ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the terrorism spectacle, as seen in official accounts and the news media, was used by the Reagan administration and conservatives more generally to reverse an array of restrictions placed on foreign security assistance programs to the Third World and domestic security investigations in the United States. The Reagan and Bush administrations attempted to create a terrorism spectacle which highlighted the violence of enemies while leaving the violence of strategic allies off-stage and in the dark. By January 1986, a Leslie Harris survey found that 72 percent of their respondents endorsed the idea of a warning from leading nations that countries backing terrorism would be invaded. Countering terrorism in the 1980s replaced counterinsurgency as the primary justification of American military involvement in the Third World. In 1984 the Pentagon had recommendation that it be allowed to form "hit squads" to assassinate "terrorists." Terrorism was Ronald Reagan's crisis—and policy God-sent.
