of this type, from the Indian Wars to the Civil War to Vietnam. Modern weapons only make this type of war more the norm than anything, and the weapons of mass destruction are, of course, the worst of all.
Against this tradition, the author points out the newer tactic of modern progressive war – a type of war with far fewer actual historical examples. It turns out that the idea of Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, that we thought was so terrible is warfare of this type. The idea here is to advance quickly to the military or political objective without stopping to try to wipe the opposing army off the face of the earth or kill off the entire civilian population.
But the author insists that, if we are to make any progress in the world, and not inspire more retaliatory terrorism, we need to change the focus of our military activities. Among the changes he recommends are a refusal to target civilians, increased use of trained groups such as the special forces to achieve limited, focused objectives, and the elimination of the often counter-productive operations of the CIA.
This was a library book.
March 19, 2018
I remember buying this book many years ago, and I finally got around to reading it. Perhaps when it came out, it could be considered ground-breaking and insightful. Yet, reading this work in 2017, I am not sure it holds up over time. Some of the historical lessons and insights on the role of terror in conflict, not just "terrorism", but how armies instilled fear into their opponents, as well as instilling terror into civilians. Carr's analysis of impacts on those civilians are significant, as they help set up his view of terrorism later on in the work. However, it is stance and view on the failings of the US in its wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. It was published as Operation IRAQI FREEDOM kicked off, so it would have been interesting to see if his stance changed as the initial military successes degenerated into a brutal counterinsurgency war. He is at once glowing about some key figures in the Bush administration, but then slams many of the mechanisms of the US government, mechanisms that even those in power under Bush used to get involved into the war in Iraq. He calls of outright elimination of the CIA, but really doesn't offer ways to mitigate that, or for how the US could truly fight wars without engaging in tactics that sow the seeds for future defeats and failures. Perhaps if I read this book back in 2003/4, I might feel differently and rate it higher, but with so much more literature out now, this one just didn't work for me, and I didn't get out of it what I hoped.
July 5, 2018
I picked up this book at a biannual book sale I go to for $2. As I was studying a subject in Terrorism at the time it seemed relevant. I wish I had more time to read books about the topics I was studying when I was studying them, as I think it would make my writing better (though I still get good grades, so its probably just me being a nerd!). Anyway, I didn't realise at the time how military history focused this book. Military history is not really my thing, partly because my brother is a historian who specialises in it (so I hear about it all the time!) and partly because I really enjoy sociology and the why of things was more. Nonetheless, Carr uses military history to argue that terrorism has always failed in its endeavours, will always fail, and should never be met with terrorism. Its important to note that he defines terrorism as acts aimed at turning a people against their government, which while valid for his argument, is not how I would define terrorism. Bearing this in mind, I can see the merits to his argument, though I can't say I'm wholly persuaded, as I personally think the motives behind terrorism are significantly more complex. Nonetheless, its an interesting take on the topic, and while I'm not sure I'm keen on advocating for acting before UN approval to ensure the element of surprise, I won't deny there is a certain logic. An interesting read on a very broad and complex topic.
April 6, 2020
This book has been in my To-Read queue for years, and I could not have been more disappointed.
Goodreads says this book was published in March 2003 at a time when I was probably waiting in a tent in Kuwait about to invade Iraq with the 1st Marine Division, and here in 2020 we all remember how that little misadventure went, as well as the rest of the regional shit-show since then.
So to hear him praising Donald Rumsfeld in the introduction was a gut-punch. In the conclusion he will actually talk about how great Predator Drones are and how once we have the balls to use them the days of civilian casualties are over! In between that are a lot of cherry-picked examples of terrorism/warfare against civilians that he will interpret to fit his thesis about how that this is strategy doomed to fail and total war is inferior to limited war. I expected a better contemplation of Terrorism, and I got a really long book report good for maybe a C+ or B- in a low level college course. What he's saying often has value, but you already can't trust him. You don't have to trust me either, check out some of the 3, 2, and 1 star reviews of this book. They start really nailing down a lot of the issues with this book a lot more effectively than I can.
Goodreads says this book was published in March 2003 at a time when I was probably waiting in a tent in Kuwait about to invade Iraq with the 1st Marine Division, and here in 2020 we all remember how that little misadventure went, as well as the rest of the regional shit-show since then.
So to hear him praising Donald Rumsfeld in the introduction was a gut-punch. In the conclusion he will actually talk about how great Predator Drones are and how once we have the balls to use them the days of civilian casualties are over! In between that are a lot of cherry-picked examples of terrorism/warfare against civilians that he will interpret to fit his thesis about how that this is strategy doomed to fail and total war is inferior to limited war. I expected a better contemplation of Terrorism, and I got a really long book report good for maybe a C+ or B- in a low level college course. What he's saying often has value, but you already can't trust him. You don't have to trust me either, check out some of the 3, 2, and 1 star reviews of this book. They start really nailing down a lot of the issues with this book a lot more effectively than I can.
January 16, 2019
i'm not sure how i missed this book. i'm a huge fan of the alienist. i read surrender new york not too long ago. i've also read his book about ward. i may not read everything i can about the global war on terror, but i've been looking for this book for eighteen years. this book provides an analytical framework on the subject that finally eases some of my confusion. it puts it into a historical context that makes sense to me.
sure some might argue the distinction between soldiers and terrorists that target civilians but carr makes a compelling case to erase that distinction. if they follow carr's argument i don't see how they could not but agree with it. you'd have to be willfully blind to any new idea to ignore it. it just hit me in my gut and i know he's right. i just wish we had the leadership to follow some of carr's recommendations instead we just continue blindly groping in the dark praying for a solution as things just get worse and worse.
this is an important work and i will have to pay more attention to carr's non-fiction.
sure some might argue the distinction between soldiers and terrorists that target civilians but carr makes a compelling case to erase that distinction. if they follow carr's argument i don't see how they could not but agree with it. you'd have to be willfully blind to any new idea to ignore it. it just hit me in my gut and i know he's right. i just wish we had the leadership to follow some of carr's recommendations instead we just continue blindly groping in the dark praying for a solution as things just get worse and worse.
this is an important work and i will have to pay more attention to carr's non-fiction.
May 27, 2018
It’s pretty clear that Carr starts from conclusions and then musters facts to support them. I was tempted, as the Newsweek review on the cover stated, to throw the book across the room. I asked myself several times whether he was naive, delusional or disingenuous...or all three.
And some of his facts were not facts at all...but factoids. Where did he get the notion that all native Americans were nomadic? Not all were plains Indians. They were also pastoralists, farmers, fisherman.
I won’t go deeper into this as it isn’t worth my time...as the book isn’t worth my time...as the book isn’t worth any reader’s time. Other reviewers have adequately ripped it.
And some of his facts were not facts at all...but factoids. Where did he get the notion that all native Americans were nomadic? Not all were plains Indians. They were also pastoralists, farmers, fisherman.
I won’t go deeper into this as it isn’t worth my time...as the book isn’t worth my time...as the book isn’t worth any reader’s time. Other reviewers have adequately ripped it.
August 18, 2018
I have read this book, published in 2002 I think, a couple times. It is very informative. Caleb does a great job presenting his arguments on terror; what it is, how it operates, how it has been used throughout history and what the outcomes of its use have been. Caleb covers vast swaths of history in a short span introducing many characters and events from his research. This book changed some of my views on terrorism and not only made me want to read more of Mr. Carr's books but also inspires me to gain a deeper historical understanding of the world.
March 12, 2021
I understand why this fails on civilians.
August 27, 2025
Extremely insightful and thought provoking. And I didn’t throw the book across the room.
December 18, 2025
I like because Caleb was able to make each paragraphs interesting eventhough the topic was war history
April 10, 2009
In spite of some fo the negative reviews here, I think it was an excellent book. I was worried it would be a right wing screed against bleeding heart liberals allowing Islamo-fascism to take over the world unless we nuke the bastards, but it is a well reasoned historical treatise that makes some very good points.
I wish the critics had posted what their actual objections were to his history or his analysis, since I don;t se it.
His premise is that terrosism- targeting civilians specifically to manipulate a populace to give up in some manner is almost always a self defeating strategy. And I was very pleased that he focused a lot of attention on American military culture that actually fosters terrorism, starting from the French and Indian Wars through the civil war and then a devastating critic on the CIA as a tool of state sponsored terrorism.
However he shovels equal condemnation on islamic fundamentalists and "liberation" movements like the IRA and PLO.
I fully agree with most of his thinking and it is refreshing to have an analysis that steps out of the standard ideological dichotomy of right wing (terrorist bad america good) or left wing (terrorist good america bad) superficiality.
Maybe hsi view is based on more libertarian thinking, but if so it is much more reasonable and fleshed out than most libertarian thinking I have seen on this subject.
he starts from roman times and points out over and over how devstation "total War" has most often resulted in retribution and unitented consequences that are the opposite of what the agents of terror fully expect. And he points out that this has happened over and over again without interested parties ever learning the lesson, or learning it slowly.
I do question some of his reasoning, in that I think there are cases where populations are so oppressed taht they really have almost no othr option. Certainly Jewish resistance in Germany and the European ghettos could not be expected to resist only againt military (though that is often their only available targets. nd his portrayal of Hezbollah and Hamas as being bent on destroying the west and targeting the west is not in my view accurate. Certainly the Palestinians in Gaza have little opportunity to strike against israili military and non violent resistance has pretty much been blacked out by the media, so attacks on civilians are almost the only way to indicate resistance to their barbaric treatment at the hands of israel.
this does not mean that I support their actions, just that I understand how it would appear almost inevitable to the affected groups to resort to this.
There are some other disagreements I have as well, especially concerning the use of targeted military strikes that are extra judicial. But his points merit real consideration and are much more useful ways of looking at how to deal with terrorism than The US and the rest of the world has done to date
I wish the critics had posted what their actual objections were to his history or his analysis, since I don;t se it.
His premise is that terrosism- targeting civilians specifically to manipulate a populace to give up in some manner is almost always a self defeating strategy. And I was very pleased that he focused a lot of attention on American military culture that actually fosters terrorism, starting from the French and Indian Wars through the civil war and then a devastating critic on the CIA as a tool of state sponsored terrorism.
However he shovels equal condemnation on islamic fundamentalists and "liberation" movements like the IRA and PLO.
I fully agree with most of his thinking and it is refreshing to have an analysis that steps out of the standard ideological dichotomy of right wing (terrorist bad america good) or left wing (terrorist good america bad) superficiality.
Maybe hsi view is based on more libertarian thinking, but if so it is much more reasonable and fleshed out than most libertarian thinking I have seen on this subject.
he starts from roman times and points out over and over how devstation "total War" has most often resulted in retribution and unitented consequences that are the opposite of what the agents of terror fully expect. And he points out that this has happened over and over again without interested parties ever learning the lesson, or learning it slowly.
I do question some of his reasoning, in that I think there are cases where populations are so oppressed taht they really have almost no othr option. Certainly Jewish resistance in Germany and the European ghettos could not be expected to resist only againt military (though that is often their only available targets. nd his portrayal of Hezbollah and Hamas as being bent on destroying the west and targeting the west is not in my view accurate. Certainly the Palestinians in Gaza have little opportunity to strike against israili military and non violent resistance has pretty much been blacked out by the media, so attacks on civilians are almost the only way to indicate resistance to their barbaric treatment at the hands of israel.
this does not mean that I support their actions, just that I understand how it would appear almost inevitable to the affected groups to resort to this.
There are some other disagreements I have as well, especially concerning the use of targeted military strikes that are extra judicial. But his points merit real consideration and are much more useful ways of looking at how to deal with terrorism than The US and the rest of the world has done to date
December 9, 2012
The authors purpose of writing this book was to inform. Caleb Carr (being the author) was trying to tell the reader the past of terrorism against civilians. When I say civilians i mean the countries own civilians. The United States using terrorism against people from the United States for instance. Caleb Carr has many degrees in military history and things like that, so the book was probably mainly to inform.
I think that the main theme of this book involved the moral choices in life. Especially moral choices running a country and using terrorism on that country. This book tried to convey that terrorism is bad which honestly doesn't sound very hard does it? But, the way it was told was overall good. It not only told how it was morally wrong, but, it told how it just doesn't work. So this books theme was probably something like "Terrorism is bad in many ways".
This book was a description. It told us of a particular time, place, or event that made the reader feel like they were experiencing it firsthand. The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians told us exactly that. It showed us all of terrorism and how it affected the countries, people, and time periods of that era. It started in early Rome and ended in about 2001 (the time of the WTC attacks).
I thought this book overall was good. But, it seemed a little biased. It talked about terrorism, yes, and how it failed, yes. But, this book didn't give any contrasting examples and that i didn't like. Terrorism has worked in the past, but reading this book no one would know that. If you based your knowledge on terrorism just on this book there would be no evil or world success dealing with terrorism and that i didn't like.
May 4, 2011
Even if you don't like history, this book might blow your mind a little bit.
Military history has never been my strong suit; however Carr's work makes such a topic not only readable, but relevant. He sets out to trace the origins of terrorism and warfare on civilian populations-- along the way he makes some intriguing points about how we arrived at modern warfare.
The sheer amount of material Carr has managed to cover in less than 300 pages is enough to make any historian cringe; there aren't many people brave enough to attempt an analysis of war on civilians- essentially from the Roman Empire up through the present day. Does he succeed? I'm willing to vote yes- and he also succeeded in making this book very difficult to put down.
There are moments when Carr seems to generalize a bit more than necessary for the sake of maintaining a fluid narrative. Overall, though, he makes his points clearly and eloquently, and his arguments are generally sound. His accounts and analyses of terrorism in Ireland and the conflict between Israel and Palestine exemplify Carr's ability to narrate and analyze historic material cohesively. This book certainly succeeds in its mission to present a history of terrorism, its origins, and the steps that must be taken in order to eradicate it.
Military history has never been my strong suit; however Carr's work makes such a topic not only readable, but relevant. He sets out to trace the origins of terrorism and warfare on civilian populations-- along the way he makes some intriguing points about how we arrived at modern warfare.
The sheer amount of material Carr has managed to cover in less than 300 pages is enough to make any historian cringe; there aren't many people brave enough to attempt an analysis of war on civilians- essentially from the Roman Empire up through the present day. Does he succeed? I'm willing to vote yes- and he also succeeded in making this book very difficult to put down.
There are moments when Carr seems to generalize a bit more than necessary for the sake of maintaining a fluid narrative. Overall, though, he makes his points clearly and eloquently, and his arguments are generally sound. His accounts and analyses of terrorism in Ireland and the conflict between Israel and Palestine exemplify Carr's ability to narrate and analyze historic material cohesively. This book certainly succeeds in its mission to present a history of terrorism, its origins, and the steps that must be taken in order to eradicate it.
August 22, 2015
Not normally the sort of book I’d read (This is a fairly brief – for the timespan dealt with – overview of terrorism, which Carr defines as deliberate attacks directed against civilians, whether by military or other civilians, through the ages), but I thought I’d give it a try, since I enjoy his historical fiction. He does have a tendency here to either gloss over (or assume a fair amount of knowledge on the part of the reader) some fairly complex issues, but I think that a lot of his reasoning and conclusions are good. It is interesting that, by his definition, sweeping economic embargoes and blockades are also terrorism, as are military offensives (like saturation bombings) where massive civilian casualties are expected. He is a big fan of drone strikes, although, in his defense, there is a lot more data available now about just how precise they are than when he wrote this book.
September 3, 2013
I had heard good things about Carr's fictional work prior to getting this book, but never read any. (Still haven't.) But I found this book very unique. In the shadow of 9/11, this book makes a very soulful argument that terrorism will generally always undo itself. He also talks about how we should "devise a style of war more imaginative, more decisive, and yet more humane than anything terrorists can contrive." I find this quote sums up the mixed feelings I had about this book when I read it, myself being very much against war, but interested in the "humane" angle. For me, he didn't make a strong enough case of this aspect to save the argument. But it's well-crafted.
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