In today’s Baltimore Sun, political science professor Thomas F. Schaller writes,
Less than 24 hours ago, an apparent act of terrorism marred this year’s Boston Marathon. It’s too early to know many of the details about this tragic event. Late last night, officials were reporting three deaths and well over 100 injuries; soon we will have a clearer sense of how many were killed and wounded. […] But we don’t need to know every detail to draw a few sad, cautionary lessons about what happened Monday.
Among those lessons is recognizing that “the primary purpose of terrorism is not to kill victims but to terrorize survivors.”
In addition to its horrific impact on victims and their families, writes Schaller, “[t]errorism poisons if not destroys our public spaces and the physical and psychic experiences we share with one another while in such spaces. After incidents like Monday’s, it’s tempting to retreat and turn our public spaces into fortresses.” But to do so, he warns, would be “fatal to our collective identities.”
Tags: CAHSS, PoliticalScience
