Prehistories of the War on Terror: A Critical Genealogy

Reveals fundamental continuities between the contemporary War on Terror and earlier U.S. imperial conflicts Prehistories of the War on Terror examines the longstanding American project of classifying enemies who challenge U.S. power abroad as terrorists. To do so, the volume brings disparate episodes of U.S. military empire-building into dialogue across time and space. From settler colonial wars in the nineteenth-century American West to twentieth-century wars of conquest in Asia and the Pacific, the collection’s essays argue that the United States has drawn both materially and ideologically on older systems of empire in the conflicts through which it has waged the present-day War on Terror. Attending to the local histories from which these conflicts emerged and examining the effects of U.S. intervention in these sites, contributors analyze the cultural frameworks for understanding and remembering past conflicts that confirm, challenge, or refigure the logics of the War on Terror. This volume reveals how contestations over sovereignty, extraction, and inequality must be suppressed and flattened in public discourse to maintain a coherent vision of a totalizing War on Terror. Together, the contributors illustrate that there was no single road that led to 9/11 or the War on Terror. Rather, they argue that we must follow multiple paths into the past to fully understand our present and to fight for a more just future. Contributors: Moustafa Bayoumi, Joo Ok Kim, Janne Lahti, A. J. Yumi Lee, Naveed Mansoori, Karen R. Miller, Kalyan Nadiminti, Tim Roberts, Colleen Woods.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Moustafa Bayoumi Introduction. Prehistories of the War on Terror 1 A. J. Yumi Lee and Karen R. Miller Part I. Settler Colonialism and Counterinsurgency on the US Frontier Chapter 1. The French Influence on American Counterinsurgency Warfare Tim Roberts Chapter 2. Borderlands of Terror: The US-Apache Wars Janne Lahti Part II. US Colonial Legacies and State Violence in the Philippines Chapter 3. Terrains of Dissent: Muslim Land Dispossession, Coloniality, and Terror in the 1930s and the Contemporary Philippines Karen R. Miller Chapter 4. Lessons in Counterinsurgency: The Huk Campaign and the Global Cold War Colleen Woods Part III. Freedom, Terror, and the Ongoing Korean War Chapter 5. “Freedom Is Not Free”: From the Korean War to the War on Terror A. J. Yumi Lee Chapter 6. A Problem of Knowledge: Epistemologies of Terror in North Korean and US Print Cultures and US Global Statecraft Joo Ok Kim Part IV. Wars of Terror in South and West Asia Chapter 7. Unruly Historicism: Post-9/11 Anti-Imperial Style in the South Asian Anglophone Novel Kalyan Nadiminti Chapter 8. Hostage to Crisis: The Specter of the Permanent Threat in the Era of Live Television Naveed Mansoori Notes List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments