The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again [Hardcover]

Caleb Carr (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0375508430 | ISBN-13: 978-0375508431 | Publication Date: January 29, 2002 | Edition: 1

In The Lessons of Terror, novelist and military historian Caleb Carr examines terrorism throughout history and the roots of our present crisis and reaches a provocative set of conclusions: the practice of targeting enemy civilians is as old as warfare itself; it has always failed as a military and political tactic; and despite the dramatic increases in its scope and range of weapons, it will continue to fail in the future.

International terrorism—the victimization of unarmed civilians in an attempt to affect their support for the government that leads them—is a phrase with which Americans have become all too familiar recently. Yet while at first glance terrorism seems a relatively modern phenomenon, Carr illustrates that it has been a constant of military history. In ancient times, warring armies raped and slaughtered civilians and gratuitously destroyed property, homes, and cities; in the Middle Ages, evangelical Muslims and Christian crusaders spread their faiths by the sword; and in the early modern era, such celebrated kings as Louis XIV revealed a taste for victimizing noncombatants for political purposes.

It was during the Civil War that Americans themselves first engaged in “total war,” the most egregious of the many euphemisms for the tactics of terror. Under the leadership of such generals as Stonewall Jackson, the forces of the South tried to systematize this horrifying practice; but it fell to a Union general, William Tecumseh Sherman, to achieve that dubious goal. Carr recounts Sherman’s declaration of war on every man, woman, and child in the South—a policy that he himself knew was badly flawed, had nothing to do with his military successes (indeed, it hampered them), and brought long-term unrest to the American South by giving birth to the Ku Klux Klan.

Carr’s exploration of terror reveals its consistently self-defeating nature. Far from prompting submission, Carr argues, terrorism stiffens enemy resolve: for this reason above all, terrorism has never achieved—nor will it ever achieve—long-term success, however physically destructive and psychologically debilitating it may become. With commanding authority and the storyteller’s gift for which he is renowned, Caleb Carr provides a critical historical context for understanding terrorist acts today, arguing that terrorism will be eradicated only when it is perceived as a tactic that brings nothing save defeat to its agents.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist and military historian Carr (The Alienist, etc.) penned this brief history of terrorism as a corrective to the widespread perception spread by ill-informed journalists and politicians that the September 11 attacks were unique and unprecedented. Carr argues from the start that terrorism must be viewed in terms of "military history, rather than political science or sociology," and that the refusal to label terrorists as soldiers, rather than criminals, is a mistake. Underlying Carr's argument is the view that a repugnant bloodthirstiness arises when one civilization, no matter how advanced, encounters another. Accordingly, as Western civilization spread throughout the 17th and 18th centuries via imperialism, and Europe's seemingly more disciplined armies encountered strange peoples such as the Aztecs, Native Americans and south Asian Indians the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants became commonplace. No liberal, Carr zooms in on the history of the U.S. and looks at how terror tactics are fundamental to U.S. military efforts. Such tactics, he shows, were first established in the Civil War, culminated with the firebombing of Germany and Japan during WWII, and reappeared later during the Vietnam War. He traces the manner in which politicians and intellectuals have sought to justify and then curtail attacks on civilians throughout history. Only occasionally dry or repetitive, this often fascinating, accessible tome skillfully contends that the terrorizing of civilians has a long and controversial history but, as an inferior method, is prone to failure; it is rooted as much in human nature as it is in the need for military expediency. (On-sale: Jan. 29)

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

To ignore history is to repeat past mistakes. History professors proffer that piece of wisdom as the primary reason for studying history. Carr, author of the best-selling historical novels The Alienist (1994) and The Angel of Darkness (1997) and also a military historian, certainly supports that maxim in this beautifully articulated but sobering history of terrorism. Without a doubt, Carr's book needs to be read by as wide an audience as possible. Looking as far back as ancient Rome and bringing his analysis up to the present, he does not so much suggest as insist that terrorism is nothing new and that it is not a political or sociological issue. Terrorism, he argues, is as old as warfare itself, and, indeed, it is warfare, the kind of warfare "deliberately waged against civilians" to break the enemy's will. Further, Carr presents convincing evidence that terrorism has never succeeded in its purpose and that it cannot be fought successfully by repaying in kind or by refusing to recognize its military nature--we must see terrorists as the soldiers they really are. Why pay such close attention to correctly defining terrorism? Because "there have never been two more vital and powerful forces at work in the world than international capitalist democracy and fundamental Islam, nor two forces more capable of physical and cultural destruction." Jolted into reading this book? Good. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (January 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375508430
• ISBN-13: 978-0375508431
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #931,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars reminds me of thirty years past, February 11, 2002

By 

C. Kollars (Ipswich, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again (Hardcover)

This book begins by defining "international terrorism" (also called "destructive war" or "punitive war") as "warfare deliberately waged against civilians with the purpose of destroying their will to support either leaders or policies that the agents of such violence find objectionable." This book only makes sense if one temporarily accepts that definition. Although such a definition of the word "terrorism" at first seems quite removed from the events of 9/11, the author shows how that event fits into his definition. The book's principal thesis is that such violence is always spectacularly counter productive in the long run.

An important corollary is that terrorists should be treated as war opponents not as criminals, and their actions should be treated as acts of war not crimes. Rather than treating them on a par with smugglers drug traffickers or political mafiosi, we should treat them as (organized highly trained hugely destructive) paramilitaries.

In describing the development of and changes to war against civilians, the book romps through more than two millenia of military history. The necessarily rather sketchy stories in this brief book provide a fascinating and accessible broad brush introduction to military history.

My chief complaint with the book --especially the first part-- is that it it doesn't provide sufficient detailed arguments to support its thesis, perhaps because it so quickly covers so much ground. A reader with a good background in military history might receive the messages differently; what I found to be simply good stories might be a sort of shorthand that would bring forth the memory of many more details from the knowledgeable and provide much more support for the thesis.

The thing I liked most about the book is the very wide variety of blunt iconoclastic opinions that the author expresses: Karl von Clausewitz' book "On War" principally shows his admiration for the methods of Napoleon. Islam is notable for the ongoing internal contradiction between its pacifistic compassionate thread and its warlike aggressive thread. The behavior of the colonists during the American revolution was horrific, and was seen as such both by outsiders and by some residents. The African slave trade could not have happened without the locals' high level of intertribal warfare and their common custom of capturing and selling defeated civilians. And many many more.

The ideas in this books don't fit neatly into an existing category. It surprised me to find these two themes joined: treat terrorism militarily, and limit war's destructiveness by not using dirty methods even against a dirty enemy. While I don't necessarily agree with the ideas in this book, I found their presentation lively and provocative, and the prima facie case for them reasonable. Although this book is out of the mainstream of current thought, it's not on the lunatic fringe. It's not just controversial, it's a "mind stretcher."

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A well-argued thesis, February 4, 2002

By 

Don Munsil (Kirkland, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again (Hardcover)

Carr argues, simply, that the tactics of terror never work. Where he gets controversial is identifying certain tactics used by the US in wars past as "terrorism." Whether you agree with that designation, his argument that targetting civilians always backfires is well-laid-out and persuasively argued.

The trouble, of course, is that I'm not a military historian and have no way of knowing if his argument is valid. If one argues that terrorism is *never* successful, all it takes to invalidate that argument is a single example of a successful terror attack. I have no idea if there are examples that are not mentioned in the book, but it seems to me that Carr is on somewhat shaky ground when he says that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were ultimately self-defeating.

He may be right -- there may have been ways to use the A-Bomb that would have been even more effective and not killed so many civilians, but it is hard to deny that the bombs had the desired effect -- Japan surrendered immediately. I would have liked him to go into this, and a few other examples, further. I still fail to see how, pragmatically speaking, the A-bomb attacks on Japan "failed to work." I understand completely the moral argument, that the attacks were morally repugnant, and probably unnecessary, but Carr argues in other parts of the book that one doesn't need to argue against terror on a moral basis -- that it simply doesn't ever work, and that's that.

Still, a completely thought-provoking book that caused me to re-evaluate my thinking on many issues. I don't know that it will change my mind, but it certainly is food for thought, and a good read.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good analysis, April 16, 2004

By 

Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again (Hardcover)

In this fascinating work, author and historian Caleb Carr looks at modern terrorism in the context of the history of war. It is the author's contention that throughout the history of warfare, people have often targeted the civilian population of their enemies in an attempt to undercut their support for their government or for certain causes. The author further contends that the combatants that resort first to the use of terror tactics and those who use them the most viciously are certain to see their own position dangerously undercut.

Starting with ancient Rome, the author traces the history of the West, as the idea of limited war, involving respect for civilians and a minimization of casualties, kept being rediscovered and then abandoned. In the final analysis, the Muslim extremists who have taken up terrorism as their weapon have damaged their own cause, and now the United States must actively fight against these extremists, while avoiding using terror and spurring the Middle East on to future terror.

I must admit that people are correct to question some of the author's analyses. Indeed, I found the author's treatment of the CIA and Vietnam to quite unobjective, and his denunciations of strategic bombing and economic embargo made me wonder how he would have suggested that the United States battle Japan during W.W.2 (presumably through grinding island-invasion campaigning). Also, some of his other analyses seem out of balance as well.

But, that said, the author isn't entirely anti-West, showing as he does that it has only been in the West that people have striven to eschew terror as a weapon. Indeed, he is quite clear that non-Western people's use of terror produced its own consequences - such as the African complicity in the slave trade, and the Native American's use of terror rebounding to their own destruction.

Overall, I found this to be a very good analysis, and I do think that the author goes a long way towards proving his point. I would go one step further, the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, seeking to remove them as terrorist supporting states while attempting to limit civilian casualties, suggests that the Bush administration has been reading this book.