January 4, 2003
AVOIDING RESPONSIBILITY:
What Is Wrong with Terrorism? (Thomas Nagel, November 2002, Project Syndicate)People all over the world react with visceral horror to attacks on civilians by Al Quaeda, by Palestinian suicide bombers, by Basque or Chechen separatists, or by IRA militants. As there now seems to be a pause in the spate of suicide bombings and other terrorist acts--if only momentary--perhaps now is a moment to grapple with a fundamental question: What makes terrorist killings any more worthy of condemnation than other forms of murder?The special opprobrium associated with the word "terrorism" must be understood as a condemnation of means, not ends. Of course, those who condemn terrorist attacks on civilians often also reject the ends that the attackers are trying to achieve. They think that a separate Basque state, or the withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East, for example, are not aims that anyone should be pursuing, let alone by violent means.
But the condemnation does not depend on rejecting the aims of the terrorists. The reaction to the attacks of September 11, 2001 on New York and Washington and their like underscores that such means are outrageous whatever the end; they should not be used to achieve even a good end--indeed, even if there is no other way to achieve it. The normal balancing of costs against benefits is not allowable here.
Isn't the real reason that we find terrorism to be unacceptable that it takes seriously our own notions of consensual government? What, after all, is the difference between you, me, George W. Bush, and a random soldier in terms of legitimacy as a target in a conflict? And, since there was nearly universal outrage at the thought of a draft, are we really saying that only those soldiers should bear the brunt of U.S. policy, that the rest of us are sacrosanct, even though it's our policy too? So the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon was okay, because they were combatants, but the bombing of Hiroshima was wrong because we intentionally targeted civilians? How many U.S. soldiers should we have been willing to sacrifice to take the home islands by conventional means in order to avoid firebombing Tokyo or nuking a couple cities?
There seems something almost delusional about the idea that the end can never justify the means when it comes to attacks that kill civilians. Are we really prepared to say that a Resistance bombing of a Nuremberg rally would have been wrong, even though it killed Hitler, because thousands of rank and file Nazis and other civilians would have been killed? I don't think so. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 4, 2003 1:15 PM
Whoever this guy is, he is ignorant of both
history and morality.
First, it is only a recent leftish delusion that
only attacks against civilians constitute
terrorism.
IRA terrorism -- acknowledged as such by the
IRA itself -- in the 1919-22 period was mostly
directed against police officers. Irgun terrorism,
like the hotel bombing, was also directed against
men in uniform.
Second, there were not any innocents in
Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Harry's right - the murder of our servicepeople is as evil, or more so, than the murder of our civilians. But both are outrageous and both demand a response.
I also don't accept that the civilians of democracies are more culpable for their government's misdeeds than the citizens of dictatorships. Under dictatorships, people have abdicated their responsible to control their government. They remain complicit in the government's evil deeds.
"Under dictatorships, people have abdicated their responsible to control their government. They remain complicit in the government's evil deeds."
Ever lived in a dictatorship pj?
Being opposed to the ruling faction is seriously damaging to your health.
Ali:
And that may be an entirely reasonable calculation to make, but people still have to make it, and in so doing they consent to the dictatorship.
I think you guys are perverting the meaning of consent by ignoring the threat of force. If I give a mugger my wallet, am I "consenting" to give him money? I would also be making a reasonable calculation. Would I be considered an accomplice?
Posted by: scott h. at January 4, 2003 11:38 PMscott:
If there were forty of you and one of him, then yes, there's an element of consent.
Ali - yes - and I wouldn't have said that before 9/11 - but if dictatorships continue to sponsor terror, we are ultimately going to have to hold everyone who refuses to join the fight against them complicit in their terror. "You're either with us or against us" - that will apply to the subjects of dictators.
Posted by: pj at January 5, 2003 8:52 AMoj:
What if there were forty of us and one of him, but he happened to have a very big gun and a willingness to use it often?
Ali:
I think you have some obligation to resist, to flee, or to take responsbility for the situation. Dictatorship requires some degree of acquiesence.
Kind of scary to find pj and oj both
agreeing so much with me.
I do not downplay the difficulty of standing
up for morality. I myself pretty much got
a free ride, but my father and my grandfathers
and their grandfathers before them all
had to risk their lives, fortunes and sacred
honors for what they believed in.
Some chose the wrong side. Some lost
almost everything.
There are mistakes that one generation
bequeaths to its progency that can be so
bad that it is almost impossible to recover.
The choice to be Islamic appears to be
such a choice.
Not easy to abandon the faith and culture
of your fathers, but its a package.
The Christian principle is that the killing of innocents
is never justified; whether a person is innocent is a judgment call.
Walter Williams on the radio the other day said he has a policy in class - if a cell phone goes off, he takes ten points off the final class grade of the person with the cell phone, and
the two students on each side. This creates incentives for the neighbors, at the beginning of class, to check for cell phones and pressure their peers to turn them off. He suggested that if a country sponsors terrorism, we should bomb them and two of their neighbors. Of course that was humor, but I think attacking the people as well as the dictator follows Williams' principle and has some moral justification.
Whether it's morally justified or not, you do it
if the alternative is doing nothing -- exactly
the alternative being proposed by the
handwringers today.
I have said before that if you had asked
Americans in 1940 if it would ever be acceptable
to boil 25,000 babies alive, you would have
gotten 100% nays. Yet by 1945, we did it
and nobody objected.