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We're joined by an international terrorism expert to discuss how to define terrorism and whether it can ever be ethical.
We read:
-Donald Black's "The Geometry of Terrorism" (2004)
-J. Angelo Corlett's "Can Terrorism be Morally Justified?" (1996)
-Igor Primoratz's article on terrorism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007, revised 2011)
-Karl Heinzen's Murder and Freedom (1853)
-Bhagat Singh's "The Philosophy of the Bomb: A Brief Response to Gandhi" (1930)
-Carl von Clausewitz's On War (introduction) (1816ish)
Jon advises the U.S. government and has written textbooks on terrorism. He puts al-Qaeda in historical perspective, helps work through definitions from Black's "pure terrorism" (which has an "upwards" social geometry requiring both geographic access and cultural difference) to Corlett's attempt to construct a definition that doesn't automatically rig the moral question. Primoratz helps us ask whether harming innocents (e.g. in a war where you're threatened with extinction) is ever justified, and Heinzen and Singh preach violence against violence, where the state itself, being founded on violence, can't be effectively fought through "soul force" alone. We also discuss how the philosophical questions relate to the practical ones: do we even need a definition, or is a practical scheme of classification sufficient for all practical purposes? Plus, a bit on gun control and the state's monopoly on force. Read more about the topic and get the readings.
End song: "1000 Points of Light" by The MayTricks (1992). Read about it.
This is a real ripper of an episode. Thanks guys!
Are those guns in the picture official lego parts? 🙂
No but they still exist http://www.combatbrick.com/index.php/category/14-custom-lego-minifigs-toy-guns-accessories
🙂
Sadly, they make that lego-dude look a bit like a child soldier … :-/
Ack! I followed the amazon link (wanna help with those student loans).
SO MANY EDITIONS! I’m confused.
Hi Guys,
Awesome episode, thanks for the rant at the end, it is funny to hear you guys respond to some of the nonsense people send you.
1. Gun nuts do still listen to your show, you know… we’re not all folding our arms and pouting
2. The talk about how the British situation vs. the “Indians” (really like a jillion ethnic groups united just by opposition to colonialism) wasn’t on the level of the Nazis is debatable to say the least… Churchill was a jerk and as late as 1943 the British were fine with starving 3 million people on the subcontinent to death. Honestly I would say the ethnic attitudes present in the German and British populations (before the death camps changed the attitudes of the West forever) was different only because the Germans had so long been weak/divided/small and turned it inward (against the Jew) while the British had a global empire of Africans and Indians and Amerindians to oppress. (Hitler, for example, had mythologized the British and later American genocide of the Red Man and took a sick inspiration from it)
3. All the talk of Britain in World War II vs. the Germans and whether it was the ultimate existential threat justifying firebombings, etc. was interesting but you guys missed the real oppurtunity, to talk about Stalin/the Soviets… An interesting conversation could be had about how many of the atrocities perpetrated by Stalin could be “understood” (or however you want to phrase it) in light of the fact that there were maybe 5 years to turn a barely postfeudal backwater into something that could stare down the Wehrmacht and the 12-15 million deaths vs. the 100 million Slavic people facing extinction in the event of a Third Reich victory and repeats of Leningrad/Stalingrad all the way to Vladivostok.
4. The talk about government monopoly on force seemed fairly insubstantial and “from-the-hip” (no offense) and I hope y’all will address something from the (not Ayn Rand) libertarians in the future, Proudhon or Bakunin or something in that vein
5. Thanks for not throwing Marx under the bus, I hope you won’t shy away from controversy in the future. It’s good you have fairly temperate natures, I would have turned around and done Lenin or Mao in the face of some of those complaints =P
I really enjoyed this episode although it was quite unusual for PEL in that the discusion got very practical at some points and I think that is great and wouldn’t mind some episodes dipping into the practical pool once in a while.
I enjoyed the theoretical discussions on definitions of Terrorism particularly. I’ve always focused on the word terror when thinking about terrorism in a theoretical sense. And I think you guys hit on that quite well. I particularly liked the contrast with civil disobedience, with the idea that it was a feeling of guilt in the affected party that leads to the ‘win.’ I think I would add pity to that equation depending the specific act of disobedience. If terrorism works the same way, then it is through fear (of continued terrorism) that leads to the ‘win.’
I think there are actually several different types and examples that can all be simplified into the following scenario:
Group A commits Act X that Group B dislikes. If the mere fact that Group B dislikes Act X is not enough to stop Group A from continuing it, we should assume that Group A gains some benefit from Act X. In some cases the political process or the legal process may settle the issue in B’s favor, but often this is not the case. Therefore, B can either accept X, or change the situation where the cost of X is not worth the benefit. This, to me, is the principal by which both terrorism and civil disobedience are performed. The question is what can Group B add to the cost of Act X? In those cases Fear or Guilt (pity) respectively. Obviously sanctions work on this principal, but I think so does war, labor strikes, and boycotts. For any Act X, any Group B decides which additional costs it can apply to the act. I think that this formulation does little to aid in the fight against or prevention of terrorism, but I think Important to be able to possibly eliminate terror as a viable strategy, theoretically. That is to possibly eliminate it as a choice that we would make. I think there are a lot a variables to consider if Group B wants to commit Act Y to Group A as an additional cost added to Act X. Is Act Y worth the cost to Group B? Will Group A decide that the elimination of Group B is worth sustaining X and ending Y. Will Group A add Act Z as an additional cost to act Y? How does Act Y affect Group D or Group D, and what acts can those groups commit in response?
In fact, thinking about various responses to political or legal powerlessness and thinking about the potential consequences both short and long term could in fact be a way to curb terrorism. If we find that terrorism isn’t worth it, would it be far fetched to think that the powerless the world over, the potential terrorists could be convinced of the same?
-Nate
http://warriorpublications.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/smash-pacifism-zine.pdf
http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Interface-3-1-Williams.pdf
It is interesting that the two most overtly terroristic forces on the planet, the military (U.S., Canadian, British at the forefront) and the police weren’t at the focal point. However, then again, a ‘specialist’ who is paid to reinforce the orientalized/western version of what terrorism is was who was speaking to the matter.
I would recommend reading ‘our enemies in blue’ by Kristian Williams and ‘Orientalism’ by Edward Said.
One comment that John made in reference to his friends in the middle east requesting that upon his return to the U.S. that he inform people that the Al Quaida is not representative of the overall population is interesting. Of course this is true, however it misses the point that racism is an incremental component to the massacring of the inhabitants of the middle east by the U.S. and NATO. This dehumynization is needed in order to convince the western terrorist, convinced otherwise, that those whom they are engaged in slaughtering are merely ‘collateral damage’, or dehumynized numbers rather than living breathing beings.
So, it wouldn’t matter what John says to his friends, as his very job is to inform those who terrorize the most oppressed around the planet how to terrorize them more efficiently.
Thank you very much for this.
I have checked out several podcasts over the past six months or so,
and I was certainly surprised to see this topic come up.
Several matters covered within–terrorism and related ideas of violence and/or uprising against real
or perceived threats–are things that I have been grappling with for some time, especially lately.
This was a very good discussion.
I wish that I could profess enlightenment.
I remain perplexed.
Not a criticism, at all. May that be understood.
Please keep on keepin’ on.
If one believes torturing a slave to set an example for others who may attempt escape is not terrorism, I say ask the slaves. Were they terrified? Goddam right they were terrified, purposely so. If both the intent and the consequence of an action is terrorism, yet calling it terrorism “opens the floodgates” to a useless, overly broad definition, we must acknowledge that a vast number of people live in terror. It’s no use establishing a more narrow definition, such as “pure terrorism.” To me, the words “pure” and “terrorism” go together about as well as “legitimate” and “rape.”
I was surprised by that. Was it just me or did you guys not really talk about slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans?
Those would seem to fit the bill for the emergency cases Wes was so interested in.
I’d also be interested in testing slavery and Native American genocide as possible cases of justified terrorism form the oppressed side. So we aren’t talking about Little Big Horn or a slave killing a plantation owner. We’re talking about cases of Native Americans killing frontier families as their way of increasing the cost of settling the west. Or a group of slaves burning down a plantation house with everyone in it as a way to increase the cost of owning slaves.
It’s possible that part of that argument would be a discussion of who, if anybody, counts as innocent. That seems like a tricky line of reasoning, but it might not be any trickier than arguing, innocents were killed, but that’s justifiable. And neither of those seem like they’re any more tricky than saying the right course of action is to do nothing, or something that might not of worked.
It occurs to me that passive resistance and civil disobedience are strategies that are wholly dysfunctional prior to probably the 20th century in a lot of cases. And those strategies were still possibly useless in many 20th century situations and even today. We’d have to really get into ‘the other’ and some anthropological and sociological concepts to really get into that (which would be a fantastic episode BTW), but as Mark said, civil disobedience relies of guilt, and I agree and add pity, and it seems like guilt and pity would have very little affect against a power that saw you as ‘other’ and as ‘less than,’ and sometimes as not even human. I think that that realization is critical when thinking about the possibility of justifiable terrorism in certain cases.
I think that refraining from calling any number of things, including any number of heinous and condemnable acts in the course of slavery, genocide, police action, war or colonialism, ‘terrorism’ doesn’t amount to a moral judgement of those acts either for or against. I think it’s important that a limited usage of ‘terrorism’ doesn’t diminish the wrongness of any act that falls outside of those limits. I’m certainly not defending or apologizing for anything, either. It doesn’t seem to me that the use of violence against innocents, nor committing and act that causes terror in a victim, or even necessarily the combination of those two is sufficient for terrorism. It seems to me that the lack of ‘conventional’ ‘power’ is a necessary component.
When a colonial power (The US, The UK, Spain) invades a territory for exploitation (First Nations, Indian Subcontinent, Meso-America) nearly all of their activities, however unjust, are done using conventional powers, including technological superiority and deceit. The colonial power always has the upper hand and regardless of how many innocents are slaughtered or how terrified the survivors are, the goals were accomplished with force and deceit, not fear.
Now, it is not only possible, but extremely likely, that in certain circumstances, a portion of the stronger force winds up in the weaker position. Wether because of being outnumbered, supply issues, or fortifications. In those cases, it would not be surprising that when might and lies have failed, that fear becomes the tactic. But in those specific cases, the colonial forces were in the weaker position.
Similarly in slavery. Slavery was not perpetuated through fear primarily, it was perpetuated through law and economics. Individual slaves may have been controlled through their fear of what would happen to them if they disobeyed or tried to escape. I’m inclined to think that fear was used to supplement other powers like the laws and physical force, but I would be interested in seeing a case made for the control of slave and other ‘make an example out of’ cases being terrorism without relying on merely violence on innocents and instilling of fear.
Military power and police power seem pretty strait-forward in this context. People are certainly afraid of soldiers and policemen, and innocents die or are injured constantly when the military or the police (of anywhere, not just the US) use force, but they’re using force, not fear. Fear is a byproduct; a useful byproduct, but just a byproduct. When a line of mounted officers ride down a group of protestors, it’s brutal, but it’s not terrorism. They’re using force (and sometimes legal immunity). When the guy in Full Metal Jacket murders women and children from a helicopter, he’s using force. It’s not terrorism, it’s a warcrime. (Now, if a military force kills a village of women and children to scare the enemy soldiers into surrendering or exposing their location, maybe that’s terrorism, but I think it’s a warcrime first and it’s more useful to categorize it that way.)
-Nate
Ha ha, “I can’t understand German no matter what language it’s in.” Indeed.
What a great combination: Philosophical versus Practical Expert on Terrorism. This seems like a no-brainer that we should have with all subjects at all times. Combining theoretical knowledge and pragmatic knowledge was a very powerful dialectic during your interaction with each other–worth the price of admission alone. Your guest sort of stole the show from the power of his expertise, and I enjoyed your efforts to make it more applicable generally. I think the terrorism expert actually tried to move toward non-violence at the end (“Wish I had the courage to believe in Ghandi’s nonviolence,” or something similar). Now for my stuff:
Toward a manifesto of Peace:
Violence (terrorism) seems to be so difficult for the average human. Either they are accustomed to fighting and advocate violence or they are not and advocate ppassivity. Either we moralize and solve the problem by justification of violence or we become passive and run from violence. Today there seems to be so much political correctness that truly taking a stand is avoided, but in it’s place, political stands seem more palatable. When the guest said that “Terrorism is a small group of people who threaten or use violence against innocent people for political change,” I didn’t hear the “political change” part and felt a resolution. I was so disappointed when I went back and realized the same old thing: politics justifies violence. Really? How is that not just the new morality.
Derrida identifies that law without force is impotent and force without law is unjust. Is justice possible? Perhaps not, but we should strive for it. However, how can violence not be injustice, and how is it distinguished from force, or strength, which is not violence?
I like to follow Nietzsche when it comes to power, since he is unraveling the gordian knot of the Master-Slave relationship, and coming out on the side of standing up for your value as opposed to being run over by anyone else. This is not about Ghandian passive-resistance hoping that there is justice, but standing strong for what you know to be true. This is not about terroist-violence hoping that there is justice, but standing for what you know to be true.
Your violence against me is a violation of my truth, and that is not negotiable. I do not stand for being a slave in the face of your violent mastery. I will not start the violence, but I will end it with whatever violence brings the peace, either as an individual or as a state entity. Obviously, there is no place for self-righteousness here in the application of such a principle, but I believe it is “grace under pressure” as Hemingway desired, to be able to live up to the conditions that become demanded of us. Politics does not justify violence, but violence justifies politics in the name of nonviolence. Shalom, (عليكم) as-salāmu, and peace out.
The guest on this episode elicited acid and bile from my innards.
Great discussion, and I was especially fascinated with the portion about whether terrorism is in all cases morally reprehensible or whether it could somehow be justified. In my view, if terrorism is understood, minimally, to be the targeting of innocent civilians in order to advance a social, religious, or political cause, then it is in all cases wrong no matter who does it and when. In any case, on the podcast Stuff You Should Know, there was a recent episode posted on apartheid. In one portion of the podcast, the hosts talked about Nelson Mandela being involved with a terrorist organization to end apartheid, an organization which would specifically target civilians in order to challenge apartheid. The hosts of the show, whom I like, were pretty nonchalant about the fact, although knowing this changes my view of Nelson Mandela. Would you guys think Nelson Mandela is morally reprehensible for his terrorist activities or do you think the ends (i.e., ending apartheid) justified the means?
why focus on “civilians” as opposed to something like the innocent especially in a system like apartheid where most of the thuggish perpetrators/citizens involved just paid taxes and never directly took up arms against their darker hued countrymen?
Zizek on the normalization of torture in Zero Dark Thirty:
“Torture saves lives? Perhaps – but for certain it loses souls, and its most obscene justification is to claim that a true hero is ready to forsake his or her soul to save the lives of his or her countrymen. The normalization of torture in Zero Dark Thirty is a sign of the moral vacuum we are gradually approaching. If there is any doubt about this, try to imagine a major Hollywood film depicting torture in a similar way twenty years ago. It is unthinkable.”
Have you considered doing an episode on a justified war? You could do, The Morality of War – Brian Orend, He gives a good account of a justified war, or possibly The Melian Dialogue which is another interesting look at war. There is one more I could suggest but the name escapes me at the moment.
Brian Orend also wrote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the just war, and it is a good boiling down of his book as well.
Hi, Dan,
I think your topic suggestion is a very good one. At this point, I don’t think we’re much fixed on tracking down experts to be on the show unless they’re either super famous (or idolized by or personal friends with one of us, at least) or they’re fans of the show and so familiar with what we’re doing here and why (like Jon on this episode and Lucy Lawless). It’d be too easy to have it turn into just an interview/monologue with such a person.
That said, when we approach this topic I’ll shoot the guy an email and see if he’s super hyped to get involved.
I was actually suggesting his book on war, The Morality of War as a reading, not necessarily him as a guest. Then his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the just war as a free smaller version of his book. I would also suggest, arguing about war by Michael Walzer and the Melian Dialog has some good stuff about war.
In this you say the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were successful in ending the war. There are good reasons to doubt that. It was most likely the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that ended the war. Also we intercepted cables that said Japan was willing to surrender as long as the emperor didn’t face war crimes, a condition the US accepted after dropping the bomb.
I also doubt that the US really could argue Supreme Emergency here because most of the we saved lives arguments come after the US won the war. The arguments are not arguments discussed in any depth by the decision makers who were dropping the bomb, but made after to excuse the decision to drop the bomb. I shoot into a crowd with no knowledge of who is in the crowd, I hit a deranged gunman, I still am not justified even though I saved lives and I had to act to get that gunman.
Also it seems that there was no connection to the grand strategy with dropping the bomb. The grand strategy is how tactics interact with strategy and logistics to form a plan on how to win the war. This seems disconnected from the grand strategy, and thus would be out of place as a plan to win the war. What I think it was was a weapons test. The US was trying to figure out how to use Nuclear Weapons in warfare.
Hi Dan,
Debating whether the A-bombs did or didn’t end WWII’s Pacific Theatre strikes me as a red herring and/or meaningless quibble in this context. We were already fire-bombing Japanese civilians en masse with or without the A-bomb. More Japanese civilians were killed in the Tokyo fire-bombings than in the A-bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. And it seems futile to suggest that that the collective fire-bombings of Tokyo and Nagoya and Osaka and Kobe didn’t gradually sap Japan’s will to fight by 1945.
If we hadn’t dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, then we would have simply dropped more incendiary bombs on those very same civilian populations. It’s not like the A-bomb presented for the first time the question of “Should we bomb civilians or not?”
In other words, killing mass numbers of civilians simply works — in Germany and Japan. That’s why we did it. It seems like splitting hairs to argue whether the two A-bombs made the difference, as those were simply new instruments being introduced to a campaign already in effect.
So, in the context of an ethical discussion, I find arguing “Were the A-bombs effective?” less relevant than “Even if bombing civilian populations does work to end a war, is it morally justified?”
Hi Daniel,
I will definitely agree that your question is more pressing. It is not however a small quibble. Why is it the case for instance that international law (which has its basis in just war theory) and just war theory in general forbids the use of chemical weapons? Even for the purpose of military targets? The reason is proportionality, you must use only the force necessary to complete the goal. It is one of the main concepts of jus in bello, which is why WMD’s are considered (regardless of target) not just. To give an extreme example, Nuking Grenada could not be justified, since the same goals could be achieved through conventional warfare. Even if we only Nuked their military bases. So if the goal they wished to achieve are able to be accomplished by conventional means then conventional means should be used.
I also would disagree with the general notion of killing mass numbers of civilians simply works. Tell that to Churchill, no not Churchill circa 1945, Churchill circa 1942. The RAF commenced civilian bombings in 1942 and it simply did not work. In fact Japan’s surrender was largely due to their being militarily beaten, same with Germany. It was only after the allies stormed across all of Germany that they surrendered. This is not as small as a quibble as it would seem either, it further puts off supreme emergency, as you need to expect your actions to make a difference.
So in short I agree there is a bigger question, and it seems in either case the US had already decided to cross the lines of civilian deaths and possibly proportionality, but to say these are small quibbles, I would disagree.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for this, but I fear I may have been unclear as to what I meant by “red herring and/or meaningless quibble.”
It’s only the specific issue of whether the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombings did or didn’t prompt Japan’s surrender that I find to be a red herring and/or meaningless quibble. It was only that specific comment to which I meant to apply my description.
That is to say, it really doesn’t matter whether or not the A-bombings in particular were necessary to prompt Japan’s surrender. We would and could have killed at least as many civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki through conventional means (i.e., the same incendiary bombs used in other civilian-heavy Japanese urban centers) had we not used the A-bombs.
So, the real “just war” argument isn’t meaningfully conducted by focusing on how we killed their civilians (A-bombs vs. incendiaries), but whether we should consider civilian population centers a legitimate target during wartime.
You and I could argue and argue about whether killing civilians is effective during wartime, but:
(a) it’s a bit like arguing whether Mussolini would have won the war if he had an A-bomb arsenal. He didn’t, so anything beyond that is a “what if” story. There’s no definitive way to empirically backstop any arguments about what was or wasn’t effective, and
(b) anyway, arguing efficacy is a bit of cheat if we’re to be discussing the ethics of the matter, which shouldn’t hinge upon the issue of “what works”.
Hi Daniel,
It seems we are talking about two separate aspects of what constitutes a just war. I am assuming we accept the Supreme Emergency argument, which they discussed a little of in the program. You are wanting to address whether the Supreme Emergency argument works. What is justified inside of a SE context is also a worthy discussion.
Some background for those who are unfamiliar with the SE argument. Just War Theory says that acts of targeting civilians are unjustified. SE makes an exception for when the act prevents a greater evil or loss of life. Essentially the state in a Supreme Emergency is in such dire straits that to not act would cause greater evil.
For instance in the early stages of WW2 Great Britain stood alone against the Nazi advance, they faced a supreme emergency. The consequences of a Nazi occupied Great Britain were so severe and immediate that they chose the lesser of two evils. Essentially there are no good paths, to choose one option you kill civilians and the other option means the collapse of your society and the death of your civilians. Neither option is preferable so they choose the least terrible option.
Some have even expounded on this idea to extend it to the bombings of Japan. The argument in general goes, if the US army starved out or invaded Japan many more would have died. So the US was faced with only bad options.
If we are going to discuss whether civilians should be targeted at all then it seems the discussion should be whether wars could ever be justified, since any modern war will have civilian casualties. Civilians will die whether from starvation or accidental bombings. If the killing of civilians is unjustified and all wars cause civilian casualties then all wars are unjustified. Hey we could even talk about the greater idea of whether it can be justified to kill anything that feels pain since that is the greater concern. The point is that just because there is a framework in greater context doesn’t exclude a meaningful conversation about the smaller framework.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss hypothetical situations. Also the reason efficiency is needed in a discussion of just war is because, if you have no idea whether or not a tactic will work then you are causing the deaths of soldiers for no good reason. If a bombing is ordered it better be in the hopes of getting closer to the ending of the war. Another principle in Just War Theory is that you have to have a reasonable chance at succeeding in your war. For instance let’s say we go to stop the atrocities in the Sudan, if there are no chance that we could actually stop the atrocities then by stepping in we are causing more death.
In any case if you do not buy a conventionalist concept of war that does not mean we should not discuss a conventionalist concept of war. It is a little like saying I do not believe in divine command theory, so we should not be discussing divine command theory. (Loves me some debate, fyi. Hope to hear back from you.)
http://newbooksinhistory.com/2013/05/31/martin-a-miller-the-foundations-of-modern-terrorism-cambridge-up-2013/
This guy certainly had the proper voice and cadence to discuss this subject, but I’m surprised you guys didn’t Socrates him and force him to give a coherent definition of terrorism. To me that seems to be the entire problem with the concept of terrorism–why it’s such a loaded term–and, though I can see how he was a nice guy and you didn’t want to troll him, I believe that you let him off the hook and did the philosophical community a disservice in this episode.