America's Use of Terror

Stephen Huggins, a retired aerospace executive with a Ph.D. in history, has written an important but seriously flawed book. He examines a series of current definitions of terrorism and then propounds his own: “an act of violence against noncombatants intended to change their political will or support” (p. 11). He concedes that state-directed terrorism has a long history, reaching back to antiquity, as do attempts to protect civilians from the ravages of war. Huggins's point is that the U.S. government and its predecessor colonial governments are hardly unique by engaging in terrorism but that, when committing such acts, the United States cannot claim to be a “morally exceptional state” (p. 26). Huggins develops his case in a series of chapters: three dealing with the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans; one each on the American Revolution, slavery, the Civil War, and the Philippine-American War; two on the establishment of Jim Crow

Colonialism · Government (linguistics · Political science · Politics · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science · Terrorism · History · Law · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence · War, Ethics, and Justification