Terrorism: A Philosophical Analysis

238 Pages·2003·1.018 MB·English

by  J. Angelo Corlett (auth.)

TERRORISM:
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES
VOLUME 101
Founded by Wilfrid S. Sellars and Keith Lehrer
Editor
Keith Lehrer, University of Arizona, Tucson
Associate Editor
Stewart Cohen, Arizona State University, Tempe
Board of Consulting Editors
Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Radu Bogdan, Tulane University, New Orleans
Marian David, University of Notre Dame
Allan Gibbard, University of Michigan
Denise Meyerson, Macquarie University
François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod, EHESS, Paris
Stuart Silvers, Clemson University
Barry Smith, State University of New York at Buffalo
Nicholas D. Smith, Lewis & Clark College
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
TERRORISM
A Philosophical Analysis
by
J. ANGELO CORLETT
San Diego State University,
San Diego, U.S.A.
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-1695-0 ISBN 978-94-010-0039-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0039-0
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
©2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by K l u w e r A c a d e m i c P u b l i s h e r s in 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
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TABLEOFCONTENTS
PREFACE.............................................................................................................. ix
INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1
CHAPTERONE.Is There a Moral Duty to Obey the Law?................................. 10
CHAPTERTWO.Confronting Political Authority Non-Violently....................... 19
CHAPTERTHREE.Political Violence.................................................................. 47
CHAPTERFOUR.Secession................................................................................ 75
CHAPTERFIVE.Can Terrorism EverBe Morally Justified?............................ 112
CHAPTERSIX.The Moral Status of Terrorism: Some RecentCases............... 146
CHAPTERSEVEN.Terrorism, Secession, and the United States: An
Indigenous Perspective.................................................................................... 171
CONCLUSION.................................................................................................... 195
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................... 199
INDEX............................................................................................................... 225
Key Words/Names: civil disobedience, Joel Feinberg, humanitarian
intervention, indigenism, Immanuel Kant, Martin Luther King, Jr., Karl
Marx, John Stuart Mill, legal obligation, moral duties, moral rights, Native
Americans, non-violent direct action, pacifism, political violence, John
Rawls, retribution, revolution, secession, Socrates, terrorism, Michael
Walzer.
For Joel Feinberg,
A person of excellence in both mind and moral virtue,
and whose kindness seems to know no bounds.
PREFACE
This book is the culmination of over 15 years of research on terrorism,
secession, and related concepts such as the obligation to obey the law,
pacifism, civil disobedience, non-violent direct action, political violence,
revolution, and assassination. It is sincerely hoped that the content of this
book is construed as an ethical and philosophical attempt to advance human
understanding of some of life’s most intractable problems, namely, terrorism
and more generally, political violence. This book is proffered as a
propadeutic to further study of these issues and is not to be interpreted as the
author’s final word on them. For the pursuit of truth and avoidance of error
is never wholly complete, but at best a life-long process of continual
reflection, analysis and argument. And it will please the author of this book
if it brings even a modicum of knowledge to the difficulties it investigates.
Some of the chapters of this book have been published or have
otherwise experienced the critical assistance of various public academic
forums, and I am sincerely grateful to those who have shaped my thinking
about terrorism and its related concepts. Among those who have provided
critical and helpful insights concerning various sections of the contents of
this book are: David Copp, Richard Falk, Joel Feinberg, Richard W. Miller,
and Thomas Pogge. I am grateful also to those who have provided incisive
comments on an earlier draft of this book: Virginia Held, Aleksandar Jokic,
Al Spangler and Burleigh Wilkins. And I am tremendously indebted to the
invaluable insights of the Publisher’s referee for this book, the Philosophical
Studies Series Editor-in-Chief, Keith Lehrer, and to Kluwer Academic
Publishers for having the courage to publish it.
I would like to acknowledge that the content of Chapter 2 is a revised
version of my article, “What is Civil Disobedience?” Philosophical Papers,
27 (1997), pp. 241-59. Chapter 4 is a greatly expanded version of my article,
“Secession and Native Americans,” Peace Review, 12 (2000), pp. 5-14.
Chapter 5 is a revised version of my article, “Can Terrorism Be Morally
Justified?” Public Affairs Quarterly, 10 (1996), pp. 163-84. I am grateful to
each of the journals and their respective Publishers for use of the articles in
revised form.
Finally, at the time of completion of this book, I accessed a copy of
Professor Ted Honderich’s illuminating book, After the Terror. I regret that
due to considerations of time, Honderich’s book is not herein given the
attention it so richly deserves.
INTRODUCTION
Recent years have been plagued by incidents that often eventuate in political
violence such as terrorism and secessionist movements. A rather few
examples of recent terrorist acts include the “Unabomber” Theodore
Kaczinsky’s acts of violence against various individuals from the 1970’s
through the 1990’s in the United States, the 1998 bombings of the U.S.
embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania, the 21 December 1988 bombing of Pan
American flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, the 1996 abortion clinic and
gay nightclub bombings in Atlanta in the year that followed the 1996
Olympic bombing (an act that is rather difficult to classify as genuinely
terrorist), the constant bombings of Occidental Petroleum oil pipelines by
FARC in Colombia during the past decade of its nearly 40-year civil war
with the Colombian government, the 19 April 1995 bombing of the federal
building in Oklahoma City, OK, and the 11 September 2001 attacks on the
World Trade Center and U.S. Pentagon buildings. It must be kept in mind,
however, that such well publicized incidents of terrorism tend to overshadow
in the minds of many the fact that more regular terrorist acts occur in
countries like Israel (by Israel and Israelis against Palestinians, and by
HAMAS against Israel), Great Britain and Spain, just to name a few.
Examples of secessionist movements include the Colonists secession1 from
the British Crown in 1775, the peaceful secession of Brasil from Portugal in
1822, the southern states in the U.S. and their united secessionist attempt
from the U.S. northern states during the U.S. Civil War, the secessions of
various former USSR republics into independent states during the early
1990’s, Quebec’s recent attempts to peacefully separate from Canada,
Macedonia’s success in seceding, the recent creation of an independent
Slovakia, as well as the current Basque separatist’s move to secede from
Spain, and the civil wars that erupted in recent secessionist movements in
Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It is particularly important to understand terrorism and secession, not
only because their occurrences are increasing in numbers globally, but
because of the violence that typically, though not always, accompanies such
political movements. Philosophically, we want to know precisely what are

1 If some are correct in thinking that the Boston Tea Party and other incidents of political
violence by Colonists against the British constituted acts of terrorism, then the U.S. seems to
be founded on its committing terrorist-secessionist acts against the British Crown. This would
seem to imply that U.S. patriots, then, are not in a moral position to condemn outright either
terrorism or secession.
2 INTRODUCTION
terrorism and secession, and can they ever be morally justified? What is the
difference between a truly terrorist act and one that seems like one but is
not? What makes them terrorist acts as opposed to, say, the mere hijacking
and bombing of an airliner? And does the distinction matter? The
philosophical analysis of the nature of terrorism that I provide and defend
answers the former question, and in so doing it provides the law good reason
to distinguish between merely criminal behavior and genuine terrorism. Such
a distinction is important in that it serves as a good reason for courts to
sentence one kind of behavior more harshly than the other, other things
being equal. Perhaps what most distinguishes the respective kinds of
behavior is motive or purpose. But what kind of motive or purpose
distinguishes terrorism from terrorist-like criminal behavior?
Moreover, at first glance, it might seem that, though secession might be
justified on moral grounds, it would be ludicrous to think that terrorism
could ever be morally justified. For, it might be argued, how could an act,
event, or state of affairs which is so indiscriminately violent be morally
justified?
In order to bring rational reflection to bear on matters of terrorism and
secession, it is essential that a series of inter-related questions be addressed.
For the questions of whether or not terrorism and secession are ever morally
justified are contingent on the answer to the question of whether or not
political violence (of which terrorism is a species) is ever morally justified.
And the question of whether or not political violence is ever morally
justified is dependent on the answer to the question of whether or not
violence more generally is ever morally justified. Yet the answer to these
questions presupposes an answer to the question of whether or not it is ever
justified, on moral grounds, to break the law, and if so, whether one must in
such cases do so non-violently. This book considers each of these queries in
reverse order.
Chapter 1 is devoted to a philosophical investigation of the question: Is
there a moral obligation to obey the law? If so, what kind of obligation is it?
As we shall see, Immanuel Kant avers that it is an absolute moral obligation,
always to be upheld, while Socrates does not give a clear answer to this
question. Perhaps Socrates thinks we have a prima facie moral obligation to
obey the law, as is considered in Chapter 2. If we do not have an absolute
obligation to obey the law, under what conditions and in what ways are we
morally justified in disobeying it? Pacifism is one way to disobey the law.
What is pacifism, and under what conditions is it morally justified? Civil
disobedience is yet another way to disobey political authority. What is civil
disobedience, and is it ever morally justified? Intuitively speaking, it would
seem that if neither pacifism nor civil disobedience is ever morally justified,
then politicial violence would not ever be morally justified. For if non-
violent modes of political disobedience are not morally justified, then it
INTRODUCTION 3
would appear that violent methods of political change would not be justified.
One assumption here is that in general violent methods of social change
require a special moral justification that non-violent ones do not require.
This is because, it might be argued, violence holds the potential for innocent
lives to be lost. And this is especially true of violence that targets groups
many of the constituents of which may be morally innocent.2 On the other
hand, what if both pacifism and civil disobedience are at least sometimes
morally justified as means of challenging the law?
Chapter 3 centers on the question: What is political violence, and is it
ever morally justified? More specifically, what is terrorism, and is it ever
morally justified? What is secession, and and is it ever morally justified?
Whether or not terrorism or secession are necessarily violent means of
political challenge, it is clear that they are ways of confronting political
authority. By “confronting political authority,” I mean, for example, a
terrorist and/or secessionist act that addresses a particular political power
structure, whether by sending it a message that expects a cooperative
response, or by simply striking out in retaliation for a perceived wrong
doing, or in some other way that is based on something that the targeted
political regime did, failed to do, or attempted to do unjustly. And it is
important to understand not only what each of these methods of confronting
political authority is, but under what conditions each might be morally
justified. By “morally justified” I mean, briefly, that a practice is supported
by the balance of human reason, all things considered. Moreover, if one is
morally justified in doing something, then one has a moral right to the
exercize or enjoyment of it. Of course, that one is morally justified in and
has a moral right to this or that hardly amounts to a moral duty to the same,
though it does (generally) imply a moral duty of others to not interfere with
the exercize or enjoyment of the right.3
In Chapter 4, I provide a philosophical analysis of the nature of
secession and the conditions under which it is morally justified. Unlike any
other philosophical analysis of secession, mine sets forth and defends an
indigenous perspective on secession that is at the same time based on
generally accepted principles of the recent discussion in analytical
philosophy. In the end, it is only those (typically groups) that have valid
moral claims and/or interests to (the occupation of) certain lands that have

2 This is not meant to imply that either pacifism or even a failure to act for social change does
not require a special kind of moral justification. For in either case, such action or inaction, as
the case may be, might well eventuate in the harming or taking of innocent lives because of
the failure of certain folk to act in saving the lives of self or others.
3 This notion of a moral right is borrowed from Joel Feinberg, Freedom and Fulfillment
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), Chapters 8-10; Problems at the Roots of Law
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), Chapter 7.