Question Taking into account history, isn't it justifiable to resort to terrorism in the face of a vast empire?

Accepted:
January 29, 2006

Comments

This is a really difficult question. If terrorism is the killing of civilians in order to achieve some political end, vast empires as well as fringe political groups commit terrorist acts--sometimes appealing to a state of war to justify their killings (but a declaration of war doesn't seem to make a moral difference.) If the history of terrorism by vast empires justifies terrorist acts by fringe political groups, then one would have to say that the violent measures taken by the empires (prolonged detention and torture of suspected terrorists, for example), are also justified. But if that is the case, what does 'justified' mean, and why should anyone care whether an act is 'justified'? One thought: 'justified' seems to mean at least two different things: the best thing to do, in the circumstances (which could be quite a bad thing to do, considered by itself), and 'a good thing to do' or 'the right thing to do', period. I think a terrorist act might be justified in the first sense, but not in the second, but many people condemn terrorists thinking that terrorists don't recognise the costs of their actions (to their victims), and so don't see their acts as bad by themselves and merely excusable given the circumstances. And I suppose that starting to think about this sort of complexity would paralyse many would-be agents of terrorist acts.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'taking into account history'.

You may mean that only violence can end oppression. This is controversial, of course: didn't Gandhi's non-violent independence movement lead to the end of British colonial power in India? And even if there aren't any historical precedents of non-violent movements ending oppression, should we assume that such a thing can never happen?

If you mean (by 'taking into account history') that vast empires got their power by acts of terror themselves, then the answer to 'is terrorism against vast empires justifiable?' may be seem to be one you could settle by figuring out who was the first aggressor. But given history, the first aggressors are often long gone, and the targets of alleged retaliations, while they may be beneficiaries of the first aggressions, aren't themselves aggressors (at least not individually). Is it right for them to be the targets of terrorist acts? Terrorist actions are always (said to be) justified in terms of the wrongs they seek to rectify; perhaps, to figure out what actions are justified (in the second sense distinguished above), we would all do better to focus on the question of how the future generations of the world can best live.

Question Taking into account history, isn't it justifiable to resort to terrorism in the face of a vast empire? Accepted:January 29, 2006

Question Taking into account history, isn't it justifiable to resort to terrorism in the face of a vast empire?

Accepted:
January 29, 2006