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Terrorism: what is it and can it ever be morally justified?

Article Excerpt
Today no single issue of public concern seems to be quite as widely and hotly debated as that of terrorism. With good reason: the threat of terrorism has never been as salient and ubiquitous as it seems to be at present.

Social sciences and humanities are making an important contribution to these debates. Philosophy, too, has a contribution to make. When addressing issues of morality and of value in general, philosophers seek to do two things: to analyse and clarify the concepts involved, and to analyse, clarify and criticise arguments for and against various positions taken on those issues, as well as moral and other principles and values that ground those arguments. Whereas social sciences study the causes, varieties and effects of terrorism, and history traces the way terrorism has evolved over time, philosophy focuses on two basic questions: What is terrorism? Can it ever be morally justified?

I.

Current usage of the word reflects considerable variation and confusion over its meaning. This makes discussing the moral and political questions to do with terrorism a difficult and often frustrating undertaking. The one thing that is clear in this usage is that terrorism is a bad thing--nothing to be proud of or to support. Virtually no one today would apply the word to oneself and one's own actions, nor to those one has sympathy with or whose actions one supports. As the hackneyed cliche has it, one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. This suggests there is a double standard at work, of the form 'us versus them'.

Another type of double standard, less obvious and therefore even more of an obstacle to understanding and judging terrorism, is the tendency to accuse insurgents who resort to violence of resorting to terrorism, without taking a closer look into the type of violence and who its victims are. This is coupled with an unwillingness to talk of terrorism in relation to the violent actions and policies of a state and, in particular, one's own state--even though what is done is the same. This indicates a double standard of the form "state versus non-state actors', and the assumption that whatever it is, terrorism is by definition something done only by insurgents and never by a state.

The debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of terrorism in that conflict provide a telling example. Both Palestinians and Israelis have been committing what many might want to call terrorism. yet both deny that they have been engaging in terrorism and both accuse the other side of doing so. What the Palestinians are saying is: ours is a just struggle for putting an end to occupation and oppression and for attaining self-determination. We are both morally and legally entitled to use violence to this end. That isn't terrorism, but rather fighting for freedom. Israelis respond by saying that the state is merely using its armed forces and security services in defence of the country and the security of its citizens...

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