Disciplining Terror Quotes

“It would be easy, but misleading, to see the rise of terrorism expertise as simply a response to an increase in political violence. This simplistic empirical approach neglects the reflexive relationship between experts and their objects of knowledge. Others have suggested that we view terrorism expertise as a product of political propaganda by governments seeking to demonize their enemies and draw attention away from their own use of violence. But this “critical” approach (see, for example, Chomsky 2001; Herman and O’Sullivan 1989), which argues that terrorism experts constitute an “industry,” funded and organized by the state and other elite interests, neglects the agency and interests of the experts themselves, and the ways in which these interests may either harmonize or clash with those of the state, the media, and the “terrorists” themselves.”
― Lisa Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror

“The question to be explained here is not simply why the Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attacks with a pre-emptive war on terror but why the American people consented to it.”
― Lisa Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror

“Terrorism, the institute people think, is one of those issues dramatizing the fact that the forces threatening Israel are the same as those threatening the West in general. . . Many speakers during the conference echoed this theme: A necessary step in fighting terrorism is to educate democratic nations about how massive a moral and practical threat it is to their beliefs.”
― Lisa Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror

“Is terrorism experts’ work necessarily political? Ought it to be? Or can terrorism expertise be separated from political inflections and goals?”
― Lisa Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror

“As terrorism expert Brian Jenkins observed, When I was in the special forces, we read Mao, Guevara, etc. Not because we were ideologically enamored of Marxism, but this was the only way to understand the guerrilla warfare we confronted. But now, post-9/11, we consign terrorists simply to the realm of evil.”
― Lisa Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror