What's Wrong With Terrorism?

Robert E. Goodin

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780745634982, 9780745634975
• eBook ISBN: 9780745655444
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Terrorists perform terrible acts. They maim, mutilate and kill in pursuit of their goals. The horrifying events of 9/11 and the regular suicide bombings around the world have made terrorism one of the central preoccupations of the twenty-first century. But what is the distinctive wrong of terrorism? Criminal acts such as murder and hijacking are already on the moral statute books, so why is it that we regard terrorists as different from and morally worse than ordinary killers and kidnappers?

Some see terrorism is an ideology, others claim it is a deep-seated social or psychological failing, others that it is a form of fighting unfairly judged by just-war standards. In this provocative new book, Robert Goodin puts forward the view that terrorism is, in fact, a deliberate tactic of frightening people for socio-political gain. Fear affects peoples ability to reason clearly and undermines their capacity for autonomous self-government.

In this way, Goodin contends that terror is not only the weapon of organizations such as al-Qaeda; it also benefits democratic politicians who profit from the climate of insecurity induced by terrorist threats and violence. Political figures conducting a campaign of fear as part of their war on terrorism may therefore be committing wrongs akin to those of terrorists themselves. This, Goodin argues, is what is distinctively wrong with terrorism in the contemporary world.

1

Introduction

Let me be clear from the outset: the title of this book is anything but rhetorical. There are a great many things wrong with terrorism.¹

Indeed, it is my thesis in this book that there are even more things wrong with it than commonly appreciated. The further, under-appreciated wrongs of terrorism I shall be concentrating upon in this book are of a predominantly political character.

The fundamental thought lying behind my argument is just this. Of course terrorists do all sorts of terrible things. They kill people. They destroy buildings and aeroplanes not belonging to them. They kidnap people and chop off their ears. All that is true, and it is morally enormously important. But pause to consider: what is the distinctive wrong of terrorism? The offence of ‘killing people’ is already on the moral statute books. So too are those of ‘kidnapping’, ‘maiming’ and ‘destroying property not belonging to you’. What makes terrorists different from, and morally even worse than, ordinary murderers, kidnappers and so on? What is the moral disvalue of ‘terrorism’, over and above the moral disvalue of the particular acts (of murder, kidnapping, and so on) through which it is carried out?

I take it that any sensible definition of ‘terrorism’ simply must include, as a central feature, the fact that it involves the strategic use of terror. That is to say, terrorism is fundamentally strategic, and it is fundamentally aimed at instilling terror.

Terrorism as I shall be depicting it is first and foremost a political tactic: frightening people for political advantage. That is its core element. No doubt there are many other elements, of various familiar sorts, that it would also be necessary to add for a complete characterization of ‘terrorism’. And no doubt there are a lot of other political tactics that involve frightening people for political advantage that do not constitute ‘terrorism’.² Nonetheless, looking at terrorism as a subset of that larger class of more familiar political manoeuvres usefully brings to the fore the distinctively political wrong that is involved in terrorism.

Note well, however: if ‘frightening people for their advantage’ constitutes the analytic core of ‘terrorism’, then that is something that can be done by Western political leaders as part and parcel of their War on Terrorism as surely as it can be done by extremists in the course of their War of Terror. To what extent Western political leaders are actually guilty of doing that depends crucially upon their intentions. I do not pretend to have any privileged access to those; maybe we never really will know for sure. At least for now, I must therefore content myself with making a more philosophical point in a more hypothetical fashion.

Still, the point in this suitably hypothetical form remains. If (or insofar as) Western political leaders are intending to frighten people for their own political advantage, then (to that extent) they are committing the same core wrong that is distinctively associated with terrorism. Such, anyway, will be the argument of this book.

‘Can that possibly be right?’, one naturally asks oneself. ‘Surely those who fly aeroplanes into buildings, killing thousands of people and destroying property, are guilty of additional moral crimes – and far worse moral crimes – than politicians who do nothing more than “frightening people for political advantage”.’³

Certainly they are. My point is merely that those are other offences. What makes the terrorist pilots’ behaviour not merely (sic) ‘murder’ and ‘vandalism’, but also ‘terrorism’, is that they act with the intention of instilling fear in people for their own political purposes. That is the distinctive feature that makes ‘terrorist murderers’ not merely ‘murderers’ but also ‘terrorists’. And that is a feature that the behaviour of murderous terrorist pilots shares with the behaviour of politicians who commit no further moral offences (beyond merely frightening people for political advantage).

Very much the worst thing about mass-murdering terrorists is that they are mass murderers, not that they are terrorists. My account of ‘terrorism’ is a deflationary one: it is not as bad as we think, focusing just on the distinctively ‘terrorist’ element of a terrorist’s act. But my account is also an expansionary one: there are more terrorists around than we might ordinarily imagine (Western political leaders mounting wars against terrorism being potentially among them).

More will be said over the course of this book to try to make those propositions convincing. But be warned that that is where the argument is heading.

* * * * * * * * *

Be warned, too, about the nature of this book. It is largely an exercise in political philosophy, in the hard-nosed analytic mode.

I draw on facts as appropriate – probably more heavily than most of my peers in academic philosophy. Facts matter in any attempt at applying philosophical precepts to the real world. They are not the only things that matter, and not all of them matter equally. But certainly we should do our best to get the relevant facts wherever we can, to tailor our philosophizing to the actual world to which it is meant to apply.

Academic philosophers typically attempt to finesse the facts through toy examples. They abuse that procedure badly when they ask us to imagine some utterly fanciful scenario. ‘What would we say in that case?’, they enquire; but if the scenario is too outlandish, too far from the circumstances of ordinary life around which our intuitions have been shaped and to which they are adapted, it simply does not matter what we would say (and indeed, we may not even have anything much to say). ‘Crazy cases’ count for naught in attempting to apply moral philosophy to the real political world.⁴

In its proper place, however, that procedure can be absolutely invaluable. There are certain things we just do not (now) know that we would need to know to judge real-world actors. To help us see exactly what we would need to know – on what facts our judgements would actually turn – it can be enormously helpful to think our way through philosophical-style hypotheticals. ‘We do not know exactly how the world actually is, but suppose it were this way: would the person be guilty of terrorism in that sort of case?’ By then varying the scenarios ever so slightly and repeating the question, we can discover where exactly the cutting point comes, for us, between a terrorist and a non-terrorist. Thus, while I draw on facts where possible and appropriate, I also (in chapter 5 especially) employ philosophical-style hypotheticals to determine what facts might actually matter.

Although this is a philosopher’s attempt to come to grips with the phenomenon of terrorism, it is designed to be generally accessible to all interested readers. Scholarly apparatus is kept to a minimum. Notes are used sparingly, and placed unobtrusively at the back of the book. Fine-grained philosophical analyses are eschewed in favour of a more ‘big picture’ approach. I hope (and fear) it is still evidently the work of a professional philosopher. But I hope it is also one that anyone interested in the topic can read with both profit and perhaps even pleasure.

* * * * * * * * *

In this book, I shall be making much of ‘definitions’. That is not merely the preoccupation of a philosophical fusspot. Definitions carry political consequences.

There is a lot of loose talk about ‘terrorism’. Public officials are wont to describe just about anyone making political trouble for them, these days, as a terrorist.⁵ Here are a couple of the more egregious examples I have come across:

• In announcing increased penalties for anyone convicted of illegal logging in eastern Philippine provinces prone to flooding as a result of deforestation, President Gloria Arroyo said, ‘We are determined to make those responsible for death and destruction pay the price for their misdeeds, and we shall prosecute them’ as ‘terrorists’.⁶
• US Education Secretary Rod Paige, meeting with state governors at the White House in February 2004, ‘said the National Education Association, one of the nation’s largest unions, was like “a terrorist organization” because of the way it was resisting many provisions of a school improvement law pushed through Congress by President Bush.’ His subsequent apology was singularly unapologetic: more in elaboration than retraction, Paige said, ‘It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics that the NEA’s Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind’s historic education reforms.’⁷

But this misuse of the label ‘terrorist’ to tar any political opponent is not just the product of overstatement on the part of zealous junior officials. This sort of inflated definition is sometimes found at the highest levels, and sometimes even works its way into legislation.

Consider, for example, India’s Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002. There, a ‘terrorist act’ is defined as any act done ‘with intent to threaten the unity, integrity, security or sovereignty of India’ (followed by the more standard formulation ‘or to strike terror in the people or any section of the people’).⁸ But note well: the former clause could well deem any opposition parties, however loyal, ‘terrorist organizations’. After all, it is the job of the opposition to oppose, thereby engendering ‘disunity and dissensus’.

Well, words mean whatever we say they mean, in an observation that Lewis Carroll attributes to Humpty Dumpty. And the law is whatever lawmakers say it is. But big words such as ‘terrorist’ carry mighty consequences, and we ought be correspondingly careful how we use them. Fussing over definitions in such circumstances is anything but pure pedantry. Figuring out what exactly terrorism is and what exactly makes it so wrong is crucial to framing an appropriate response to that evil.

Notes

1 Just as there are many wrongs which those who practise terrorism protest; although unlike Honderich (2003a, 2003b) I am not prepared to allow that fact to excuse terrorists their own wrongs. For a much more careful discussion of circumstances under which terrorism might be morally justified, see Corlett (2003, chs 5–6).

2 For a partial survey and potted history, see Robin (2004).

3 Frightened people often end up killing lots of other people, however; and for that, politicians who intentionally instilled that fear might be largely to blame.

4 As I have been insisting for some time, now (Goodin 1982, ch. 1).

5 Not to mention the public, more generally. Martha Nussbaum (2003, 233) recounts the tale of ‘a baseball game I went to at Comiskey Park, the first game played in Chicago after September 11 … [A]s the game went on and the beer began flowing, one heard, increasingly, the chant, “U-S-A, U-S-A”, a chant left over from the Olympic hockey match in which the United States defeated Russia, expressing the wish for America to defeat, abase, humiliate, its enemies. Indeed, the chant USA soon became a general way of expressing the desire to crush one’s enemies, whoever they were. When the umpire made a bad call against the Sox, the same group in the bleachers turned to him, chanting “U-S-A”. Anyone who crosses us is an evil terrorist, deserving of extinction.’ Or anyway such was the mindset of the White Sox fans on that day.

6 Aglionby (2004). Arroyo’s own phrasing was ambiguous but at least admits of this reading.

7 Pear (2004). The reporter has Paige saying the NEA ‘was like “a terrorist organization” ’; but Paige’s own spokesperson reports, ‘He said he considered the NEA to be a terrorist organization.’

8 India (2002), sec. 3 (1)(a).

2

Terrorism as Unjust War: Killing Innocent Civilians

Nowadays terrorism is typically defined as involving most fundamentally ‘violence against’ (and in the limiting case ‘the killing of’) ‘innocent civilians’. The wrongness of terrorism then follows almost automatically from the simple analytic fact that it is wrong, by definition, to harm (especially kill) ‘the innocent’.¹

That is very much the orthodox way of approaching such problems. Theories of ‘just war’ handed down to us from medieval Church fathers have been assimilated into international law, culminating in the Geneva Conventions.² Because that is our received way of moralizing about the use of force, it is also the most natural way for us to begin to think about the use of force by terrorists, be they foreign or domestic.

Among academics, Michael Walzer, whose Just and Unjust Wars constitutes the leading exposition of just-war theory for our time, did much to champion that characterization of terrorism as well.³ As he summarizes that position,

Terrorism is the deliberate killing of innocent people, at random, in order to spread fear through a whole population and force the hand of its political leaders.

Elaborating, he writes,

The victims of a terrorist attack are third parties, innocent bystanders; there is no special reason for attacking them; anyone else within a large class of (unrelated) people would do as well. The attack is directed indiscriminately against the entire class.⁴

A plethora of academic commentators follow Walzer’s lead in defining terrorism as essentially involving violence against innocent civilians.⁵

It is not just academics who think this way, however. This view of ‘terrorism’ as violence against innocent civilians is enshrined in US law. Title 22, section 2656f(d) of the US Code defines terrorism as:

pre-meditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatants, targeted by sub-nation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Terrorism as Unjust War: Killing Innocent Civilians
• 3 Terrorism as a Political Tactic: Intending to Instil Fear
• 4 States Can Be Terrorists, Too
• 5 Warnings Can Be Terroristic, Too: Profiting Politically from Fear
• 6 Warnings Bound to Be Misheard
• 7 Terrorizing Democracy
• 8 Conclusions
• References
• Index