Book Reviews
1960s. More importantly, she illustrates how
In the name of terrorism: Presidents
on political violence in the
post–World War II era
Carol K. Winkler
State University of New York Press, Albany, New York,
2006 $65.00 (hard), $24.95 (soft), pp. 260
At a time when U.S. book publishers have
made 9/11 and terrorism into their own liter-
ary genres with over 2,000 books currently
available, Carol Winkler’s In the Name of Ter-
rorism: Presidents on Political Violence in the
Post–World War II Era is a timely, important,
and unique work. Readable as a history, a pol-
icy analysis, and as a rhetorical study, this
book stands out because the author reminds
us that the idea of terrorism has been an
important weapon in every presidential
administration’s linguistic arsenal since the
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Book Reviews
the deployment of the concept in presidential
discourse has usefully served to label enemies,
establish cultural narratives, and—for better
and worse—shape the direction of U.S. policy.
In her quest for the definition of this vex-
ing topic, Winkler directs her attention to the
executive branch. The combination of presi-
dent as commander in chief of the armed
forces and as chief translator of clandestine
intelligence data for the American public
makes, ‘‘the executive branch . the single
most vital source for understanding how ter-
rorism functions within American culture’’
(p. 7). According to Winkler, what presidents
say—and what they say about terrorism in
particular—deserves attention because these
utterances often justify the exercise of power.
One of the book’s most useful approaches
comes from the awareness that modern pres-
idents rarely speak spontaneously about a
topic as weighty as terrorism. Donning her
hat as historian, Winkler shows how a variety
of sources, ranging from national security
briefings to cabinet-level memos all converge
to shape the rhetorical choices made by polit-
ical leadership. This tug-of-war over meaning
has made terrorism a deeply unstable concept,
and a number of different groups and persons
have worn its label: the Viet Cong (Johnson),
American antiwar protesters (Nixon), Libya
and Syria (Reagan), Saddam Hussein (G.
Bush), Osama bin Laden (Clinton), and non-
state organizations such as Al-Qaeda (G. W.
Bush). There is inconsistency here, but there
is resiliency, too. For as much as the inhabi-
tants of this ‘‘rogues gallery’’ have changed over
time, the gallery itself has been open through
eight presidential administrations and it prom-
ises to stay open for the foreseeable future.
Thus, Winkler contends that terrorism
has become an ideograph—a permanent
(yet conceptually unsettled) part of the polit-
ical culture. This kind of semantic flexibility
places demands on presidential rhetoric.
Winkler tracks both the changing meaning
of terrorism and the narratives that presidents
tell to maintain their currency and to make
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their policies coherent to the public. When into a key ideological marker for the Ameri-
conceived as a narrative, she argues, terrorism can culture. Accordingly, quite a bit has
has been repeatedly presented to the public been—and will be done—in its name.
‘‘as a moral drama, pitting good against evil
in an ongoing battle for the survival of civili- William Jennings
zation itself’’ (p. 10). But in their own unique University of Cincinnati
manner, each administration has the oppor-
tunity to create new, or modify existing, nar-
ratives to shape the contours of public
discourse and insert its own ideology.
Each substantive chapter of this book
retells one of these startlingly different stories.
Lyndon Johnson, for example, could expect
his Cold War era audience to follow his depic-
tions of ‘‘communist terrorists’’ as if the two
wordswere synonymous. This associative strat-
egy, of course, was not available to a post–Cold
War president like George Bush, who instead,
opted to frame terrorism as a threat to a fragile
New World Order. Taking a moral perspective,
Jimmy Carter could present the Iranian hos-
tage crisis as human tragedy, whereas Bill Clin-
ton spoke of the World Trade Center bomb
plot legally and framed it as criminal act. More
recently, George W. Bush has described terror-
ism expansively and has stated that the events
of September 11, 2001, have ushered in a new
phase of American history. The variety of these
narratives makes for interesting comparisons.
But Winkler reminds us that these narratives
possess a sense of gravity and momentum.
Events like military offensives, Olympic boy-
cotts, United Nations resolutions, economic
embargoes, criminal investigations, and the
enhancement of presidential powers during
wartime have all come in their wake.
After studying the presidential rhetoric
surrounding terrorism, Winkler concludes
the book with an empirical analysis of the
character, geography, and frequency of ter-
rorist incidents over time. This exercise serves
to juxtapose the most memorable incidents of
political violence with broader statistical
trends. The results illustrate the contrast
between the reality of political violence, the
rhetoric it inspires, and the policies it produ-
ces. In this light, Winkler argues that these
contrasts reveal how terrorism has evolved

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