Final Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Final Paper - Essay Example As society processes the information regarding the event, the victims are framed by the news media and public officials. The reaction to the event creates another class of victims as the public is penalized through loss of freedoms and privacy. Innocent people are viewed with suspicion and an unrealistic assessment of the risk places a heavy toll on a stressed society. While terrorism has existed for millennia, recent uses of the criminal act and escalated methods have increased the level of societys awareness of the victims of terrorism. There is a Chinese saying that says, "Kill one [to] frighten ten thousand" (as cited in Ewald, 2006, p.4). Where in centuries past the concept of terrorism was to instill fear, modern terrorism seeks to murder on a massive scale. It is the ability of the terrorists to murder thousands of people in a single event that evokes such fear and dread. Exploring a few of the most significant terrorist acts committed against Americans can help to understand the ways that the victims are viewed and why they become victims. They are generally victims of opportunity and symbolism. Direct victims can be viewed through the positivist lens, while the indirect victims are more aptly analyzed through the anti-positivist viewpoint. The direct victims are real and concrete, while the indirect victims are constructed through societies own labels and judgments. Killing one can indeed frighten ten thousand, and killing 3 thousand can frighten 3 million. Americans have lived with various forms of terrorism since the countrys beginning, but only recently has it been viewed as a complex social issue. Table 1 is a partial list of the most noteworthy terrorist acts in modern history. The 1993 truck bomb at the World Trade Center was the first terrorist event that took place on US soil that attracted large scale public attention. Though there had been a number of airplane hijackings throughout the previous