"The Terror Next Time"

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews "The Terror Next Time," an article about the September 11 terror attacks and the future of terrorism that appeared in "The Economist" magazine in September 2001. It presents and then critiques the article's thesis, which is that there are three obstacles facing a terrorist who want to use weapons of mass destruction, finding a supply, turning that supply into a weapon and delivering the weapon to the target.

From the Paper:

"The Terror Next Time was first published on October 4, 2001, less than one month after the 9-11 attacks. As a result, the audience for the article differed from an audience of today and from the audience of September 10, 2001. While most Americans have come down from the absolute terror that gripped the country in the first few weeks following 9-11, it is not difficult to remember the anxiety of those days. People were purchasing duct tape and rolls of plastic sheeting, ready to barricade themselves in their homes, in the event that terrorists chose to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States. Therefore, the audience for the article was composed of people with a very elevated, though legitimate, concern of terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction. The author acknowledges those fears, and then attempts to allay them by demonstrating that terrorists did not then have the capability to effectively use weapons of mass destruction."

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