Nation: Bombing: A Way of Protest and Death

ONLY nine months ago, the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence was able to report that the U.S. "has experienced almost none of the chronic revolutionary conspiracy and terrorism that plagues dozens of other nations." To be sure, plots and skirmishes have footnoted American history, and bomb blasts sometimes provided the punctuation. But they were usually isolated cases tied to a specific labor dispute, racial confrontation or criminal feud. For many decades, the specter of the political bomber has been as alien and anachronistic as the caricature of the...