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The Morality of Terrorism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
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There is a strong tendency in the scholarly and sub-scholarly literature on terrorism to treat it as something like an ideology. There is an equally strong tendency to treat it as always immoral. Both tendencies go hand in hand with a considerable degree of unclarity about the meaning of the term ‘terrorism’. I shall try to dispel this unclarity and I shall argue that the first tendency is the product of confusion and that once this is understood, we can see, in the light of a more definite analysis of terrorism, that the second tendency raises issues of inconsistency, and even hypocrisy. Finally, I shall make some tentative suggestions about what categories of target may be morally legitimate objects of revolutionary violence, and I shall discuss some lines of objection to my overall approach.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1985
References
1 Roger, Woddis, Ethics for Everyman, from The New Oxford Book of Light Verse, chosen and edited by Kingsley Amis (Oxford University Press, 1978), 292.Google Scholar
2 Carlos, Marighela, Handbook of Urban Guerilla Warfare, collected in For the Liberation of Brazil by Carlos Marighela, trans. John Butt andRosemary Sheed (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 89.Google Scholar
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10 Here I simplify somewhat for purposes of exposition. What I sketch is certainly a pacifist position but some pacifists would accept the use of severe police violence within a legal framework but reject what they see as the basically unconstrained violence of war. For a good discussion of some of the issues to do with pacifism see Jenny Teichman, 'Pacifism', Philosophical Investigations 4 (January 1982).
11 This is again shorthand but I think reasonable shorthand. In a fuller discussion we should distinguish that utilitarianism which looks to justify violence by its promotion of narrowly military goals and that which takes a wider view of the goods in question. There is also the question of rule utilitarianism. If rule-utilitarianism can be shown to be a genuine alternative to act-utilitarianism as a form of utilitarianism then perhaps some version of it would blur the line between the second and third responses.
12 Walter, Laquer, Terrorism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977); R. C., Lineberry, The Struggle Against Terrorism (Wilson, 1977).Google Scholar
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14 The definition treats threats as essentially intentional so that the specification ‘intentional threat’ would be pleonastic. If the reader believes that there can be unintentional threats then heshould read the relevant part of the definition as referring to intentional threats.
15 Cf. B. Paskins and M. Dockrill, op. cit. 90, and Martin Hughes,‘Terrorism and National Security’, Philosophy 57 (January 1982), 5. My agreement with Paskins and Dockrill is only partial, however, since they want to restrict the application of the term 'terrorism' to contexts of evasive warfare and so refuse to apply it to full scale wars between states.
16 Ibid. 89.
17 The contrast is the familiar one drawn by such writers as G. E. M., Anscombe, ‘War and Murder’ in War and Morality, Richard Wasserstrom (ed.) (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1970); Thomas, Nagel ‘War and Massacre’,Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1972); Michael, Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, and Jeffrie G., Murphy, ‘The Killing of the Innocent’, The Monist 57(1973). By calling it ‘familiar’ I do not mean to say or imply that it is uncontentious.Google Scholar
18 In Michael Walzer's words: ‘At the height of the blitz many British officers still felt strongly that their own air attacks should be aimed only at military targets and that positive efforts should be made to minimize civilian casualties. They did not want to imitate Hitler, but to differentiate themselves from him.’ Just and Unjust Wars, 257.
19 It is interesting that Neville Chamberlain in 1940 denounced such ‘blackguardly’ bombing proposals as ‘mere terrorism’. See J. F. C., Fuller, The Conduct of War, 1789-1961 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972), 280Google Scholar
20 It seems possible to espouse a less absolute form of internalism in which some actions can be seen as wrong from an internalist perspective but have, regrettably, to be done, at least partly because of the awful consequences of not doing them. Bernard Williams seems to hold such a view (see ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’, in Utilitarianism: For and Against by J. J. C., Smart and Bernard, Williams (Cambridge University Press, 1973), Ch. 5, and especially p. 117) and Michael Walzer (op. cit.) has condoned some of the terrorist bombing of World War II in this way.Google Scholar
21 See especially John C. Ford, SJ, ‘The Morality of Obliteration Bombing’, collected in Wasserstrom, op. cit., and the articles of Anscombe and Murphy previously cited.
22 Walzer, op. cit. 199.
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24 Debray, op. cit. 75.
25 Quoted in Robert, Taber, The War of the Flea (London: Paladin, 1972), 106.Google Scholar
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28 Walzer, op. cit. 21.
29 C. A. J., Coady, ‘The Leaders and the Led’, Inquiry 23 (September 1980), 286.Google Scholar
30 Paskins and Dockrill, op. cit. 94.
31 Hughes, op. cit. 5.
32 Ibid. 18.
33 Charles, Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland 1919-1921(Oxford University Press, 1975), 153.Google Scholar
34 Ibid. 152.
35 H. C., Wylly, History ofthe Manchester Regiment, II (London: Forster Groom, 1925), 210.Google Scholar
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