Murderous Terrorism in Bonn

All terrorists are tyrants, so lost in the furious red haze of fanaticism that they cannot distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. They are conspirators, not simply against law but against life itself.

The world was reminded of this Thursday, when the brilliant West German banker Alfred Herrhausen was murdered by terrorist bombers shortly after leaving his home near Frankfurt. Herrhausen, 59, was more than just the chairman of the Deutsche Bank, his country’s largest financial institution. He was one of the world’s most progressive and influential financial thinkers, the proponent of widely admired plans to assist the emerging free economies of Eastern Europe and the architect of far-sighted proposals for the restructuring of the Third World’s crushing debt. Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady incorporated many of the latter in his initiative to aid Mexico’s financial recovery.

The criminals who so quickly claimed responsibility for Herrhausen’s murder said they were members of the Red Army Faction, a group spawned by the anarchist subculture within the German protest movement of the late 1960s. It originally was called the Baader-Meinhof Gang after its founders, a petty criminal and a failed journalist. It is said to have about 20 members.

Like Italy’s Red Brigades, Spain’s ETA, the Japanese Red Army and certain factions of Ulster’s IRA, the Baader-Meinhof people received training, logistical support and, in some cases, financial help from Soviet client states in the Middle East. At the time, they must have seemed a convenient inconvenience to the Soviets’ Western foes. Now they are a threat to everyone who inhabits Mikhail Gorbachev’s “common European home.” That--and what can be done about it--are matters that Gorbachev and President Bush ought to include in their discussions this weekend.