Daily Inspiration Quote by Otto Schily

“International terrorism entered a new dimension” is bureaucratic language doing emergency work: it takes an event too vast for ordinary description and stamps it with official legibility. Otto Schily, speaking as a German interior minister in the post-9/11 aftershock, isn’t reaching for poetry. He’s reaching for permission.

The phrase “new dimension” is deliberately vague, which is precisely why it’s potent. It suggests not just a change in scale but a change in kind: terrorism as something that has crossed a threshold into a different category of threat. That framing matters politically. If the danger is unprecedented, then unprecedented measures start to sound responsible rather than opportunistic. Schily’s intent is to reset the baseline for security policy and public tolerance: expanded surveillance, tighter immigration controls, broader police powers. A “dimension” can’t be managed with incremental tweaks; it demands structural redesign.

The subtext is also internationalist in a specific way. “International terrorism” folds the attacks into a global system rather than a localized conflict, a move that aligns Germany with the U.S.-led “War on Terror” while still speaking in the measured cadence expected of European governance. It signals solidarity without flag-waving, urgency without panic.

There’s a quiet rhetorical sleight of hand in the date marker: “On September 11 last year…” anchors a permanent policy era to a single spectacular rupture. Memory becomes mandate. The line doesn’t grieve; it governs.