Terrorism, Morality, and Supreme Emergency

Abstract

In this chapter, I will be using ‘terrorism’ in the sense of organized use of violence to attack non-combatants (’innocents’ in a special sense) or their property for political purposes . 1 Is terrorism wrong? Given this definition — which I want to term ‘tactical’ — and given just war theory, the answer is, as I have argued more fully elsewhere, 2 clearly yes. Terrorism violates a central principle of the jus in bello , the principle of discrimination, which declares the immunity of non-combatants from direct attack. It is not just that there are good utilitarian arguments for this principle or that it has been agreed between nations. The prohibition lies at the heart of the reasoning that allows for legitimate war in extremis since you are entitled to wage war only against those who are doing a certain sort of harm (and then only if other conditions are fulfilled). As John Locke put it: ‘they [those among the enemy population innocent of waging the war] ought not to be charged as guilty of the violence and injustice that is committed in an unjust war any farther than they actually abet it.’ 3 Here Locke echoes what is common in the just war tradition. 4 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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