essay war against terrorism

From Knowledge to Wisdom

Disastrous War against Terrorism

Nicholas Maxwell University College London Chapter 3 of Terrorism Issues: Threat Assessment , Consequences and Prevention , ed. Albert W. Merkidze, Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2007, pp. 111-133. Abstract Introduction Eight Principles 1. Comply with International Law 2. Combat Terrorism as Police Operation 3. Do Not Undermine Civil Liberties 4. Use Diplomacy and Intelligence 5. Resolve Conflicts that Fuel Terrorism 6. Combat Terrorism so as not to Promote It 7. Strengthen Treatises that Curtail Spread of Terrorist Materials 8. Do Not Commit Acts of Terrorism Global Problems Need for Public Education The Pursuit of Knowledge Correcting Blunders of the Enlightenment Conclusion References Notes Abstract In combating international terrorism, it is important to observe some basic principles, such as that international law must be complied with, care should be taken that one does not proceed in such a way that future terrorists are recruited, and one does not oneself become a terrorist. Unfortunately, the war on terrorism, conducted by President Bush, Prime Minister Blair and others since 9/11 in 2001, has violated all of these basic principles.  The outcome has been disastrous. In what follows, I take eight such principles in turn, and indicate how they have been violated, and how and why this has had adverse consequences. I then put the problem of terrorism into the context of other, and in some cases more serious global problems such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, war and the threat of war, and raise the question of how humanity can learn to tackle these problems more effectively and intelligently than they are being tackled at present. If these problems are to be tackled democratically, a majority of people in democratic countries need to understand what the problems are and what needs to be done about them. This, in turn, requires a major programme of public education. I conclude by putting forward a proposal as to how this can be brought about. [Back to Top] Introduction Terrorism is likely to be with us for quite some time. And the chances are that, as time passes, it will become increasingly dangerous. There is always the dreadful possibility that terrorists will get hold of biological or nuclear material that enables them to start an epidemic, or explode an atomic bomb - or at least a conventional bomb laced with radioactive material. The present President of the Royal Society in Britain, Professor Martin Rees, is so worried by these possibilities that he thinks that this might be our final century (Rees, 2003). Given all this, and given the spate of terrorist attacks both before and after 9/11, it is a matter of major importance that the liberal, democratic nations of the world collaborate in combating terrorism in as effective and intelligent a way as possible, and in a way which does as little damage as possible to those traditions and institutions of civilization we have managed so far to create and maintain. It is no good defeating terrorism in such a way that we destroy along the way the very thing we seek to preserve, what is best in our whole way of life. If we are to combat terrorism in this effective and intelligent manner, there are certain basic principles which must be observed. They include the following:- 1. International law must be complied with. 2. Terrorism must be combated as a police operation, not a war. 3. Civil liberties must not be undermined. 4. Nations suspected of harbouring or supporting terrorists must be engaged with both by means of diplomacy, and in such a way that intelligence is sought by stealth. 5. If terrorists' acts are motivated by long-standing conflict - as in the Palestine/Israeli conflict - every effort should be made by the international community of nations to resolve the conflict that fuels the terrorism. 6. As far as possible, terrorism must not be combated in such a way as to recruit terrorists.  7. International treatises designed to curtail the spread of terrorist materials must be maintained and strengthened. 8. Democratic nations combating terrorism must exercise care that, in combating terrorism, they do not thereby act as terrorists. Unfortunately, the war on terrorism, conducted by President Bush, Prime Minister Blair and others since 9/11 in 2001, has violated all of these principles, 1 to 8.  The outcome has been disastrous. In what follows, I take these eight principles in turn, and indicate how they have been violated, and how and why this has had adverse consequences. I then put the problem of terrorism into the context of other, and in some cases more serious global problems such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, war and the threat of war, and raise the question of how humanity can learn to tackle these problems more effectively and intelligently than they are being tackled at present. If these problems are to be tackled democratically, a majority of people in democratic countries need to understand what the problems are and what needs to be done about them. This, in turn, requires a major programme of public education. I conclude by putting forward a proposal as to how this can be brought about. Initially, I take terrorism to be the murdering or injuring of people for the sake of political ends. Any doubts there might be about this brief definition will not be relevant for what I have to say initially. Only when we come to the eighth principle, and the question of whether democratic nations perform terrorist actions, will it be necessary to consider more carefully what we should mean by terrorism. There are three basic reasons why, in combating terrorism, the above eight principles should be observed. Elementary moral principles relevant to national and international politics should not be violated; we should not undermine our traditions and institutions of civil rights, freedom and democracy under the mistaken idea that this is required to combat terrorism successfully; and we should not proceed in such a way that we cause more and more people to take up terrorism, thus exacerbating the very thing we seek to diminish. We go against one or other - or in some cases all three - of these points in failing to comply with each of the above eight principles. Let us, then, consider the eight principles in turn. {Back to Top] Eight Principles 1. International law must be complied with According to the UN charter, the circumstances in which nations can use force legally against other nations is limited to self-defence and collective action authorized by the Security Council. Does this mean that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, initiated by the US, UK and others in response to 9/11, were legal according to international law? The Afghanistan war is widely taken to have been legally justified. Resolution 1368 of the UN Security Council, taken on the 12 September 2001 (the day after 9/11) "Calls on all states to work together urgently to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these terrorist attacks and stresses that those responsible for aiding, supporting or harbouring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these acts will be held accountable". This was taken to justify legally the subsequent Afghanistan war. And it is true there was UN involvement in the subsequent occupation. Resolution 1378 of the 14 November 2001, condemns "the Taliban for allowing Afghanistan to be used as a base for the export of terrorism by the al-Qaeda network" and "Affirms that the United Nations should play a central role in supporting the efforts of the Afghan people to establish urgently … a new and transitional administration". There is, however, no Security Council resolution explicitly endorsing the war. The presumption was, nevertheless, that the war had UN approval on the grounds that the US had been attacked, and was justified in defending itself. But Afghanistan did not perform an act of aggression against the US.  The Taliban government refused to release bin Laden on the grounds that he would not receive a fair trial - very reasonable, unfortunately, given the behaviour of Bush's administration.  Would the UN Security Council have backed war with Afghanistan if bin Laden's target had been France rather than the US - if the Louvre, perhaps, had been demolished, with a similar death toll?  Or was the war deemed legal because the US is the world's superpower?  How big an act of terrorism does it have to be for this to make legal a war against a country which harbours the terrorists?  At the time of writing, Hillary Clinton has declared that if a terrorist attack occurred in the US her policy would be to attack those responsible. It seems all too likely that the Democrats, when they get into the White House, will continue Bush's policy in this respect. But it seems to me thoroughly reprehensible that criminal acts of individuals, which are not acts of war by states, should be regarded by the Security Council - and thus by international law - as providing grounds for a "war of self-defence".  That seems to stretch "self-defence" way beyond what must have been originally intended, and was only allowed because of the US's superpower status. In my view, then, even if understood to be sanctioned by the Security Council, the Afghanistan war ought to have been declared illegal, an act of criminal international aggression. The Iraq war of 2003 is quite different. It is clear that neither of the two conditions for war to be legal were met. Iraq was not attacking any other nation - most certainly not the US or UK. The US and UK governments did their utmost in an attempt to convince the rest of the world that an illegal nuclear research programme was underway in Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction", but the only evidence produced in support of these claims turned out to be fraudulent. There were no grounds for holding there was some kind of link between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden. On the contrary, they were bitterly opposed to each other. All grounds for holding Saddam Hussein had either the intent or the means to attack other nations (let alone the US or UK) turned out to be fake. George Bush was quite content to attack Iraq without any attempt to get the backing of the UN, but it was recognized that this would create difficulties for Tony Blair, and so the attempt was made to persuade the Security Council to back the impending war. This attempt failed, although the UK government insisted, against the facts, that it had all the UN resolutions needed to justify legally the war. There is no serious doubt whatsoever: in going to war against Iraq in 2003, the US, UK and other nations involved acted in violation of international law. Saddam Hussein was a monster, and his regime was monstrous. But our only hope for a more democratic, peaceful and just planet is through the observance, strengthening and enhancing of international law; it cannot be achieved by international acts which violate it - that is, by what are, essentially, criminal international actions. The idea that Bush's actions were essentially well-intentioned, in that he sought to replace a brutal dictatorship by a democracy, hardly stands up to examination. There are a number of other brutal dictatorships in the world which do not receive similar attention. It is hard not to believe that in the case of Iraq, the crucial additional factor was oil. Perhaps Bush really did believe his own rhetoric when he declared that democracy in Iraq would be a beacon for democracy in the Middle East. If so, democracy was desirable, for Bush, because - so it was believed - it would be associated with favourable trading arrangements in oil. The lies peddled by Bush and Blair in the lead-up to the Iraq war do not exactly encourage one to think the war was pursued with noble intentions. At one stage, 82% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to bin Laden and 9/11, a misconception Bush did nothing to discourage.[1] In fact, on the 22 nd September 2002, Bush declared "You can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when it comes to war on terror". But it is above all the way the Iraq campaign was pursued, both during and after immediate hostilities in the Spring of 2003, that makes the idea of good intentions seem so absurd. US soldiers stood by while massive looting took place after initial hostilities had ceased. Vast sums of money were squandered in Iraq - much of it Iraq's own oil funds - corruption being rife. Initially, little was done to establish security, law and order, in and around Baghdad. It should have been obvious to the invading armies, before the war, that there would be a severe security problem after hostilities had ceased, because of long-standing enmity between the Sunni and Shia populations. Saddam Hussein had used Sunni henchmen to persecute and subjugate the Shia population. Many Shia felt hatred towards the Sunni as a result, and the Sunni Iraqis had good cause to fear the revenge of the Shia majority. The occupying US forces acted as if they knew nothing of this history; they acted as if Sunni and Shia alike would feel nothing but gratitude towards them for invading their country and deposing Saddam Hussein. Not only has there been a disastrous failure to establish even a minimal level of security. There has also been a miserable failure to establish elementary services at a basic level: electricity, water, health, equipment in hospitals. This has been due, partly to corruption, partly to the lack of security and, more recently, because of the exodus from Iraq of professionals and others who are no longer prepared to endure the danger and misery of life in Iraq. Many others, no doubt, would leave if they could. The whole campaign to bring democracy to Iraq has been a disaster. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands more have been crippled. Few Iraqis, even four years after the war, think life in Iraq is better now than how it was under Saddam Hussein. The daily death toll has got worse and worse as time has passed. Prospects for the future look grim. Allied to the ignorance and stupidity of the US administration in Iraq after the war, there is the sheer brutality of the occupation, the apparent indifference to the killing of civilians at check points, and during hunts for insurgents, like that carried out in Fallujah. A recent Pentagon report revealed that "Approximately 10 per cent of soldiers and marines report mistreating non-combatants (damaged/destroyed Iraqi property when not necessary or hit/kicked a non-combatant when not necessary)". More than a third of soldiers thought torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow soldier.[2] Even worse, in a number of well-documented cases, US troops have fired on and killed civilians in Iraq since initial hostilities in 2003 came to an end, no one in the US military being brought to account. Well over one hundred thousand Iraqis have been killed during and since the war up to the time of writing.[3] And prospects for the future look grim. When the US pulls out, it seems quite likely that Iraq will descend into all-out civil war between Sunni and Shia. Iran, no doubt, will come to the aid of the Shia, the Sunni will be defeated, and a Shia Iran-Iraq axis will be established. The outcome of the war has been the very opposite of what Bush must have hoped for. It has enormously strengthened Iran in the Middle East. It has unleashed terrorism of almost unparalleled ferocity. The streets of Baghdad have become training grounds for future terrorists who will, no doubt, move on to the UK and the US. It has enormously strengthened the cause of al-Qaeda. And the unspeakable brutality and illegality of the war and the occupation - their sheer criminality - have enraged a proportion of Muslim youth all over the world and will no doubt inspire many to attempt to perform future acts of terrorism in revenge. Bush's "war against terrorism" has served here, as in other ways, to create the very thing that is, ostensibly, being fought to be defeated. It would be wrong, of course, to blame all this on the illegality of the war. Even if the UN had given the war its seal of approval, and the war had achieved some kind of official, if somewhat spurious legality, all the above disasters might well have ensued. On the other hand, we may take the view that, on this occasion, the UN got it right, the Iraq war was an illegal act of aggression, and there were, on this occasion at least, very good reasons for not going to war. The other way the "war against terrorism" has violated international law has to do with the treatment of prisoners, and the suspension of the Geneva Convention. Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have been held by the US for years without being charged, subjected to treatment that is widely regarded as amounting to torture, without resort to the law, in a kind of "legal black hole". These prisoners are classified as "enemy combatants", neither prisoners of war, nor subject to ordinary civil legal processes and safeguards. Treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib also clearly violated the Geneva Convention, and there have been accusations of torture sanctioned and aided by the US in prisons elsewhere in the world, victims being transported by means of the secret process of "rendition". Not only is all this a moral and legal outrage; it serves, again, to inspire some Muslim youth to join the war against the infidels, and become terrorists. [Back to Top] 2. Terrorism must be combated as a police operation, not a war President Bush declared "war on terrorism" in an address to the nation on the very night of the 9/11 atrocity. Even if "war" had been used metaphorically, as in "war on drugs", this declaration would have been a serious blunder from the standpoint of combating Al-Qaeda effectively. Like all terrorists, bin Laden and his associates see themselves as soldiers in a war, not as criminals. To have this confirmed by the President of the US enormously enhances the prestige of al-Qaeda, and is a great aid to recruitment. To suggest that the US must be put on a war footing to combat al-Qaeda gives a vastly over-estimated impression of the strength and danger of the opposition. It suggests that al-Qaeda is on a par with the military might of the US, which is of course absurd. What was required to combat al-Qaeda effectively was a combination of diplomacy with relevant and potentially friendly nations such as Pakistan, gathering of good intelligence, and police work. The rhetoric of war raises public expectations of battles, very different from the quiet, behind-the scenes work needed to combat terrorism effectively. But Bush, in declaring "war on terrorism", meant war to be understood in a way much stronger than the metaphorical. The declaration justified the announcement of a "state of emergency". And it led to literal war, first in Afghanistan, and then, even more disastrously, in Iraq. As I have already mentioned, the American people were encouraged to believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack. In fact Saddam Hussein and bin Laden were mortal enemies. Iraq had had nothing to do with 9/11. Not only has the Iraq war been a disaster for the hundreds of thousands who have died during it, and subsequently, and the vastly greater number who have been injured, or who have lost loved ones, but it has had the effect of generating terrorism in occupied Iraq to a quite unprecedented extent. As I have already remarked, the embattled streets of Baghdad are training grounds for future terrorists in the US, UK and elsewhere. Immediately after 9/11 there was a world-wide upsurge of sympathy and support for the US. The subsequent pre-emptive wars have had the effect of transforming this sympathy into hostility and fear. Not only does this help recruit terrorists; it undermines the kind of international cooperation required to combat international terrorism successfully. [Back to Top] 3. Civil liberties must not be undermined It is tempting to think that the threat of terrorism means that certain civil liberties must be suspended. But such measures are inherently undesirable, in that they undermine what every liberal democracy should strive to maintain and strengthen. It is as if, not content with suffering the damage the terrorists do to us, we decide to take the matter into our own hands, and ourselves do further damage to ourselves. Such measures also have the effect of signalling to the terrorist that they are having a major impact, and may thus encourage further acts of terrorism. And finally, if suspending elements of civil liberties means weakening due process of law, so that suspects can be held without trial, or convicted without a proper trial, this may well result in the innocent being imprisoned or convicted, and may incite further terrorism. Civil liberties have been curtailed in various ways in response to 9/11 in both the US and the UK. Thus in the UK, after 9/11, the Government introduced indefinite detention without charge of foreign nationals. This was replaced by the control order regime which allows government ministers to impose sweeping restrictions on individual freedoms on the basis of secret intelligence and suspicion. Pre-charge detention has been increased from 14 days to 28 days, with further extensions threatened. Legislation has been passed curtailing free speech and the right to demonstrate, and enhancing police powers to detain and search. [Back to Top] 4. Nations suspected of harbouring or supporting terrorists must be engaged with both by means of diplomacy, and in such a way that intelligence is sought by stealth For many years, Gaddafi of Libya was suspected of supporting terrorists and attempting to develop the nuclear bomb. Pressure and negotiations eventually led Gaddafi to renounce both. Such strategies can meet with success. Similar strategies need to be adopted in connection with Iran and Syria. But, until very recently (at the time of writing), President Bush has refused to negotiate with either. Instead, there has been threat, not spoken but not denied, that nuclear installations in Iran will be bombed if enrichment of uranium does not cease. Threatening Iran with war, or a bombing campaign, has the effect of strengthening the position of the more hardline and fanatical groups in the country, and at the same time undermining those of a more liberal stance who support negotiations. Once again, the outcome may be the very opposite of what is intended. Exactly the same considerations apply to countries suspected of harbouring or supporting terrorist groups. The best hope of dealing successfully with such support lies in negotiation and secret intelligence gathering, and not in refusal to negotiate, withdrawal of diplomatic relations, name calling and veiled threats of military action. [Back to Top] 5. If terrorists' acts are motivated by long-standing conflict - as in the Palestine/Israeli conflict - every effort should be made by the international community of nations to resolve the conflict that fuels the terrorism Reacting to terrorist atrocities - by curtailing civil liberties, or by giving in to terrorist demands - has the adverse consequence that it leads the terrorists to believe they are having an impact and are meeting with success, and may, as a result, give encouragement and resolve to the terrorists, and help promote recruitment. On the other hand, if serious injustices exist, the fact that terrorists demand an end to them should not be used as an excuse to do nothing to put a stop to them, on the grounds that action would amount to giving in to terrorist demands. Such inaction amounts to allowing terrorists to dictate policy in a negative sense: the mere fact that terrorists make a demand means that nothing can be done, even when something should be done, out of fear this will amount to giving in to the demands of terrorists. It is possible that this negative influence of terrorism may have played a role in the long conflict in northern Ireland. British governments may have been reluctant to address the legitimate complaints of Catholics out of fear that this would amount to giving in to the demands of the IRA. And it is conceivable that something similar may have been at work in connection with the long-standing Israel/Palestine conflict. Al-Qaeda demands justice for the Palestinians. If the US takes determined action to procure such justice, this may seem too close to giving in to the demands of al-Qaeda. The conflict has gone on for so long that it may seem unresolvable. But determined action by the US and the UN could, over time, bring the conflict to an end. What is required is deployment of sufficient peace-keeping troops deployed between Israel, the Gaza strip and the West Bank, pressure on Israel to withdraw from land occupied after the 1967 war, pressure on both sides to acknowledge each other's right to exist as independent states, and to end hostilities. Pressure on Israel would have to take the form of the US threatening to curtail the immense annual budget Israel receives from the US - the budget actually being decreased if mere threats have no effect. It is often said that the Jewish lobby in the US is so powerful it would never permit such policies to be adopted. It is hardly so powerful that it could prevent a President in power from initiating and pursuing policies of this kind. At most it might prevent a President who pursued such policies having a second term. On the other hand, even if assessed in the wholly cynical terms of leaving one's mark on history, it might be deemed more worthwhile to be instrumental in bringing the Israel/ Palestine conflict to an end, than not to do this and be re-elected for a second term. It seems likely that the current treatment of Palestinians by Israel, the US and Europe does much - along with the continuing hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq - to aid recruitment to Islamic terrorist groups. And it is possible that fear of being thought to be giving in to the demands of bin Laden and al-Qaeda may be one of the factors deterring action to bring the conflict to an end. In this connection, Louise Richardson in her excellent book What Terrorists Want (Richardson, 2006), makes a point of decisive importance. In combating terrorism, it is essential to take into account, and to distinguish, the terrorists themselves, and the community that is sympathetic to the political aims of the terrorists. In combating terrorism, one goal should be to isolate the terrorists from their sympathetic community (since it is from that community that the terrorists will gain support and recruits). If the community has legitimate grievances, doing something about those grievances may well have the consequence that the community in question cools its sympathy for the terrorists, which in turn may lead eventually to the collapse of the terrorist groups. All this is highly relevant to the Israel/Palestine conflict. There can be no doubt that the treatment of the Palestinians over the decades has outraged many members of the world-wide Islamic community. Indeed, one does not have to be a member of that community to be outraged. Al-Qaeda terrorists have made it quite clear that one motive for their terrorist action is to highlight the injustice suffered by the Palestinians. Bringing the Israel/Palestinian conflict to an end is overwhelmingly desirable for the sake of the Israeli and Palestinian people. But it is also desirable as one of the measures needed to defeat al-Qaeda in the long term. [Back to Top] 6. As far as possible, terrorism must not be combated in such a way as to recruit terrorists  Some necessary police operations, however sensitively conducted, may have the effect of antagonizing some of those affected, and may prompt them to join the ranks of the terrorists. This can hardly be avoided. Nevertheless every effort should be made to drive a wedge between terrorist groups and potential sympathizers. Above all, terrorism must not be combated in such a way as actually to drive sympathizers into the arms of the terrorists. This is plain common sense, and yet it has been violated again and again by Bush's and Blair's "war on terrorism", as we have already seen. The most dreadful example is the Iraq war. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Bin Laden was bitterly opposed to the secular Saddam Hussein. War with Iraq had nothing to do with combating Islamic terrorism. The outcome has been an unleashing of terrorism in Iraq itself of almost unprecedented ferocity. This is very likely to spread to other countries in the future. The war itself, and above all the brutal subsequent occupation and its multiple failures, are calculated to provoke al-Qaeda sympathizers all over the world to become active terrorists. The scandal of the treatment of prisoners, in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere will have had the same effect. Engaging in war, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, mistreating prisoners, and supporting Russia in its ruthless actions in Chechnya, far from combating terrorism, amounts to the exact opposite. It is inflaming terrorism. Bin Laden's hopes for 9/11 were, no doubt, to provoke a massive over-reaction from Bush which would, in turn, cause Islamic youth everywhere to take up jihad. Bush obliged. A cynic might wonder whether Bush, after he had got over the initial shock of 9/11, did not welcome this new "war on terrorism". It provided his presidency with a mission. He quickly became a hero in the eyes of his countrymen. It put new powers into his hands. And it made it possible to do what he had wanted to do all along - go to war with Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. The armed might of the US, which might have come to look somewhat excessive - even to Americans - after the collapse of the Soviet Union, suddenly had a new rationale, a new enemy: the terrifying menace of international terrorism. [Back to Top] 7. International treatises designed to curtail spread of terrorist materials must be maintained and strengthened Far from strengthening international treaties, the US tends, unfortunately, to take the view that, as the world's only superpower, it is above compliance with such treaties. As one commentator has put it recently " Of the total number of active treaties (550), the US has ratified only 160 (29%). President Bush has reversed US backing of six pacts: the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, Landmine Treaty, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and nullified Clinton's signature related to the International Criminal Court. Only Somalia and the US have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child!" (Irish, 2005). Two international treaties are of particular relevance to our present concerns: the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. The idea behind the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, when it was signed in 1970, was that non-nuclear nations would refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons if the nuclear powers moved towards nuclear disarmament. Neither the US nor the UK has shown the slightest sign of taking seriously their part of the bargain. In the meantime, India, Pakistan and North Korea have acquired nuclear weapons, and it seems likely that Iran is working towards joining the nuclear club as well. As for US support for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, during the 1980's the US sent Anthrax and other biological agents to Saddam Hussein in clear contravention of the Convention (Holland, 2004). [Back to Top] 8. Democratic nations combating terrorism must exercise care that, in combating terrorism, they do not thereby act as terrorists It may seem outrageous to suggest that the US or UK could stoop so low as to engage in terrorist acts themselves. But if we take terrorism to be the murdering - the unjustifiable killing - of people for the sake of political ends, then it must be acknowledged that the US has, again and again in recent times, performed terrorist actions - aided and abetted, on occasions, by the UK. The Iraq war may indeed be regarded as a monumental act of terrorism - the 2003 war itself, and the occupation afterwards. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, far more than the three thousand who died in the twin towers as a result of 9/11. The US military is directly responsible for a substantial percentage of these deaths. Many were civilians. Repeatedly over the years of occupation, US soldiers have killed civilians, at check points, during house searches, or in response to demonstrations. How does this differ from terrorism? It is, admittedly, a democratic state that has carried out these atrocities, not an anonymous group of fanatics, but that does not weaken the crime involved. It could be objected that the intentions of the US in going to war with Iraq, and occupying the country afterwards, were noble (to topple Saddam Hussein), and quite different from those of real terrorists. But some terrorists may have noble goals: that does not make them any the less terrorists. Terrorism has to do with the means taken - terror - not the character of the aim (except that it is in some way political). And in any case, as we have seen, it is dubious that President Bush's motives in going to war with Iraq were all that noble. It might be objected, again, that the US does not deliberately target civilians. Deliberately targeting civilians is - it may be argued - the defining characteristic of terrorism. But first, this is not what terrorism is ordinarily taken to mean, and certainly not by the US and UK governments. Those who kill soldiers in Iraq are deemed to be terrorists. Five men were arrested in New Jersey, US, on the 7 th May 2007, and charged with conspiracy to murder US soldiers (Guardian, 2007). That these men evidently planned to attack an army base and kill soldiers, and not civilians, will not be deemed sufficient to release them from the charge of terrorism. Second, the excuse that civilians are not deliberately targeted only has force if every effort is made not to kill civilians in a legitimate military operation. This cannot be said of many US military operations in Iraq. One example is the attack on Fallujah in the Spring of 2004. The highly respected "Iraq Body Count" has concluded that, of the 800 deaths of Iraqis reported in connection with the attack on Fallujah by the US, somewhere between 572 and 616 were civilians, with over 300 of these being women and children. There have been all too many reports of civilians being killed by US soldiers in Iraq in circumstances which make it impossible to say every effort was made to avoid the deaths. Apparent terrorist actions performed by the US did not begin with the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. In 1986, the US bombed Libya's capital Tripoli, killing at least a hundred people. This was in retaliation for a terrorist bomb in Berlin, which killed two American servicemen. Britain colluded in the attack in allowing the planes involved to take off from military bases in the UK. Similar operations have been conducted by the US, over the years, in Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere. For a list of such operations conducted from 1945 to the present and a brief description of each, see Blum (2006, chapter 17). The US has also sponsored terrorism enacted by others, as when it has supported the Contras in Nicaragua, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and groups trying to overthrow Castro in Cuba and Allende in Chile. [Back to Top] Global Problems To sum up. The current "war on terrorism" violates all eight of the principles, enunciated above. This has had disastrous consequences,[4] and is likely to have further disastrous consequences for decades into the future. The task of combating, or containing, terrorism urgently needs to be transformed so that all eight principles are implemented. But how is this to happen? It might help if a Democrat is elected to be the next President of the US, but it seems unlikely, given the historical record, that this would suffice to bring about the radical change in foreign policy that is needed, whoever is elected. It is not as if President Bush's administration can be held solely responsible for what has happened, with Blair being charged with some additional responsibility. Both Bush and Blair were re-elected after the 2003 Iraq war, and long after the character of the "war on terrorism" had become all too apparent. What is required, evidently, is a much more widely dispersed understanding, among the electorates of the democratic nations of the world, of how terrorism can be tackled, or contained, intelligently and effectively, in such a way that international law is observed, civil liberties are not undermined, and without resort to terrorist actions. But how is this to be brought about? Before I attempt to answer this key question, I would like first to put the problem of international terrorism into the context of other urgent global problems. There is the problem of war in general, over 100 million people having died in countless wars in the 20th century (which compares unfavourably with the 12 million or so killed in wars during the 19th century). There is the arms trade, the massive stockpiling of armaments, even by poor countries, and the ever-present threat of their use in war, whether the arms be conventional, chemical, biological or nuclear. There is the sustained and profound injustice of immense differences of wealth across the globe, the industrially advanced first world of North America, Europe and elsewhere experiencing unprecedented wealth while something like three quarters of humanity live in conditions of poverty in the developing world, hungry, unemployed, without proper housing, health care, education, or even access to safe water. There is the long-standing problem of the rapid growth of the world's population, especially pronounced in the poorest parts of the world, and adversely affecting efforts at development. There is the problem of the progressive destruction of tropical rain forests and other natural habitats, with its concomitant devastating extinction of species. And there is the horror of the AIDS epidemic, again far more terrible in the poorest parts of the world, devastating millions of lives, destroying families, and crippling economies. And most serious of all, perhaps, there is the problem of global warming. Most of these problems are interlinked with one another, in complex ways. Global warming may lead, as a result of drought, floods, or rising sea levels, to populations becoming displaced which, in turn, is likely to lead to terrorism and war. The arms trade, the stockpiling of weapons, clearly has implications for war and terrorism. On the other hand, the decision to make "the war on terrorism" the number one issue may have, and may have already had, the effect of distracting attention away from even more serious problems, such as global warming. [Back to Top] The Need for Public Education It is now, in my view, of decisive importance to appreciate the following elementary points concerning these interlinked global problems. If we are to tackle these problems effectively, humanely and democratically, then it is essential that the electorates of the democracies of the world have a good understanding of what these problems are, and what we need to do to solve them. That in turn requires that people are educated about what the problems are, and what we need to do to solve them. And that in turn requires that our institutions of learning - our schools and universities - are rationally devoted to this fundamental task, to the task of educating the public about what our problems of living are and what we need to do about them, especially our immense, intractable, apparently impersonal global problems, including the problem of international terrorism. There is, I believe, no evading the conclusion of this elementary argument. We cannot hope to resolve the world's problem undemocratically. It would be foolish or even, perhaps,, suicidal to put our trust in enlightened unelected political leaders. Even if we had elected leaders and governments with the best possible will and understanding in the world, they would still be constrained, in their actions, by what electorates would tolerate. As it is, we do not have leaders and democratic governments with the best possible good will and understanding, and nor are we likely to have them in the future. If our governments are to pursue more intelligent and humane policies, powerful democratic pressure must be put on them to do so. It must be made abundantly clear that a sizeable majority of the electorate demand such policies from their governments, so much so that governments which do not oblige will be kicked out of office at the next election. Electorates must be adept at seeing through the deceptions of governments, so that governments cannot get away with pursuing one set of policies while convincing most of the electorate that quite different policies are being implemented. All this requires education - education about what our problems are and what we need to do to solve them, and education about the realities, constraints, and deceptions, of government. There is, quite simply, no alternative. If humanity is to tackle its immense problems effectively and humanely, it is essential that humanity has a good understanding of what the problems are, and what needs to be done to resolve them. And this in turn requires that our public institutions of learning - our schools and universities - are rationally devoted to achieving this fundamental goal. This point applies just as much to the problem of international terrorism as it does to global warming, population increase or rapid extinction of species. [Back to Top] The Pursuit of Knowledge One immediate response may be that schools and universities are already devoting considerable energy to educating the public about these matters. I believe this to be true. It is nevertheless the case that the primary official intellectual aim of academic inquiry is not to help humanity learn how to solve its global problems, make progress towards a better world. It is rather to acquire knowledge and technological know-how. Or rather, the idea is that the primary way in which academia can help humanity make progress towards a better world is, in the first instance, to acquire knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; then it can be applied to help solve social problems. And furthermore, in order to be of benefit to humanity, academia must ensure that authentic, objective, reliable knowledge is acquired. This means that the pursuit of knowledge must be sharply dissociated from all social, humanitarian or political goals. If social, political and evaluative considerations are not excluded from science, the danger is - so it is held - that the pursuit of knowledge will degenerate into mere propaganda or ideology, science will be corrupted intellectually, and will cease to be of value to humanity. In order to make a contribution of value to humanity, paradoxically, science must eschew all considerations concerning what is of human value. And this means universities do not, and cannot, devote themselves primarily to educating the public about what our global problems are, and what we need to do to solve them. Academia must restrict itself, in the first instance at least, to solving problems of knowledge, so that knowledge that is acquired can, subsequently, be used to help solve social problems of living. Elsewhere, I have expounded and criticized this immensely influential view as the philosophy of knowledge, or knowledge-inquiry (see Maxwell, 1984, 1992, 2000, 2004). There can be no doubt whatsoever that the scientific pursuit of knowledge has, over the centuries, helped transform the human condition, and has brought immense benefits to our whole way of life. The modern world is quite simply inconceivable without modern science. Nevertheless, the pursuit of knowledge dissociated from a more fundamental concern with problems of living - with our global problems - as demanded by knowledge-inquiry, despite the benefits that have resulted, has also had profoundly damaging consequences. It has resulted in all our current global problems, including the lethal character of modern terrorism. Modern science and technology vastly increase our power to act. This, as I have said, has a multitude of beneficial consequences. But also, not surprisingly, it can have bad consequences as well, either intentionally, in war and terrorism, or unintentionally (initially at least) when modern industry and agriculture lead to global warming, destruction of natural habitats and extinction of species. Modern science and technology make possible hygiene and modern medicine, the rapid growth in the human population, modern industry and agriculture, modern armaments; these, in turn, make possible the lethal character of modern war and terrorism, destruction of natural habitats, global warming, and all our other current global problems. Even the AIDS epidemic has emerged in this way, AIDS being spread by modern methods of travel. In short, not only does the current devotion of academia to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how prevent universities from taking their primary task to be to educate the public about what our global problems are, and what we need to do about them. Even worse, this immensely successful pursuit of knowledge dissociated from a more fundamental concern with global problems of living is actually implicated in the creation of our current global problems. It is even worse than this. In a perfectly reasonable sense of "cause", our global problems have been caused by modern science and technology. At once the objection may be made that it is not science that is the cause of our global problems, but rather the things that we do, made possible by science and technology. This is obviously correct. But it is also correct to say that scientific and technological progress is the cause. The meaning of "cause" is ambiguous. By "the cause" of event E we may mean something like "the most obvious observable events preceding E that figure in the common sense explanation for the occurrence of E". In this sense, human actions (made possible by science) are the cause of such things as people being killed in war, destruction of tropical rain forests. On the other hand, by the "cause" of E we may mean "that prior change in the environment of E which led to the occurrence of E, and without which E would not have occurred". If we put the 20th century into the context of human history, then it is entirely correct to say that, in this sense, scientific-and-technological progress is the cause of our distinctive current global disasters: what has changed, what is new, is scientific knowledge, not human nature. (Give a group of chimpanzees rifles and teach them how to use them and in one sense, of course, the cause of the subsequent demise of the group would be the actions of the chimpanzees. But in another obvious sense, the cause would be the sudden availability and use of rifles - the new, lethal technology.) Yet again, from the standpoint of theoretical physics, "the cause" of E might be interpreted to mean something like "the physical state of affairs prior to E, throughout a sufficiently large spatial region surrounding the place where E occurs". In this third sense, the sun continuing to shine is as much a part of the cause of war and pollution as human action or human science and technology. In short, if by the cause of an event we mean that prior change which led to that event occurring, then it is the advent of modern science and technology that has caused all our current global crises. It is not that people became greedier or more wicked in the 19th and 20th centuries; nor is it that the new economic system of capitalism is responsible, as some historians and economists would have us believe. The crucial factor is the creation and immense success of modern science and technology. This has led to modern medicine and hygiene, to population growth, to modern agriculture and industry, to world wide travel (which spreads diseases such as AIDS), to global warming, and to the destructive might of the technology of modern war and terrorism, conventional, chemical, biological, nuclear. 9/11 is a striking case in point. There is nothing exclusively modern about terrorism itself, any more than there is about war: terrorism goes back at least to Biblical times. But what is distinctively modern is the scale of the threat, and its impact. Those responsible for 9/11 used nothing more high-tech than knives, but they were able to exploit modern technology so as vastly to increase the enormity of their action, and the scale of its impact. They exploited aeroplanes with which to do the deed, and relied on television and modern communications to spread news and images of what they had done round the world instantly, as the horror unfolded. It was modern technology which made the immediate global impact of 9/11 possible. Before the advent of modern science and technology, lack of wisdom - lack of the capacity to resolve our problems of living intelligently and humanely - did not matter too much. We lacked the power to do too much damage to ourselves, or to the planet (although some damage we did do). But now that we (or some of us) possess unprecedented powers, thanks to modern science, lack of wisdom has become a menace. Humanity urgently needs to learn how to solve its problems more intelligently and humanely than it has done up to the present, and for that, as I have said, we urgently need to develop public institutions of learning rationally designed and devoted to achieving this goal. But how is this to be done? Who could get academics to agree to transform the whole academic enterprise in the way that is, it seems, required? What guidelines could there be for creating a kind of inquiry rationally devoted to promoting wisdom? Might not the whole endeavour be a disaster, in that the only outcome would be the undermining of the objectivity, the intellectual integrity, of science, and thus its human value? Is it not an absurd over-reaction to cry for the transformation of academia so that the public may be better educated about the problems of the world? Is it not hopelessly utopian to think, in any case, that it is possible for humanity to learn wisdom? [Back to Top] Correcting the Blunders of the Enlightenment A perfectly acceptable answer to these questions stares us in the face. And yet it is one that almost everyone overlooks. Modern science has met with astonishing success in improving our knowledge of the natural world. It is this very success, as we have seen, that is the cause of our current problems. But instead of merely blaming science for our troubles, as some are inclined to do, we need, rather, to try to learn from the success of science. We need to learn from the manner in which science makes progress towards greater knowledge how we can make social progress towards a better, wiser world. This is not a new idea. It goes back to the Enlightenment of the 18 th century, especially the French Enlightenment. Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet and the other philosophes of the Enlightenment had the profoundly important idea that it might be possible to learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards an enlightened world. They did not just have the idea: they did everything they could to put the idea into practice in their lives. They fought dictatorial power, superstition, and injustice with weapons no more lethal than those of argument and wit. They gave their support to the virtues of tolerance, openness to doubt, readiness to learn from criticism and from experience. Courageously and energetically they laboured to promote reason and enlightenment in personal and social life. And in doing so they created, in a sense, the modern world, with all its glories and disasters. The philosophes of the Enlightenment had their hearts in the right place. But in developing the basic Enlightenment idea intellectually the philosophes, unfortunately, blundered. They botched the job. And it is this that we are suffering from today. The philosophers thought that the proper way to implement the Enlightenment Programme of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards an enlightened world is to develop the social sciences alongside the natural sciences. If it is important to acquire knowledge of natural phenomena to better the lot of mankind, as Francis Bacon had insisted, then (so, in effect, the philosophes thought) it must be even more important to acquire knowledge of social phenomena. First, knowledge must be acquired; then it can be applied to help solve social problems. They thus set about creating and developing the social sciences: economics, psychology, anthropology, history, sociology, political science. This traditional version of the Enlightenment Programme, despite being damagingly defective, was immensely influential. It was developed throughout the 19 th century, by men such as Saint-Simon, Comte, Marx, Mill and many others, and was built into the intellectual-institutional structure of academic inquiry in the first part of the 20 th century with the creation of departments of the social sciences in universities all over the world. Academic inquiry today, devoted primarily to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how, is the outcome of two past revolutions: the scientific revolution of the 16 th and 17 th centuries which led to the development of modern natural science, and the later profoundly important but very seriously defective Enlightenment revolution. It is this situation which calls for the urgent need to bring about a third revolution to put right the structural defects we have inherited from the Enlightenment. But what, it may be asked, is wrong with the traditional Enlightenment Programme? Almost everything. In order to implement properly the basic Enlightenment idea of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards a civilized world, it is essential to get the following three things right. 1. The progress-achieving methods of science need to be correctly identified. 2. These methods need to be correctly generalized so that they become fruitfully applicable to any worthwhile, problematic human endeavour, whatever the aims may be, and not just applicable to the one endeavour of acquiring knowledge. 3. The correctly generalized progress-achieving methods then need to be exploited correctly in the great human endeavour of trying to make social progress towards an enlightened, wise world. Unfortunately, the philosophes of the Enlightenment got all three points wrong. And as a result these blunders, undetected and uncorrected, are built into the intellectual-institutional structure of academia as it exists today. Academia today is, in other words, the outcome of a botched attempt to learn from scientific progress how to make social progress towards a better world. First, the philosophes failed to capture correctly the progress-achieving methods of natural science. From D'Alembert in the 18 th century to Popper in the 20 th, the widely held view, amongst both scientists and philosophers, has been (and continues to be) that science proceeds by assessing theories impartially in the light of evidence, no permanent assumption being accepted by science about the universe independently of evidence. But this standard empiricist view is untenable. If taken literally, it would instantly bring science to a standstill. For, given any accepted scientific theory, T, Newtonian theory say, or quantum theory, endlessly many rivals can be concocted which agree with T about observed phenomena but disagree arbitrarily about some unobserved phenomena. Science would be drowned in an ocean of such empirically successful rival theories if empirical considerations alone determined which theories are accepted, which rejected. In practice, these rivals are excluded because they are disastrously disunified. Two considerations govern acceptance of theories in science: empirical success and unity. But in persistently accepting unified theories, to the extent of rejecting disunified rivals that are just as, or even more, empirically successful, science makes a big persistent assumption about the universe. Science assumes that the universe is such that all disunified theories are false. The universe has some kind of unified dynamic structure. It is physically comprehensible in the sense that explanations for phenomena exist to be discovered. But this untestable (and thus metaphysical) assumption that the universe is comprehensible is profoundly problematic. How can we possibly know that the universe is comprehensible? Science is obliged to assume, but does not know, that the universe is comprehensible. Much less does it know that the universe is comprehensible in this or that way. A glance at the history of physics reveals that ideas about how the universe may be comprehensible have changed dramatically over time. In the 17 th century there was the idea that the universe consists of corpuscles, minute billiard balls, which interact only by contact. This gave way to the idea that the universe consists of point-particles surrounded by rigid, spherically symmetrical fields of force, which in turn gave way to the idea that there is one unified self-interacting field, varying smoothly throughout space and time. Nowadays we have the idea that everything is made up of minute quantum strings embedded in ten or eleven dimensions of space-time. Some kind of assumption along these lines must be made but, given the historical record, and given that any such assumption concerns the ultimate nature of the universe, that of which we are most ignorant, it is only reasonable to conclude that it is almost bound to be false. The way to overcome this fundamental dilemma, inherent in the scientific enterprise, is to construe science as making a hierarchy of metaphysical assumptions concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, these assumptions asserting less and less as one goes up the hierarchy, and thus becoming more and more likely to be true. In this way a framework of relatively insubstantial, unproblematic, fixed assumptions and associated methods is created within which much more substantial and problematic assumptions and associated methods can be changed, and indeed improved, as scientific knowledge improves. Put another way, a framework of relatively unspecific, unproblematic, fixed aims and methods is created within which much more specific and problematic aims and methods evolve as scientific knowledge evolves. (A basic aim of science is to discover in what precise way the universe is comprehensible, this aim evolving as assumptions about comprehensibility evolve.) There is positive feedback between improving knowledge, and improving aims-and-methods, improving knowledge-about-how-to-improve-knowledge. This is the nub of scientific rationality, the methodological key to the unprecedented success of science. Science adapts its nature to what it discovers about the nature of the universe. For a detailed exposition and defence of this hierarchical, aim-oriented empiricist conception of science see Maxwell (1998; 2001, chapter 3 and appendix 3; and 2004, chapter 1 and 2 and appendix; 2007, chapter 14). So much for the first blunder of the Enlightenment. Second, having failed to identify the methods of science correctly, the philosophes naturally failed to generalize these methods properly. They failed to appreciate that the idea of representing the problematic aims (and associated methods) of science in the form of a hierarchy can be generalized and applied fruitfully to other worthwhile enterprises besides science. Many other enterprises have problematic aims; these would benefit from employing a hierarchical methodology, generalized from that of science, thus making it possible to improve aims and methods as the enterprise proceeds. There is the hope that, in this way, some of the astonishing success of science might be exported into other worthwhile human endeavours, with aims quite different from those of science. Third, and most disastrously of all, the philosophes failed completely to try to apply such generalized progress-achieving methods to the immense, and profoundly problematic enterprise of making social progress towards an enlightened, wise world. The aim of such an enterprise is notoriously problematic. For all sorts of reasons, what constitutes a good world, an enlightened, wise or civilized world, attainable and genuinely desirable, must be inherently and permanently problematic. Here, above all, it is essential to employ the generalized version of the hierarchical, progress-achieving methods of science, designed specifically to facilitate progress when basic aims are problematic. Properly implemented, in short, the Enlightenment idea of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards an enlightened world would involve developing social inquiry as social methodology, or social philosophy, not primarily as social science. A basic task would be to get into personal and social life, and into other institutions besides that of science - into government, industry, agriculture, commerce, the media, law, education, international relations - hierarchical, progress-achieving methods (designed to improve problematic aims) arrived at by generalizing the methods of science. A basic task for academic inquiry as a whole would be to help humanity learn how to resolve its conflicts and problems of living in more just, cooperatively rational ways than at present. This task would be intellectually more fundamental than the scientific task of acquiring knowledge. Social inquiry would be intellectually more fundamental than physics. Academia would be a kind of people's civil service, doing openly for the public what actual civil services are supposed to do in secret for governments. Academia would have just sufficient power (but no more) to retain its independence from government, industry, the press, public opinion, and other centres of power and influence in the social world. It would seek to learn from, educate, and argue with the great social world beyond, but would not dictate. Academic thought would be pursued as a specialized, subordinate part of what is really important and fundamental: the thinking that goes on, individually, socially and institutionally, in the social world, guiding individual, social and institutional actions and life. The fundamental intellectual and humanitarian aim of inquiry would be to help humanity acquire wisdom - wisdom being the capacity to realize (apprehend and create) what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom thus including knowledge and technological know-how but much else besides. One important consequence flows from the point that the basic aim of inquiry would be to help us discover what is of value, namely that our feelings and desires would have a vital rational role to play within the intellectual domain of inquiry. If we are to discover for ourselves what is of value, then we must attend to our feelings and desires. But not everything that feels good is good, and not everything that we desire is desirable. Rationality requires that feelings and desires take fact, knowledge and logic into account, just as it requires that priorities for scientific research take feelings and desires into account. In insisting on this kind of interplay between feelings and desires on the one hand, knowledge and understanding on the other, the conception of inquiry that we are considering resolves the conflict between Rationalism and Romanticism, and helps us to acquire what we need if we are to contribute to building civilization: mindful hearts and heartfelt minds. Another outcome of getting into social and institutional life the kind of aim-evolving, hierarchical methodology indicated above, generalized from science, is that it becomes possible for us to develop and assess rival philosophies of life as a part of social life, somewhat as theories are developed and assessed within science. Such a hierarchical methodology "provides a framework within which diverse philosophies of value - diverse religions, political and moral views - may be cooperatively assessed and tested against the experience of personal and social life. There is the possibility of cooperatively and progressively improving such philosophies of life (views about what is of value in life and how it is to be achieved) much as theories are cooperatively and progressively improved in science. In science diverse universal theories are critically assessed with respect to each other, and with respect to experience (observational and experimental results). In a somewhat analogous way, diverse philosophies of life may be critically assessed with respect to each other, and with respect to experience - what we do, achieve, fail to achieve, enjoy and suffer - the aim being so to improve philosophies of life (and more specific philosophies of more specific enterprises within life such as government, education or art) that they offer greater help with the realization of value in life" (Maxwell, 1984, p. 254). All in all, if the Enlightenment revolution had been carried through properly, the three steps indicated above being correctly implemented, the outcome would have been a kind of academic inquiry very different from what we have at present. We would possess what we so urgently need, and at present so dangerously and destructively lack, institutions of learning well-designed from the standpoint of helping us create a better, a wiser world. We have travelled far from our initial topic, the disastrous "war on terrorism". And yet, the transformation in our instruments of public learning that I have (briefly) argued for, are highly relevant to our capacity to deal effectively and humanely with terrorism. What our initial discussion of the eight principles that need to be observed in combating terrorism revealed is that, again and again, the current "war on terrorism" is achieving the very opposite of what was intended. Terrorism is being actively promoted, even implemented, not contained and curtailed. The aim of combating terrorism, like so many other aims in life, is inherently problematic. If we do not proceed intelligently, learning from past mistakes, it is all too likely that we will achieve the very opposite of what we seek. Hence the fundamental importance of a kind academic inquiry, a kind of learning, which emphasizes the need to subject problematic aims to sustained criticism and improvement. It would be absurd, of course, to argue that we need to transform academia so that we can learn how to combat terrorism intelligently. That is not what I have argued. Rather, my claim is that international terrorism is one of a number of global problems that confront us and that, if we are to tackle these problems intelligently, humanely and democratically (as we must do), people quite generally must have a much better understanding of what these problems are, and what needs to be done about them, than they do at present, this in turn requiring a kind of inquiry rationally designed to promote such public education about our problems, this in turn requiring a revolution in our schools and universities. Learning how to tackle terrorism more intelligently would be a beneficiary along with learning how to tackle more intelligently our other global problems. I must emphasize, however, that the reasons for the revolution in the aims and methods of inquiry that I have indicated are not only humanitarian. There are also absolutely decisive intellectual reasons. The kind of inquiry that would emerge - wisdom-inquiry as I have called it - would be both more rigorous intellectually, and of greater human value, than what we have at present. The revolution is needed in the interests both of the intellectual and the practical aspects of inquiry. But will it happen? I first spelled out the argument over thirty years ago (Maxwell, 1976). It was spelled out again, in very much greater detail, in my second book (Maxwell, 1984). This received many excellent reviews, in particular a glowing review from Christopher Longuet-Higgins in Nature, who remarked, during the course of his review, " Maxwell is advocating nothing less than a revolution (based on reason, not on religious or Marxist doctrine) in our intellectual goals and methods of inquiry ... There are altogether too many symptoms of malaise in our science-based society for Nicholas Maxwell's diagnosis to be ignored" (Longuet-Higgins, 1984). Unfortunately it has been ignored. With agonizing slowness, in a wholly piecemeal and confused fashion, some changes have taken place in science, and in academia more generally, that are somewhat in the direction that I have argued for, but in complete ignorance of my argument (and often masked by other changes that take things in the opposite direction): see Maxwell (2007, chapters 6 and 12); see, also, Iredale (2007). Academia is supposed to be about innovation but, when it comes to the rules of the game, dogmatic conservatism tends to take over. It is difficult, too, to arouse public interest in the current damaging irrationality of academia. In the popular mind, "academic" is almost synonymous with "irrelevant" or "pointless". That judgement is part of the problem. On the other hand, the revolution that we need might be compared in significance to the Renaissance, to the scientific revolution, or to the 18 th century Enlightenment. Intellectual revolutions as profound and far-reaching as these do not happen overnight. Thirty years of inaction, when the matter is viewed in that light, is perhaps not such a long time interval. But the question that haunts me is this: Given the state of the world today, given the enormity of the problems that face us, can humanity afford to put off any longer creating institutions of learning rationally designed to help us discover how to tackle our problems in wiser, more cooperatively rational ways? [Back to Top] Conclusion In the meantime, all is not lost. Louise Richardson's What Terrorists Want seems to me exactly the kind of work that academics today should be writing: intelligent, informative, wise, highly readable and well-written, it provides genuine insight into the motives and character of terrorism, and comes up with sensible proposals as to how the problem should be tackled. It is clearly intended to contribute to public education. It is an exemplary contribution to wisdom-inquiry. Here, to conclude, is a summary of the changes that need to be made to science, and to academic inquiry more generally, to put right the blunders we have inherited from the Enlightenment, thus creating a kind of inquiry rationally designed to help humanity learn how to create a better world. 1. There needs to be a change in the basic intellectual aim of inquiry, from the growth of knowledge to the growth of wisdom - wisdom being taken to be the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, and thus including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how. 2. There needs to be a change in the nature of academic problems, so that problems of living are included, as well as problems of knowledge. Furthermore, problems of living need to be treated as intellectually more fundamental than problems of knowledge. 3. There needs to be a change in the nature of academic ideas, so that proposals for action are included as well as claims to knowledge. Furthermore, proposals for action need to be treated as intellectually more fundamental than claims to knowledge. 4. There needs to be a change in what constitutes intellectual progress, so that progress-in-ideas-relevant-to-achieving-a-more-civilized-world is included as well as progress in knowledge, the former being indeed intellectually fundamental. 5. There needs to be a change in the idea as to where inquiry, at its most fundamental, is located. It is not esoteric theoretical physics, but rather the thinking we engage in as we seek to achieve what is of value in life. 6. There needs to be a dramatic change in the nature of social inquiry (reflecting points 1 to 5). Economics, politics, sociology, and so on, are not, fundamentally, sciences, and do not, fundamentally, have the task of improving knowledge about social phenomena. Instead, their task is threefold. First, it is to articulate problems of living, and propose and critically assess possible solutions, possible actions or policies, from the standpoint of their capacity, if implemented, to promote wiser ways of living. Second, it is to promote such cooperatively rational tackling of problems of living throughout the social world. And third, at a more basic and long-term level, it is to help build the hierarchical structure of aims and methods of aim-oriented rationality into personal, institutional and global life, thus creating frameworks within which progressive improvement of personal and social life aims-and-methods becomes possible. These three tasks are undertaken in order to promote cooperative tackling of problems of living - but also in order to enhance empathic or "personalistic" understanding between people as something of value in its own right. Acquiring knowledge of social phenomena is a subordinate activity, engaged in to facilitate the above three fundamental pursuits. 7. Natural science needs to change, so that it includes at least three levels of discussion: evidence, theory, and research aims. Discussion of aims needs to bring together scientific, metaphysical and evaluative consideration in an attempt to discover the most desirable and realizable research aims. 8. There needs to be a dramatic change in the relationship between social inquiry and natural science, so that social inquiry becomes intellectually more fundamental from the standpoint of tackling problems of living, promoting wisdom. 9. The way in which academic inquiry as a whole is related to the rest of the human world needs to change dramatically. Instead of being intellectually dissociated from the rest of society, academic inquiry needs to be communicating with, learning from, teaching and arguing with the rest of society - in such a way as to promote cooperative rationality and social wisdom. Academia needs to have just sufficient power to retain its independence from the pressures of government, industry, the military, and public opinion, but no more. Academia becomes a kind of civil service for the public, doing openly and independently what actual civil services are supposed to do in secret for governments. 10. There needs to be a change in the role that political and religious ideas, works of art, expressions of feelings, desires and values have within rational inquiry. Instead of being excluded, they need to be explicitly included and critically assessed, as possible indications and revelations of what is of value, and as unmasking of fraudulent values in satire and parody, vital ingredients of wisdom. 11. There need to be changes in education so that, for example, seminars devoted to the cooperative, imaginative and critical discussion of problems of living are at the heart of all education from five-year-olds onwards. Politics, which cannot be taught by knowledge-inquiry, becomes central to wisdom-inquiry, political creeds and actions being subjected to imaginative and critical scrutiny. 12. There need to be changes in the aims, priorities and character of pure science and scholarship, so that it is the curiosity, the seeing and searching, the knowing and understanding of individual persons that ultimately matters, the more impersonal, esoteric, purely intellectual aspects of science and scholarship being means to this end. Social inquiry needs to give intellectual priority to helping empathic understanding between people to flourish (as indicated in 6 above). 13. There need to be changes in the way mathematics is understood, pursued and taught. Mathematics is not a branch of knowledge at all. Rather, it is concerned to explore problematic possibilities, and to develop, systematize and unify problem-solving methods. 14. Literature needs to be put close to the heart of rational inquiry, in that it explores imaginatively our most profound problems of living and aids personalistic understanding in life by enhancing our ability to enter imaginatively into the problems and lives of others. 15. Philosophy needs to change so that it ceases to be just another specialized discipline and becomes instead that aspect of inquiry as a whole that is concerned with our most general and fundamental problems - those problems that cut across all disciplinary boundaries. Philosophy needs to become again what it was for Socrates: the attempt to devote reason to the growth of wisdom in life. This is the revolution we need to bring about in our traditions and institutions of learning, if they are to be properly and rationally designed to help us learn how to make progress towards a wiser world. [Back to Top] References Blum, W. (2006). Rogue State. London: Zed Books. Chomsky, N. (2007). Failed States. London: Penguin. Curtis, M. (2003). Web of Deceit. London: Vintage. The Guardian, UK. (9 th May 2007). 'Jihad DVD find foiled terror plot, says FBI'. Hiro, D. (2005). Secrets and Lies. London: Politico's. Holland, G. (2004). 'Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and Iraq: A report for Parliament on the British Government's response to the US supply of biological materials to Iraq'. School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex. Online. Iredale, M. (2007). 'From knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry: is the revolution under way?', London Review of Education, July 2007. Irish , D. (2005). ' Routes not Taken / Roles not Played (for peace and democracy)', North Country Peace Builder , vol. 56, no. 2. Online. Longuet-Higgins, C. (1984). 'For goodness sake', Nature, vol. 312, 15 November 1984, p. 204. Maxwell, N. (1976). What's Wrong With Science?. Frome, UK: Bran's Head Books. ________ (1984). From Knowledge to Wisdom. Oxford: Blackwell. ________ (1992). 'What Kind of Inquiry Can Best Help Us Create a Good World?'.Science, Technology and Human Values 17, pp. 205-27. ________ (2000). 'Can Humanity Learn to become Civilized? The Crisis of Science without Civilization, Journal of AppliedPhilosophy 17, pp. 29-44. ________ (2001). The Human World in the Physical Universe: Consciousness, Free Will and Evolution. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. ________ (2004). Is Science Neurotic?. London: Imperial College Press. ________ (2007). From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution for Science and the Humanities. Second enlarged edition, London: Pentire Press. Richardson, L. (2006). What Terrorists Want. London: John Murray. Rees, M. (2003). Our Final Century . London: Arrow Books. Roberts, L. et al. (29 th October 2004). 'Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey', The Lancet. Online. Washington Post (6 th September 2003). 'Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 Attacks'. [Back to Top] Notes [1] Washington Post poll, 'Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 Attacks', September 6, 2003. [Return to text] [2] 'Iraq war strain leads troops to abuse civilians, survey shows', The Guardian, 5 th May, 2007. [Return to text] [3] Roberts et al. (2004) estimate, in a famous article published in The Lancet, that about 100,000 Iraqis died as a result of the war and occupation during the period 19 March 2003 to September 2004. This estimate excludes those who died in Fallujah. Iraq Body Count ( www.iraqbodycount.net ) held, on 13th May 2007, that the number of civilians reported killed as a result of the military intervention was between 63, 373 and 69,418. That the maximum figure, here is, for a longer period of time, considerably lower than The Lancet estimate makes sense once one appreciates that most deaths go unreported in Iraq. [Return to text] [4] I have here given only a brief sketch of the disastrous current "war on terrorism". For much more detailed accounts, see Richardson (2006), Blum (2006), Chomsky (2007), Hiro (2005), Curtis (2003). [Return to text] [Back to Top]

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The 20th Anniversary Of The 9/11 Attacks

The world has changed since 9/11, and so has america's fight against terrorism.

An American flag at ground zero on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Mark Lennihan/AP hide caption

An American flag at ground zero on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.

In the fall of 2001, Aaron Zebley was a 31-year-old FBI agent in New York. He had just transferred to a criminal squad after working counterterrorism cases for years.

His first day in the new job was Sept. 11.

"I was literally cleaning the desk, I was like wiping the desk when Flight 11 hit the north tower, and it shook our building," he said. "And I was like, what the heck was that? And later that day, I was transferred back to counterterrorism."

It was a natural move for Zebley. He'd spent the previous three years investigating al-Qaida's bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And he became a core member of the FBI team leading the investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

It quickly became clear that al-Qaida was responsible.

The hijackers had trained at the group's camps in Afghanistan. They received money and instructions from its leadership. And ultimately, they were sent to the U.S. to carry out al-Qaida's "planes operation."

President George W Bush gives an address in front of the damaged Pentagon following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack there as Counselor to the President Karen Hughes and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stand by. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images hide caption

President George W Bush gives an address in front of the damaged Pentagon following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack there as Counselor to the President Karen Hughes and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stand by.

As the nation mourned the nearly 3,000 people who were killed on 9/11, the George W. Bush administration frantically tried to find its footing and prevent what many feared would be a second wave of attacks.

President Bush ordered members of his administration, including top counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, to imagine what the next attack could look like and take steps to prevent it.

"We had so many vulnerabilities in this country," Clarke said.

At the time, officials were worried that al-Qaida could use chemical weapons or radioactive materials, Clarke said, or that the group would target intercity trains or subway systems.

"We had a very long list of things, systems, that were vulnerable because no one in the United States had seriously considered security from terrorist attacks," he said.

That, of course, quickly changed.

Security became paramount.

And over the next two decades, the federal government poured money and resources — some of it, critics say, to no good use — into protecting the U.S. from another terrorist attack, even as the nature of that threat continuously evolved.

The response to keeping the U.S. secure takes shape

The government built out a massive infrastructure, including creating the Department of Homeland Security, all in the name of protecting against terrorist attacks.

The Bush administration also empowered the FBI and its partners at the CIA, National Security Agency and the Pentagon to take the fight to al-Qaida.

The military invaded Afghanistan, which had been a haven for the group. The CIA hunted down al-Qaida operatives around the world and tortured many of them in secret prisons.

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Part of flight 93 crashed on my land. i went back to the sacred ground 20 years later.

The Bush administration also launched its ill-fated war in Iraq, which unleashed two decades of bloodletting, shook the Middle East and spawned another generation of terrorists.

On the homefront, FBI Director Robert Mueller shifted some 2,000 agents to counterterrorism work as he tried to transform the FBI from a crime-fighting first organization into a more intelligence-driven one that prioritized combating terrorism and preventing the next attack.

Part of that involved centralizing the bureau's international terrorism investigations at headquarters and making counterterrorism the FBI's top priority.

Chuck Rosenberg, who served as a top aide to Mueller in those early years, said the changes Mueller imposed amounted to a paradigm shift for the bureau.

Robert S. Mueller, then-director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, talks to reporters on Aug. 17, 2006, in Seattle. Ted S. Warren/AP hide caption

Robert S. Mueller, then-director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, talks to reporters on Aug. 17, 2006, in Seattle.

"Mueller, God bless him, couldn't be all that patient about it," Rosenberg said. "It couldn't happen at a normal pace of a traditional cultural change. It had to happen yesterday."

It had to happen "yesterday" because al-Qaida was still plotting. Overseas, its operatives carried out horrific bombings in Bali, Madrid, London and elsewhere.

In the U.S., al-Qaida operative Richard Reid was arrested in December 2001 after trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with a bomb hidden in his shoe. More plots were foiled in the ensuing years, including one targeting the Brooklyn Bridge.

Over time, the FBI and its partners better understood al-Qaida, its hierarchical structure, and how to unravel the various threads of a plot.

That stemmed to large degree, Zebley says, from the U.S. getting better at pulling together various threads of intelligence and by upping the operational tempo.

"If you have a little thread that could potentially tell you about a terrorist plot, not only were we much better at integrating the intelligence, but we did it at a pace that was tenfold what we were doing before," he said.

But critics warned that the government's new anti-terrorism tools were eroding civil liberties, while the American Muslim community felt it was all too often the target of an overzealous FBI.

The digital world helps transform terrorism

By the early days of the Obama administration, the U.S. had to a large extent hardened the homeland against 9/11-style plots. But the terrorism landscape was evolving.

At that time, Zebley was serving as a senior aide to Mueller. Each morning, he would sit in on the FBI director's daily threat briefing.

"I was thinking about al-Qaida for years leading up until that moment," he said. "And now I'm sitting in these morning threat briefings and I'm seeing al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa, al-Shabab. ... One of my first thoughts was 'the map looks very different to me now.' "

Robert Mueller (left) and Aaron Zebley testify on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 24, 2019, before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference. Susan Walsh/AP hide caption

Robert Mueller (left) and Aaron Zebley testify on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 24, 2019, before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference.

Ultimately, AQAP — al-Qaida's branch based in Yemen — emerged as a significant threat to the U.S. homeland.

That became clear in November 2009 when U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. A month later, on Christmas Day, a young Nigerian man tried to blow up a passenger jet over Detroit with a bomb hidden in his underwear.

It quickly emerged that both men had been in contact with a senior AQAP figure, an American-born Yemeni cleric named Anwar al-Awlaki.

"My sense when I first heard about him was 'well, he's some charismatic guy, born in the U.S., fluent English speaker and all that. But how big a threat could he be?" said John Pistole, who served as the No. 2 official at the FBI from 2004 until 2010 when he left to lead the Transportation Security Administration.

"I think I failed to recognize and appreciate his ability to influence others to action."

Awlaki used the internet to spread his calls for violence against America, and his lectures and ideas influenced attacks in several countries. Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011, a move that proved controversial because he was an American citizen.

A few years later, a different terrorist group emerged from the cauldron of Syria and Iraq — the Islamic State, or ISIS, a group that would build on Awlaki's savvy use of the digital world.

"When ISIS came onto the scene, particularly that summer of 2014, with the beheadings and the prolific use of social media, it was off the charts," said Mary McCord, who was a senior national security official at the Justice Department at the time.

Her Brother Died On Flight 93. She Still Sees Him Surfacing In Small Ways

Like al-Qaida more than a decade before, ISIS used its stronghold to plan operations abroad, such as the coordinated attacks in 2015 that killed 130 people in Paris. But it also used social media platforms such as Twitter and Telegram to pump out slickly produced propaganda videos.

"They deployed technology in a much more sophisticated way than we had seen with most other foreign terrorist organizations," McCord said.

ISIS produced materials featuring idyllic scenes of life in the caliphate to entice people to move there. At the same time, the group pushed out a torrent of videos showing horrendous violence that sought to instill fear in ISIS' enemies and to inspire the militants' sympathizers in Europe and the U.S. to conduct attacks where they were.

"The threat was much more horizontal. It was harder to corral," said Chuck Rosenberg, who served as FBI Director James Comey's chief of staff.

People inspired by ISIS could go from watching the group's videos to action relatively quickly without setting off alarms.

"It was clear too that there were going to be attacks we just couldn't stop. Things that went from left of boom to right of boom very quickly. People were more discreet, the thing we used to refer to as lone wolves," Rosenberg said. "A lot of bad things could happen, maybe on a smaller scale, but a lot of bad things could happen more quickly."

Bad things did happen

Europe was hit by a series of deadly one-off attacks. In the U.S., a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in 2016. A year later, a man used a truck to plow through a group of cyclists and pedestrians in Manhattan, killing eight people. Both men had been watching ISIS propaganda.

A makeshift memorial stands outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in the aftermath of a deadly shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018. Matt Rourke/AP hide caption

A makeshift memorial stands outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in the aftermath of a deadly shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018.

The group's allure waned after a global coalition led by the U.S. managed to retake all the territory that ISIS once claimed.

By then, America's most lethal terror threat already stemmed not from foreign terror groups, but from the country's own domestic extremists.

For nearly two decades, the FBI had prioritized the fight against international terrorists. But in early 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that had changed.

"We elevated to the top-level priority racially motivated violent extremism so it's on the same footing in terms of our national threat banding as ISISI and homegrown violent extremism," he testified before Congress.

The move came in the wake of a series of high-profile attacks by people espousing white supremacist views in Charlottesville, Va., Pittsburgh, Pa., Poway, Calif., and El Paso, Texas.

At the same time, anti-government extremist groups and conspiracy theories like QAnon were attracting more adherents.

Those various movements converged in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, in the storming of the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden's presidential win.

Rioters climb the west wall of the the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. Jose Luis Magana/AP hide caption

Rioters climb the west wall of the the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6.

The FBI has since launched a massive investigation into the assault, and Wray has bluntly described the Capitol riot as "domestic terrorism."

McCord, who is now the executive director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center, says domestic extremist groups are using many of the same tools that foreign groups have for years.

"You see that in the use of social media for the same kind of things: to recruit, to propagandize, to plot, and to fundraise," she said.

The Capitol riot has put a spotlight on far-right extremism in a way the issue has never received in the past two decades, including in the media and the highest levels of the U.S. government.

President Biden, for one, has called political extremism and domestic terrorism a looming threat to the country that must be defeated, and he has made combating the threat a priority for his administration.

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Just and Unjust War in the Terrorist Age

Americans have always sought to fight “moral” wars, and this is true once more in the war against terrorism. After September 11, rather than prosecuting an indiscriminant and disproportionate Western counter-jihad against the Muslim world, American political and military leaders have conducted—and the American public has supported—a limited, proportionate, and discriminating attack on terrorist organizations and on the nations that aid and abet them. Whether they realize it or not, Americans have been guided in forming their moral intuitions by a long tradition of Christian reflection on the moral questions that surround the use of force—the just war tradition.

This mainstream teaching in Christian moral theology has perennially faced two competing moral views. The first might be called Machiavellian realism, which rejects the idea that war can be a just and moral enterprise. For the realist, the resort to war, when all is said and done, is justified by the requirements of realpolitik and is merely an extension of day-to-day politics. And for the realist, the conduct of war is, in principle, subject to no moral limitation. The other challenge to the just war tradition is pacifism, which involves the moral renunciation of violence tout court. Between pacifism and realism lies the just war tradition, an understanding of statecraft in which the use of force in the service of justice, order, and peace is both permitted and restrained.

While historically, at least in the past four centuries, the main challenge to the just war moral position has come from some shade of Machiavellianism, in recent decades the challenge to the tradition has come from the pacifist side. Ironically, pacifist objections have frequently been raised by those one might expect to be the principal guardians of the just war tradition— namely, Christian theologians. Here, I will discuss the fundamental contours of the classic just war teaching, suggest why it is relevant to the contemporary war on terrorism, and then defend the tradition against its principal contemporary competitors.

The classical Christian teachings on the use of force are known by the Latin terms jus ad bellum (literally, justice toward war) and jus in bello (justice in war). The jus ad bellum criteria provide guidance about the resort to war. The jus in bello criteria place restraints on the means used to wage even a justified war.

Classically, the jus ad bellum requires that before war can be waged there must be legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention. Each of these criteria is related to a fundamental political good: right authority is related to the political good of order, just cause is related to the political good of justice, and right intention is related to the political good of peace. As the tradition developed, other criteria were added to the jus ad bellum criteria as prudential considerations to guide statesmen when they contemplated the use of force: Is there a reasonable chance for success ?Will the overall good exceed the harm done ( proportionality )?Have other means to redress a harm been attempted ( last resort )?Can peace among the combatants really be achieved ( the end of peace )?

Traditionally, the criteria for just cause explicitly included one or more of three possibilities: defense against wrongful attack, retaking something wrongly taken, or the punishment of evil. Since the Peace of Westphalia (1648), just cause has been understood in international law almost exclusively as just defense—although in recent years a more expansive concept of just cause has been developed in light of attempts to justify humanitarian intervention for particularly egregious human rights abuses. Right intention has since the time of Saint Augustine meant, negatively, that war should not be undertaken on account of implacable hatred, personal glory, or bloodlust. Positively, right intention has insisted that the aim of war is to bring about peace—not a utopian peace, nor the peace of the new heavens and the new earth, but as Augustine called it, a tranquility of order ( tranquillitas ordinis ) in international relations. Legitimate authority classically meant that the right to employ force was reserved to persons or communities with no political superior—that is, to sovereign entities.

Jus in bello consists in the criteria of proportionality of means and discrimination (or noncombatant immunity). The criterion of proportionality of means places restrictions on gratuitous and otherwise unnecessary violence. The criterion of discrimination prohibits the direct and intentional targeting of noncombatants.

In light of September 11, we may ask what makes terrorism, from the just war perspective, a particularly grave evil. The answer would seem obvious. Unlike trained and disciplined soldiers on the traditional battlefield, terrorists deliberately attack innocent and defenseless civilians. Those tutored in the just war tradition will denounce terrorism because such actions are morally forbidden by the principle of discrimination of jus in bello . What makes the September 11 attack even more egregious than the attack on Pearl Harbor is that the focus of the Japanese attack was at least on a military target. If war against Japan was justified in the former instance, how it is not justified in this one is hard to see. Thus, from a just war perspective, the call for justice—in the form of retribution by the U.S. government against the perpetrators and their allies—is entirely warranted. President Bush’s declaration, “whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done,” should be applauded.

But the moral judgment against terrorism must not remain confined to the violation of the principle of discrimination and the targeting of civilians. In fact, to understand the evil of terrorism exclusively through the prism of noncombatant immunity is to make a dangerous moral and political concession. Here, we must turn to the jus ad bellum criterion of right authority. In recent years, the criterion of legitimate authority has almost entirely been neglected by theologians advancing claims in the just war tradition. At least among American theologians and philosophers, discussions have centered on such peripheral questions as whether the president can use force without the consent of Congress or whether a nation must first seek international approval for the use of force. While these may be important questions, they fail to address the most fundamental issue and thus obscure the full moral significance of the fight against terrorism.

In asking whether war could be waged justly, Saint Thomas Aquinas began not with just cause, but with legitimate authority, citing as biblical support Romans13:1–6. By legitimate authority, Aquinas (and classical Christian thought, more generally) was referring to a political authority to which there was no superior. Beginning with Saint Augustine and developing throughout the Middle Ages, Christian thinkers sought to curb violence by declaring illegitimate any use of force by subordinate nobles, private soldiers, criminals, and the Church. When confronted with a militaristic Germanic culture in which princes frequently engaged and gloried in combat for private ends, Christian thinkers repeatedly insisted that warfare was a public issue. War could not merely be an extreme tool of private parties but had to be a legal instrument, a part of the coercive power of law itself. Historically and theoretically, securing a public monopoly on the use of force was a necessary (though not sufficient) precondition for a peaceful and civilized society. From this perspective, the freelance terrorism of our time is nothing less than a direct assault on this achievement of civilization. Failure by the United States to act decisively against terrorism in a publicly-authorized way may encourage the proliferation of disorder and barbarism of a kind far worse than the private wars of the so-called “dark ages.”

This is why—contrary to those who want terrorism to be handled exclusively as a criminal matter—we should not hesitate to embrace the term war to describe our fight against terrorism, especially when governments actively support terrorist groups in their sovereign territory. As James Turner Johnson, the most important contemporary scholar of just war theory, maintains, the tradition

never distinguished between the use of force by the political community to combat disturbers of justice, order, and peace at home or abroad. The critical distinction made there was between use of force for the public good ( bellum ) and private use of force ( duellum ). . . .It is, in just war terms, a proper bellum for the use of all levels of force as appropriate by the national authority to respond to this profound form of evildoing.

This distinction between bellum and duellem suggests why, if left unchallenged, the rise of terrorism may foreshadow a return to the barbarism of private war. In fact, a return to private warfare in the twenty-first century is far more ominous, since vengeance is no longer fueled merely by distorted notions of private glory and honor. Today the motive is ideological, ethnic, and a religious fanaticism that knows no bounds. And it is now equipped with technologies capable of inflicting truly inhuman carnage.

But it is not just the potential destructiveness of modern terrorism which raises heightened moral concern. Rather, terrorism by its nature aims to undermine the goods of justice, order, and peace which are secured by political authority. In attacking these political goods, terrorism thus attacks every human being who benefits from them. Johnson writes:

While the tradition has allowed for the possibility of a war between two states both seeming, because of the complexity of the issues involved, to be just, the kind of violence we today call terrorism is evil in its very nature, because it attacks the foundations of political community itself. The authority to use force to curb and punish terrorism is thus the same authority that seeks to protect the goods of the political order as such. There is no justice in terrorism, only injustice.

Terrorism comes about as close as is possible to what the old moral theologians called malum in se —evil in itself. Thus, we should have no qualms when our political leaders refer to terrorists as evildoers. Far from being irrelevant to the war on terrorism, the classic just war tradition developed in large measure precisely to confront and contain the sort of private violence or private war currently practiced by terrorist organizations of all sorts.

Two forms of pacifism constitute the major contemporary moral challenges to the just war tradition. The first is expressed by the “seamless garment” metaphor made popular by the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago. This metaphor is intended to convey the notion that Christian opposition to violence must be all of one piece. It is morally inconsistent, the argument goes, to oppose abortion and euthanasia without also opposing capital punishment and war. After September 11, this form of thinking was evident in a document issued by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House in Washington, DC. The statement declared, “Any bombing, anywhere, is a tragedy. Any bloodshed, anywhere, is a tragedy. No war is holy. All war is evil. If we kill as a response to this great tragedy, we are no better than the terrorists who launched this awful offensive. Killing is killing, and killing is wrong.”

The problem with the seamless garment argument is that it fails to recognize a moral distinction between quite different types of coercive force. Conceptually, we can distinguish between three distinct uses of force, whether lethal or non-lethal. First, an act that originates or initiates harm of one’s neighbor is simply illegitimate violence. When such violence is lethal it is called “murder.” This first type of force stands in marked contrast to the two other possible uses of force. The second type involves a personal response to an initial act of violence against one’s self, one’s family, or one’s neighbor. When force is employed in this case, whether lethal or non-lethal, it is typically called vengeance. On one level, such force is reprehensible because it is likely to start a spiral of violence, reprisals, and blood feuds. Nonetheless, it also can be understood to have a certain juridical character. A forceful response to violence is a form of retribution, distinguishable from the original act of violence. The third type is an act of force, either lethal or non-lethal, by a political system with established police and military forces. Rather than allowing the personally offended party to exact vengeance, an established political system makes it possible both to prevent or punish those who originate acts of violence and to halt acts of personal vengeance. This is why political authority is a human good.

The seamless garment position expressed in the Catholic Worker statement makes no moral distinction between the act of a cold-blooded murderer; a vigilante lynch mob formed in response to a murder; and a deputized sheriff’s posse that sets out to arrest and if need be kill the murderer. Because they acknowledge no moral distinction between these different types of violence, the proponents of the seamless garment are led to the morally reductionist conclusion that if “we”—the United States—kill in response to terrorist acts, then “we” are just as evil as the terrorists.

This pacifist moral understanding dissents not only from the tradition of just war thinking but also, in important ways, from classical Christian pacifism as well. The classical Christian pacifist position is best articulated in Article 6 of the Schleitheim Articles of 1527, widely regarded as the theological consolidation of Anabaptism and an early expression of Mennonite theology:

Concerning the sword we have reached the following agreement: The sword is ordained by God outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and kills people and protects and defends the good. In the law the sword is established to punish and to kill the wicked, and secular authorities are established to use it.

Unlike seamless garment pacifism, classical Christian pacifism affirmed that public authorities have a mandate from God to do what Christians otherwise are supposedly prohibited from doing. While most versions of orthodox Christianity—Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican—entirely rejected pacifism for good biblical and theological reasons, the Schleitheim version of Christian pacifism at least avoids moral and intellectual incoherence and thus deserves a modicum of moral respect.

The fundamental difference between classical Christian pacifism and the just war views both of the magisterial Reformers and of Roman Catholicism was not whether public authorities were authorized to punish evildoers by capital punishment and by waging war. The Biblical witness was simply too perspicuous for any of them to doubt it. Contemporary pacifists are fond of quoting Romans 12:14, 19, “Bless those that persecute you; bless and do not curse. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath,” and then leaving it at that. But classical Christian pacifists understood that Romans 13 holds governing authorities to be agents of God’s wrath, ordained by him to “bring punishment on the evildoer.” Moreover, Christian believers are enjoined to submit to the governing authorities not out of fear, but for conscience’ sake (Romans 13:5). As a result, classical Christian pacifists never suggested that a single word, violence or killing, could be used equivocally to refer both to an initiation of harm to neighbor and to a retributive response to such an act by public authority. By the reasoning of classical Christian pacifism, no moral equivalence exists between acts of terrorism and the response to such acts by legitimate public authority.

Classical Christian pacifists did teach that individual Christians, bound to the higher law of Christ-like love, could not themselves wield the sword. They could maintain a certain degree of moral and intellectual coherence because their pacifism was part of a broader rejection of all political activity for Christians. The classical pacifist prohibition against Christians wielding the sword was part of their general prohibition against Christians holding judicial and political office of any kind. By making clear distinctions between the responsibilities of Christians and the divinely ordained responsibilities of political rulers, classical pacifists avoided the moral reductionism of the modern seamless garment position. Contemporary seamless garment pacifists, however, reject the implications of this radical dualism, usually out of an interest in “being prophetic.” To the extent that contemporary pacifists want to breach this dualism and align the state with the gospel requirement of reconciliation expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, to that extent their policy prescriptions are morally incoherent.

Many contemporary theologians and activists want to reject the apolitical, avowedly sectarian stance of classical Christian pacifism but simultaneously want to reject traditional just war teaching as too bellicose. They have thus sought to create a hybrid out of pacifism and the just war tradition, which has variously been described as “just-war pacifism,” “modern-war pacifism,” “crypto-pacifism,” or the “presumption against war ” interpretation of the just war tradition.

This view has gained widespread acceptance in liberal mainline Protestant denominations and among some evangelical Protestants, but it is also reflected in much contemporary Roman Catholic teaching. In their influential 1983 statement The Challenge of Peace, for instance, the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States repeatedly asserted that pacifism and just war have equal standing in the tradition of the Church. Moreover, that statement claims that the just war tradition shares with pacifism a common “presumption against war.” Those who defend a more classical interpretation of the just war tradition insist that this claim is historically mistaken and that, practically, it introduces a perverse logic into moral reflection concerning war.

The first problem with the presumption-against-war view is that as an historical matter it simply has no precedent among the authoritative exponents of the Christian tradition, whether Catholic or Protestant. In Contra Faustum 22.74, Saint Augustine asks rhetorically, “What is the evil in war?” He responds by rejecting the notion that war’s evil is “the death of some who will soon die in any case,” adding that, “this is mere cowardly dislike, not any religious feeling.” The real evil of war lies in any evil intent of the warriors or of the political authorities who wage war: “love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable hatred of the enemy, wild resistance, the lust of power, and such like.” But Augustine immediately adds that “it is generally to punish these things, when force is required to inflict the punishment, that, in obedience to God or some lawful authority, good men undertake wars, when they find themselves in such a position as regards the conduct of human affairs, that right conduct requires them to act, or to make others act in this way.”

Saint Thomas Aquinas discusses the question “Whether it is always sinful to wage war?” in a section of his treatise on theology devoted to love— Summa Theologiae 2-2, Q. 40. Aquinas, summarizing the medieval tradition, argues that war is not intrinsically sinful, and he holds, as we have already seen, that three things are required to justly wage war: legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention. In agreement with just war theorists before and after him, Aquinas moves from the responsibility of political authorities to guard the peace domestically to their responsibility to protect the commonwealth from external threats. “And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom, or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers (Romans 13:4) . . .so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies.”

The magisterial Protestant Reformers were in complete agreement on the moral responsibility of political authorities to use lethal force when necessary. Commenting on the Sermon on the Mount, Martin Luther asks, “What does it mean, then, to be meek? From the outset here you must realize that Christ is not speaking at all about the government and its work, whose property is not to be meek . . . but to bear the sword (Romans 13:4) for the punishment of those who do wrong (I Peter 2:14), and to wreak a vengeance and a wrath that are called the vengeance and wrath of God.”

John Calvin is even more explicit concerning the obligations of the “civil magistrate.” While “the law of the Lord forbids killing,” Calvin observes, in order “that murderers may not go unpunished, the Lawgiver himself puts into the hands of his ministers a sword to be drawn against all murderers. . . .” Citing several Biblical examples, Calvin argues that since the “true righteousness” of the civil magistrate is “to pursue the guilty and the impious with drawn sword,” then if magistrates should rather “sheathe their sword and keep their hands clean of blood, while [in a passage most relevant to contemporary terrorism] abandoned men wickedly range about with slaughter and massacre, they will become guilty of the greatest impiety. . . .” For the same reason, kings and their peoples must take up arms to wage lawful wars, “for if power has been given them to preserve the tranquility of their dominion . . . can they use it more opportunely than to check the fury of one who disturbs both the repose of private individuals and the common tranquility of all?” ( Institutes 4, 20, 10 –11)

It should be evident from these (and countless other) classic texts that the Christian just war teaching does not begin with a “presumption against war ” but rather with a presumption against injustice focused on the need for responsible use of force to confront wrongdoing. Force, according to the just war tradition, is a neutral instrument that can be good or evil depending on the use to which it is put. The classical Christian writers confirm George Weigel’s observation that from its beginning “just-war thinking has been based on the presumption—better, the classic moral judgment—that rightly constituted public authorities have the moral duty to pursue justice, even at risk to themselves and those for whom they are responsible.” Indeed, the criteria classified under jus ad bellum does nothing else than specify the terms under which those in political power are authorized to resort to force.

But the problem with the presumption-against-war position is not merely historical. More importantly, it introduces a certain perverse logic into moral reflection on the use of military force, a perversity that helps account for the irrelevance of most recent academic and ecclesiastical teaching on the ethics of war.

As we have seen, the resort to military force in the just war tradition has historically come to be defined through the following moral concepts: just cause, competent authority, right intention, reasonable hope of success, last resort, the goal of peace, and overall proportionality of good over harm. However, both historically and in terms of the inner logic of the just war idea, the criteria are not all of equal importance. Just cause, competent authority, and right intention have priority because they are immediately oriented to fundamental political goods. The remaining concerns— last resort, proportionality, reasonable chance for success, and the prospects for peace—must be taken seriously; but being prudential tests, they are, as James Turner Johnson says, “of a qualitatively different character from the deontological criteria” of the first three. Contemporary writers advancing the presumption-against-war position, however, tend to invert these priorities, so that prudential criteria such as last resort (probably the least helpful of the criteria) are presented as being at the center of the tradition.

To draw attention to this inversion of priorities is no mere splitting of academic hairs. The purpose of the just war tradition is not to provide publishing opportunities for academic philosophers, nor is it to provide course material for seminary professors teaching social ethics. Rather, the just war teaching has three quite serious and practical purposes. First, the tradition provides a normative grounding for statecraft, subjecting the use of force to a higher-law ethic. Second, the tradition provides guidance to military commanders, placing their role within the larger context of the moral ends of statecraft. Third, the tradition offers moral guidance for individuals as they conscientiously weigh the question of participation in the use of force and the degree of such participation. For most Americans, it is that last purpose which is most immediately relevant: the just war tradition illuminates the responsibilities of citizens in a self-governing democracy under God.

By inverting the logical priority of the criteria, the presumption-against-war interpretation of the tradition ends up presenting just war as a jumbled collection of abstract moral ideals, utterly disconnected from political and military judgment. Both historically and conceptually, however, the just war approach to the use of force is already in dialogue with the spheres of statecraft and military expertise. Indeed, just war reasoning belongs to, and properly resides with, military commanders and statesmen considering the use of force, not academics. If the mere use of military force is conceived in the first instance as the “problem ” to which avoidance is the preferred solution, then just war reasoning is reduced to little more than a moralistic checklist brought in from the outside, external to the task of statecraft.

Properly, therefore, the judgment as to whether a military operation will be successful (the criterion of reasonable chance for success) or will result in greater good than harm (the principle of proportionality) rests with those who have the competence to render such judgments. Put bluntly, it resides with those who know what they are talking about. In almost every instance, that does not include bishops, theologians, and professors. It is the disorienting inversion of logical priorities in the presumption-against-war teaching that explains why, in recent years, we confront the maddening spectacle of theologians who know virtually nothing about military strategy, force structure, and weapons capability holding forth confidently on the likely or unlikely success of a military operation. It accounts for the frequently heard assertion that pacifists and just warriors share a common commitment to military force as a “last resort,” the only purported difference being that pacifists believe a last resort is never reached—as if that were a minor difference. It also explains how it can be that so many intellectuals can support the use of force in theory, but also always oppose it in practice.

It is thus unsurprising that statesmen and military commanders who must make responsible and speedy moral judgments simply ignore the posturings of the modern pacifists who would be their moral guides. Modern pacifists offer a blanket moral advice that inevitably counsels “nonviolence” or extreme caution in the use of military force. History, of course, is full of examples of nations that have suffered catastrophes by being overly aggressive and over-extended militarily. This is a lesson from Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War; it is arguably a lesson America learned from Vietnam. So, the modern pacifist or crypto-pacifist will sometimes get something right. But history also tells us that an insufficiently forceful policy can have disastrous results as well. The classic case is the failure of appeasement in the 1930s, which led to the carnage of the Second World War. The pacifist will always get this wrong.

The moral and strategic limitations of pacifism are again evident in our contemporary war on terrorism. It is plausible that the terrorist attacks on September 11 resulted from the United States’ failure to respond aggressively after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, or after the bombing of our embassies in Africa in 1998, or after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. In each instance, you needn’t do a lot of research to discover what military response—or rather, lack thereof—the pacifists were urging. It is precisely the “seamless monotony” of the pacifists’ moral advice that renders their advice morally useless.

A serious debate is now underway concerning national strategy after the conclusion of the Afghan campaign. How aggressively do we pursue terrorists elsewhere using military forces? Do we seek regime termination in nations that continue to sponsor terrorists, such as Iraq? These decisions must be made by wise, prudent, and moral statesmen. But our statesmen are not likely to heed the policy advice of pacifist professors and clerics who believe, by definition, that military forces should be eliminated, who know little or nothing about military capabilities and doctrines, and who misrepresent or misunderstand the core teachings of the just war tradition.

Ultimately, the intellectual source of this pastoral confusion lies with the novel contemporary effort to synthesize the two mutually exclusive moral positions of pacifism and just war. Allsuch attempts fundamentally distort both traditions and render them logically, morally, and theologically incoherent. Just war thinking begins with the belief that in a fallen world, the use of coercion and force, including the use of lethal force by legitimate public authority, is not only permitted but also morally required under certain circumstances. For governments not to use lethal violence to protect the innocent is unjust and dishonors God. The classical pacifist believes that to use force is evil, perhaps in the case of the modern crypto-pacifist a necessary evil, but still an evil. Between these positions, no middle ground exists, and yet that is where the “presumption-against-war” thinkers have sought to build their intellectual house. Because their resulting hybrids are incoherent, they cannot do the practical political and military work that the just war tradition is designed, precisely, to do.

Which leaves us to suggest that Saint Augustine (and the Augustinians), Saint Thomas Aquinas (and the Thomists), Luther (and the Lutherans) and Calvin (and the Calvinists) are, despite their diverse theological perspectives, more reliable guides to reflection on this great contemporary problem than are the vast majority of our contemporary academic experts. A recovery of the authentic just war tradition should be among our first tasks in these perilous times.

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How Terrorism Is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence

Virginia Held, How Terrorism Is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence , Oxford University Press, 2008, 205pp., $45.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780195329599.

Reviewed by Igor Primoratz, University of Melbourne

This is a book on terrorism and political violence more generally, written by a philosopher and accordingly focusing on conceptual and moral, rather than empirical or historical, questions. The book is meant for fellow philosophers and political theorists, but it is written clearly and without philosophical jargon, and will be accessible, and of much interest, to the general reader too.

While political violence is a traditional topic in political and moral philosophy, terrorism -- the type of political violence generally considered most difficult to defend -- was not much discussed before the attacks in the US on 11 September 2001. Virginia Held is one of the few philosophers who gave it sustained attention before it became a fashionable topic. The present book is a collection of seven essays she has published over the last twenty-odd years and one previously unpublished paper. Some essays discuss terrorism or political violence generally, while others look into such related issues as the ways the media deals with political violence, or collective responsibility for ethnic hatred and violence. There is also an essay on the methods of moral inquiry.

In her approach to moral questions, Held combines consequentialism, deontological ethics and the ethics of care. The relevance of the last approach to discussing issues of political violence is rather limited, and Held's position on terrorism and political violence is grounded in consequentialist and deontological considerations of a more traditional type. So is just war theory, but Held's views are not a version of that theory. Indeed, she doubts that just war theory can be of much help in understanding and judging contemporary armed conflicts.

The title of the book might be thought somewhat misleading, as Held does not so much seek to show how terrorism is wrong as how it can be right. To be sure, a title highlighting the latter prospect probably would not have been a good idea in the current atmosphere of the "war on terror." This "war" is both driven and defended by a "moral clarity" claimed by leaders of some major powers and by many analysts and commentators. Held rightly challenges this facile "moral clarity," according to which all terrorism is morally the same, clearly distinct from war, and a monopoly of insurgents, who are both amoral and utterly irrational and fanatical, and therefore never to be engaged with in dialogue or negotiation. She goes on to argue that we should not adopt a sweeping moral rejection of all terrorism, whatever the cause it serves, the circumstances in which it does so, and the consequences of refraining from it; that terrorism is not "uniquely atrocious"; and that it is not necessarily morally worse than war.

The scope and import of any moral assessment of terrorism depends on just what is meant by "terrorism". Accordingly, Held discusses at some length the question of how the term should be defined. The usage over the two centuries or so since the term entered political and moral discourse in the West has been notoriously confusing, fraught with moral emotions and political passions, and plagued by relativism and double standards. It is in such cases that philosophy can demonstrate its relevance to public debates by clarifying central concepts and main positions, spotting missteps in argument, exposing prejudice and double standards, and thus facilitating more rational and discerning moral deliberation and choice. Most definitions of terrorism crafted by philosophers acknowledge the two traits that make up the core concept underlining all shifts in descriptive and evaluative meaning: terrorism is violence aiming at intimidation (fear, terror). Beyond this, philosophers tend to disagree, most importantly on whether terrorism is violence against civilians (non-combatants, innocent people), or can also target members of the military and security services and highly placed government officials. This is the question of a narrow vs. wide definition. A wide definition is in line with common use over two centuries, whereas a narrow definition is revisionary. Yet a narrow definition may be more appropriate in the context of moral assessment of violence and terrorism. Surely there is a considerable moral difference between planting a bomb in an office of (what is considered) an extremely oppressive government and killing a number of its officials, and planting a bomb in a coffee shop and killing a number of common citizens.

Held prefers a wide definition, for reasons I do not find convincing. One is common use. Held points out that the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, or much Palestinian violence directed at Israeli soldiers, would not count as terrorism on a narrow definition, while the bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima would, and finds these implications unacceptable. To me, they seem just right. She quotes Walter Laqueur's remark that "most terrorist groups in the contemporary world have been attacking the military, the police, and the civilian population" (p. 55) as showing the inadequacy of a narrow definition. But surely the fact that a group has engaged in terrorism to an extent sufficient to consider it a terrorist group does not turn every act of political violence committed by the group into an act of terrorism. Finally, Held rejects narrow definitions on the ground that "it is not at all clear who the 'innocent' are as distinct from the 'legitimate' targets. We can perhaps agree that small children are innocent, but beyond this, there is little moral clarity" (pp. 19-20). Yet even if only "small children" were morally protected against violence that would be a weighty consideration, as indiscriminate political violence against civilians or common citizens is bound to kill and maim children too. Moreover, there are other classes of civilians that are just as clearly innocent in the relevant sense, i.e. innocent of the (alleged) injustice or oppression: opponents of the government, those too old or infirm to take part in political life, or those inculpably ignorant of the immorality of their government's policies.

The book offers two somewhat different definitions of terrorism: as "political violence that usually spreads fear beyond those attacked" and "perhaps more than anything else … resembles small-scale war" (p. 21), and as political violence employed with "the intention either to spread fear or to harm non-combatants" (p. 76). Both definitions run together war and terrorism, and imply that an act of war proper, i.e. one aimed at a legitimate military target, counts as terrorism. For, as Trotsky pointed out in his defense of the "red terror", "war … is founded upon intimidation… . [It] destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the remainder and breaking their will" ( Terrorism and Communism , Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 58). Held accepts this implication of her position; I find it problematic.

Philosophers working with a wide definition of terrorism usually distinguish terrorism that targets the military and high government officials and terrorism that attacks common citizens, and argue that the former type of terrorism can be morally justified in certain circumstances, while the latter type is never, or almost never, justified. Held does not take this line. Her book offers two different justifications of terrorist violence, and both apply to the latter as well as the former kind of terrorism.

The first is in terms of the responsibility of citizens in a democracy for what their government does on their behalf. This justification is only suggested at several points in the book and is never developed and defended from likely objections. Held does not make it clear whether she sees common citizens as proper objects of terrorist violence because, as voters, they authorize the government's actions and policies (p. 20), or on account of various types and degrees of support they give the government (pp. 56, 78). Both these lines of argument are open to serious queries.

Held's second justification of terrorism, presented in chapter 4 )“Terrorism, Rights, and Political Goals”) is carefully spelled out. It focuses on the issue of human rights. When human rights of a person or group are not respected, what may we do in order to ensure that they are? On one view, known as consequentialism of rights, if the only way to ensure respect of a certain right of A and B is to infringe on the same right of C, we will be justified in doing so. Held does not accept such trade-offs in rights with the aim of maximizing their respect. But she points out that rights sometimes come into conflict, whether directly or indirectly. When that happens, we cannot avoid comparing the rights involved in terms of their stringency and making certain choices. That applies to the case of terrorism too. Terrorism violates some human rights of its victims. But its advocates claim that in certain circumstances a limited use of terrorism is the only way of bringing about a society in which the human rights of all will be respected.

Even when that is so, it is not enough to make resort to terrorism justified. But it will be justified if an additional condition is met: that of distributive justice. If there is a society where the human rights of a part of the population are respected, while the same rights of another part of the population are being violated, and if the only way of putting an end to that and bringing about a society in which human rights of all are respected is a limited use of terrorism, and finally, if terrorism is directed against members of the first group, which until now has been privileged as far as respect of human rights is concerned -- then terrorism will be morally justified. This is an argument of distributive justice, brought to bear on the problem of violations of human rights. It is more just to equalize the violations of human rights in a stage of transition to a society where the rights of all are respected, than to allow the group which has already suffered large-scale violations of human rights to suffer more such violations (assuming that in both cases we are dealing with violations of the same, or equally stringent, human rights). Human rights of many are going to be violated in any case. "If we must have rights violations, a more equitable distribution of such violations is better than a less equitable one" (p. 88).

This is an original, deontological cum consequentialist justification of terrorism. Neither the indispensable contribution of terrorism to bringing about equal respect of human rights of all nor the justice in the distribution of violations of such rights in the transition stage is, in itself, enough to justify its use. Each is necessary, and jointly the two are sufficient for its justification. Obviously, a critique that reduces Held's position to either of its prongs falls short of the mark. So does the objection that terrorism is as a matter of fact highly unlikely ever to help usher in a better, more just society. If so, that tells against terrorism, rather than against Held's (or any other) stringent moral requirements for a morally defensible recourse to it.

Another objection is that in allowing for sacrificing such basic human rights as the right to life and to bodily security of individual victims of terrorism for the sake of a more just distribution of violations of the same rights within a group in the course of transition to a stage where these rights will be respected throughout that group, Held adopts a collectivistic position that offends against the principles of separateness of persons and respect for persons. In response, Held argues that

to fail to achieve a more just distribution of violations of rights (through the use of terrorism if that is the only means available) is to fail to recognize that those whose rights are already not fairly respected are individuals in their own right, not merely members of a group … whose rights can be ignored. … Arguments for achieving a just distribution of rights violations need not be arguments … that are more than incidentally about groups. They can be arguments about individuals' rights to basic fairness. (pp. 89-90)

Still, a common citizen belonging to the relatively privileged section of the population has done nothing to forfeit her right to life. If she is killed by a terrorist seeking to make the distribution of right to life violations in the entire population more just, her right to life is violated for reasons to do with the group: for the sake of more justice within the group. This has nothing to do with her sins of commission or omission, and in this sense Held's is a collectivistic argument -- and an argument that I, for one, do not find convincing. Held argues that, if we fail to resort to terrorism in the circumstances described in her argument, we thereby fail to recognize that individuals belonging to the disadvantaged section of the population "are individuals in their own right," rather than merely members of a group whose human rights can be ignored. This argument is predicated on moral equivalence of acts and omissions, and on ascription of negative responsibility. This, too, I find problematic. We do not fail to respect the right to life of disadvantaged individuals when we fail to kill or maim other individuals, personally innocent of the plight of the former. The disadvantaged individuals do not have a right that we should engage in terrorism in their behalf, and we do not have a duty to do that. Indeed, I believe we have a duty not to do that.

Whether Held's two-prong justification of terrorism can be successfully defended against this and other possible objections or not, it remains an original, complex, and highly important position on the morality of terrorism. The essay presenting it is the centerpiece of Held's book and her most valuable contribution to the discussion of terrorism as far as fellow philosophers are concerned. The general reader will find much of interest in all the essays in this book. In the wider context of public debate about terrorism and the "war" against it, Held provides a strong antidote to the simplistic deliverances of "moral clarity" many of our political leaders and "public intellectuals" claim to possess.

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Waging war against terror: an essay for sandy levinson.

Philip Chase Bobbitt , Columbia Law School Follow

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Publication date.

Wars are acts of State, and therefore there has never been a "war on terror." Of course states have fought terrorism, in many guises, for centuries. But a war on terror had to await the development of states – including virtual states like al Qaeda's global ummah – whose constitutional order was not confined to a particular territory or national group and for whom terror could therefore be a permanent state of international affairs, either sought in order to prevent persons within a state's control from resisting oppression by accessing global, empowering resources and networks, or suffered because other states wished to press such a condition on us and because our global vulnerabilities could not be detached from our prosperity and freedom.

Professor's Levinson's warning must therefore prepare us not only for the aftermaths of an attack by al Qaeda, but also for attacks mounted by twenty-first century terrorism of which al Qaeda is only a herald. Just as terrorists in earlier centuries mimicked the states they were struggling against, so terrorists in the twenty-first century will copy the decentralized, devolved, outsourcing and privatized market-state of the twenty-first century, instead of modeling their activities after those of the national liberation groups of the twentieth century that fought nation-states.

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Law | Military, War, and Peace | National Security Law

Recommended Citation

Philip C. Bobbitt, Waging War Against Terror: An Essay for Sandy Levinson , 40 Ga. L. Rev. 753 (2006). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2230

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The Alliance for Citizen Engagement

Swini Adikari

• July 18, 2022
• , Foreign Policy , Middle East and North Africa

Introduction

The United States’ longest war came to an end with the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Taliban’s swift and hostile takeover of Afghanistan’s government following the U.S. withdrawal left the country once again in the hands of the Taliban. The Taliban takeover is a significant development in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and raises questions about the unforseen consequences of the war against terrorism. 

The GWOT is an international, American-led coalition campaign launched in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland. Following the attacks, then-President George W. Bush launched a comprehensive plan to eliminate and disrupt all terrorist organizations around the globe. He stated, “ Our war on terror begins with Al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” 

The U.S. employed every instrument of national power including diplomacy, intelligence, law enforcement, and financial and military tools to disrupt and defeat not just Al-Qaeda but to extend the fight to other militant groups around the world. Nations around the globe joined the U.S. in the battle against global terror. The GWOT led to the disruption of violent extremist organizations, the elimination of terrorist safe havens, the disruption of terrorist financing, the advancement and transformation of global security, and the elimination of the immediate terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland. Simultaneously, the GWOT also fueled radicalization and laid the foundation for the rise of extremist groups with similar ideological sympathies that can spread violence.

Successes of the GWOT

Military and intelligence operations including offensive strategies and covert operations proved successful in the fight against terrorism. These operations have been shown to deter transnational terrorist groups from conducting logistically complex attacks in the face of limited resources as a consequence of U.S. and international led-military forces. U.S. military action succeeded in ousting the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in December 2001 . While Al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies once controlled 95% of Afghanistan, U.S. military campaigns succeeded in seizing large swaths of Al-Qaeda-held territory including its center of gravity near the Afghan-Pakistan border in Afghanistan and reduced its ability to carry out large-scale terrorist attacks. This impacted Osama Bin Laden’s immediate communications with the organization. This disconnect eventually reduced Al-Qaeda’s ability to plan until 2004 when Osama Bin Laden reconnected with Al-Qaeda after years of hiding.  

Targeted killings proved effective in dismantling terrorist groups that followed a hierarchical bureaucratic structure. However, Al-Qaeda was still able to conduct attacks despite leadership decapitation. Thus, while leadership decapitation was a major blow to the terrorist organization, the bureaucratization of Al-Qaeda allowed the group to formulate contingencies for a leadership turnover. However, the GWOT succeeded in eliminating key terrorist leaders of Al-Qaeda, including Osama Bin Laden. 

Additionally, the U.S. made domestic advancements by developing more efficient technology and law enforcement processes and establishing the Transportation Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to prevent further attacks on the U.S. homeland.

Failures of the GWOT

According to the Costs of War project at Brown University, nearly 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, the financial costs of the GWOT stand at $8 trillion and the death toll stands at 900,000 people. Casualties include U.S. military members, allied fighters, opposition fighters, journalists, humanitarian aid workers, and civilians. Of the total number killed , 287,000 are categorized as civilians, 207,000 as members of the national military and police forces, and another 301,000 as opposition fighters. 

In the aftermath of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Iraq was destabilized without an effective bureaucratic system to provide basic goods and services to its citizens. The absence of adequate law enforcement and military forces to secure Iraqi borders, and the absence of extensive monitoring led to the country being infiltrated by former jihadist foreign fighters . 

Following the Iraqi invasion, the provisional government led a de-Baathification process to rid the government and military of Ba’ath influence. The Ba’ath political party had previously led the country and top officials perpetrated human rights violations, but many had joined the party because it was the only way to gain many roles in the government sector. The de-Baathification gave rise to grievances that extremist groups started to exploit. Former Iraqi soldiers with no jobs were susceptible to radicalization. Grievances in the Sunni regions remained strong as there was little progress made with regards to reconstruction while security forces targeted former Ba’ath party members through unjust anti-terrorism laws. The use of unjust anti-terrorism laws , lack of security and services, and the length of displacement of these communities all led to an environment that extremist groups such as the Islamic State could exploit. All these conditions fueled radicalization and laid the foundations for the rise of other extremist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq. 

GWOT moving forward

Moving forward, the U.S. will likely continue to carry out special operations in regions that witness the rise of jihadi groups, to disrupt and eliminate terrorist organizations, disrupt terrorist financing, and prevent radicalization. U.S. military doctrine retains the essential elements to plan and execute successful operations against conventional and irregular opponents. Recently, the U.S. successfully executed a covert operation that killed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader Abu Ibrahim al–Hashimi al-Qurayshi . This operation demonstrates a high degree of sophistication in U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. 

Most importantly, the U.S. is incorporating countering violent extremism into the U.S. National Security Strategy to prevent the radicalization of individuals as radicalization and recruitment remain threat multipliers. Thus, preventing radicalization remains essential to countering extremism, especially in internally displaced camps where extremist propaganda is widely being spread. 

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America’s War on Terrorism Essay

Terrorism, propagated by Islamic Extremists, has cost the lives of countless innocent inhabitants, for a long time. These terrorists majorly attack the United States citizens. The newsagents have aired various cases of terrorism from time to time over an incredibly longer period. One of the worst incidents or terror attacks was experienced in 11 th September 2001, with the bombing of the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

As a result, the United States retaliated by ambushing many of these terrorists from their hideouts and thus significantly reducing cases of terror attacks (Gale, Radu & Sicherman, 2009). One of the major breakthroughs in this fight was the recent execution of the leader of Al Qaeda Network, Osama bin Laden. However, the US government should not celebrate yet for this milestone, but it should be more vigilant to curb any retaliatory attacks (Ross, 2011).

Moreover, with the advancement of technology, the United States military is to fight this menace and significantly impede terrorists’ operations. On the other hand, terrorists have taken advantage of technology to perpetrate terror to innocent victims. Terrorists now use sophisticated weaponry to carry out their ill-fated missions, in the name of fighting for their religion. Terror groups have now gone global, with followers being almost in every nation (Noritz, 2009).

Over the past years, many critics have raised the issue as to whether this war is worth its taking. The war against terrorism has cost the United States large sums of taxpayers’ money that could have been used elsewhere to uplift the economy. However, in my opinion, it is worthwhile. Among the benefits of this undertaking are improved security to the citizens of the United States.

The resilient and unending war against the terrorists has made the US citizens to have free movement without fear of recurrent attacks. This has resulted in saving innocent lives and helped safeguarding the welfare of citizens, thus promoting economic growth. Besides, the war has aided significantly in reducing threats from the terror perpetrators (Noritz, 2009).

In addition, the battle on terrorism has significantly reduced recurrent attacks. The US Army has deactivated most terrorist activities, thus diminishing their strength for further attacks. Furthermore, the US involvement in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan has led to the elimination of autocratic rule based on corruption and nepotism and brought democracy to those involved nations. As a result, these countries will experience economic development and thus improve people’s living standards.

Through this war, the US military forces have gained vast knowledge about how best to fight enemies, not only the terrorist attackers. As a result, the US government has reinforced its military prowess in terms of efficiency, better organization structure and weaponry sophistication through technology incorporation. This makes the US military the best in the world.

The involvement of US in War against terrorism has made US earn recognition from other countries. Nations such as India, Britain and the East African states face the challenge of terrorism and with total cooperation, they will gradually put terrorism at bay. This way, they will create strong international relations and thus, promote peace among world nations. Moreover, through the war on terrorism, the US government has sensitized other nations towards the fight for democracy and proper governance.

Conversely, the war against terrorism costs the US government loads of money. Critics argue against the fight, claiming that terrorism is currently not a serious threat to the residents. Moreover, they argue that the money used for terrorism war could be utilized better in other economy stimulating activities such as trade, or it could be channeled to the healthcare system. Others argue that the US army is using too much force while fighting against terrorism, thus compromising human rights.

Gale, S., Radu, M. & Sicherman, H. (2009). The war on terrorism: 21st-century perspectives . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Ross, D. (2011). Why al Qaeda is winning the war we’re fighting, and the war we think we’re fighting . Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Noritz, J. (2009). Pirates, terrorists, and warlords: the history, influence, and future of armed groups around the world . New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishers.

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IvyPanda. (2022, March 31). America's War on Terrorism. https://ivypanda.com/essays/war-on-terrorism/

"America's War on Terrorism." IvyPanda , 31 Mar. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/war-on-terrorism/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'America's War on Terrorism'. 31 March.

IvyPanda . 2022. "America's War on Terrorism." March 31, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/war-on-terrorism/.

1. IvyPanda . "America's War on Terrorism." March 31, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/war-on-terrorism/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "America's War on Terrorism." March 31, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/war-on-terrorism/.

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Terrorism Essay for Students and Teacher

500+ words essay on terrorism essay.

Terrorism is an act, which aims to create fear among ordinary people by illegal means. It is a threat to humanity. It includes person or group spreading violence, riots, burglaries, rapes, kidnappings, fighting, bombings, etc. Terrorism is an act of cowardice. Also, terrorism has nothing to do with religion. A terrorist is only a terrorist, not a Hindu or a Muslim.

Types of Terrorism

Terrorism is of two kinds, one is political terrorism which creates panic on a large scale and another one is criminal terrorism which deals in kidnapping to take ransom money. Political terrorism is much more crucial than criminal terrorism because it is done by well-trained persons. It thus becomes difficult for law enforcing agencies to arrest them in time.

Terrorism spread at the national level as well as at international level.  Regional terrorism is the most violent among all. Because the terrorists think that dying as a terrorist is sacred and holy, and thus they are willing to do anything. All these terrorist groups are made with different purposes.

Causes of Terrorism

There are some main causes of terrorism development  or production of large quantities of machine guns, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, nuclear weapons, missiles, etc. rapid population growth,  Politics, Social, Economic  problems, dissatisfaction of people with the country’s system, lack of education, corruption, racism, economic inequality, linguistic differences, all these are the major  elements of terrorism, and terrorism flourishes after them. People use terrorism as a weapon to prove and justify their point of view.  The riots among Hindus and Muslims are the most famous but there is a difference between caste and terrorism.

The Effects Of Terrorism

Terrorism spreads fear in people, people living in the country feel insecure because of terrorism. Due to terrorist attacks, millions of goods are destroyed, the lives of thousands of innocent people are lost, animals are also killed. Disbelief in humanity raises after seeing a terrorist activity, this gives birth to another terrorist. There exist different types of terrorism in different parts of the country and abroad.

Today, terrorism is not only the problem of India, but in our neighboring country also, and governments across the world are making a lot of effort to deal with it. Attack on world trade center on September 11, 2001, is considered the largest terrorist attack in the world. Osama bin Laden attacked the tallest building in the world’s most powerful country, causing millions of casualties and death of thousands of people.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Terrorist Attacks in India

India has suffered several terrorist attacks which created fear among the public and caused huge destruction. Here are some of the major terrorist attacks that hit India in the last few years: 1991 – Punjab Killings, 1993 – Bombay Bomb Blasts, RSS Bombing in Chennai, 2000 – Church Bombing, Red Fort Terrorist Attack,2001- Indian Parliament Attack, 2002 – Mumbai Bus Bombing, Attack on Akshardham Temple, 2003 – Mumbai Bombing, 2004 – Dhemaji School Bombing in Assam,2005 – Delhi Bombings, Indian Institute of Science Shooting, 2006 – Varanasi Bombings, Mumbai Train Bombings, Malegaon Bombings, 2007 – Samjhauta Express Bombings, Mecca Masjid Bombing, Hyderabad Bombing, Ajmer Dargah Bombing, 2008 – Jaipur Bombings, Bangalore Serial Blasts, Ahmedabad Bombings, Delhi Bombings, Mumbai Attacks, 2010 – Pune Bombing, Varanasi Bombing.

The recent ones include 2011 – Mumbai Bombing, Delhi Bombing, 2012 – Pune Bombing, 2013 – Hyderabad Blasts, Srinagar Attack, Bodh Gaya Bombings, Patna Bombings, 2014 – Chhattisgarh Attack, Jharkhand Blast, Chennai Train Bombing, Assam Violence, Church Street Bomb Blast, Bangalore, 2015 –  Jammu Attack, Gurdaspur Attack, Pathankot Attack, 2016 – Uri Attack, Baramulla Attack, 2017 – Bhopal Ujjain Passenger Train Bombing, Amarnath Yatra Attack, 2018 Sukma Attack, 2019- Pulwama attack.

Agencies fighting Terrorism in India

Many police, intelligence and military organizations in India have formed special agencies to fight terrorism in the country. Major agencies which fight against terrorism in India are Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), National Investigation Agency (NIA).

Terrorism has become a global threat which needs to be controlled from the initial level. Terrorism cannot be controlled by the law enforcing agencies alone. The people in the world will also have to unite in order to face this growing threat of terrorism.

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Pakistan and the “War on Terror”

Middle East Policy has been one of the world’s most cited publications on the region since its inception in 1982, and our Breaking Analysis series makes high-quality, diverse analysis available to a broader audience.

Mark N. Katz

Senior Fellow

Pakistan’s relationship to the “War on Terror” has been highly ambivalent. On the one hand, Pakistan played a key role in facilitating the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan from shortly after 9/11 up to the present. It has permitted the transit of matériel across Pakistani territory to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan has also tolerated American missile attacks launched from Afghanistan against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s lawless border region with that country.

On the other hand, Pakistan has provided safe haven not just for radical Islamist movements targeting its rival India, but also for the Afghan Taliban. Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, among others, are also believed to be hiding in Pakistan. Whether, to what extent and by whom within the Pakistani government they are being protected is unclear, but Pakistan certainly has not helped the United States to locate and capture them. There have also been press reports that Pakistan has blocked the efforts of some Taliban leaders to seek peace with the U.S.-backed Karzai government in Kabul. U.S.-Pakistani relations have become increasingly strained over how to prosecute the “War on Terror,” yet cooperation between them also continues.

The explanation for this ambivalence is that while the United States and Pakistan have some common goals, their priorities differ markedly. The U.S. was concerned primarily with the Soviet threat during the Cold War, and has been focused on the threat from al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies since 9/11. Pakistan, by contrast, has been primarily concerned with its struggle with India ever since the two became independent from Britain in 1947. The fate of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region that was divided between India and Pakistan during the first war between them, has been Pakistan’s principal concern. It also has many others, including which of the two rivals will have predominant influence in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has also been vitally concerned with the preservation of its territorial integrity. The country is an agglomeration of ethnicities with little in common except an adherence to Islam. In the early 1970s, the conflict between what were then the two parts of the country — West and East Pakistan — was essentially over which ethnicity would predominate. Indian intervention in that war allowed East Pakistan to secede and become Bangladesh. Since then, the Pakistani military and security services have increasingly emphasized Pakistan’s Islamic identity to keep its remaining disparate ethnic groups together. But one group has been predominant in the Pakistani military and security services, and hence in the government, ever since independence: the Punjabis.

Kashmir provides a rallying point for all Pakistanis, who believe that the Muslims there should also be able to live in overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan. Kashmir, however, has also posed a problem for the Pakistani government and military. Pakistan has neither been able to seize it from India nor to persuade India to give it up. But, while it has no real hope of acquiring Indian-held Kashmir, no Pakistani government can afford to acknowledge this or relinquish Pakistan’s claim. Doing so would not only be hugely unpopular inside Pakistan; it might also encourage other ethnicities (Pushtuns, Sindis and Balochis) to push for secession from the Punjabi-dominated state.

During the period of their Cold War alliance, the differing American and Pakistani priorities were evident: the United States sought Pakistan as an ally against the USSR, while Pakistan sought the United States as an ally against India. The height of Pakistani-American cooperation occurred during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the United States, Pakistan and many others backed the Afghan mujahideen, who were resisting the Soviets. Even then, however, Pakistan favored the Islamist Afghan mujahideen groups over the more nationalist ones. Islamabad seemed to think that it would have more influence over the former.

After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988-89, American concern about that country and South Asia in general diminished. Pakistan, however, remained focused on its rivalry with India. During the 1990s, then, Pakistan supported the rise of the Taliban, for several reasons: to restore order in what had become a chaotic country, to promote an Islamist ally that would sympathize with Pakistan over Kashmir and thus resist Indian influence, to establish a secure road network across Afghanistan to link Pakistan with newly independent Central Asia (thus benefiting the politically powerful Pakistani trucking industry), and even to extend Pakistani influence across Afghanistan into Central Asia. The Pakistani military and security services also believed that having an ally in Afghanistan would give Pakistan “strategic depth” in any future confrontation with India (though precisely what this meant and how it would work were ill-defined and poorly thought out).

With Pakistani help, the Taliban was able to seize control of most of Afghanistan in 1996. The Taliban, though, proved to be an extremely difficult ally for Pakistan, providing safe-haven to several radical Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda. After al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks and it became clear that the United States would intervene militarily in Afghanistan in retaliation, the Bush administration forced Pakistan to choose between siding with the United States or with the Taliban. Pakistan formally chose to side with the United States, not due to a genuine change of heart regarding the Taliban, but due to the fear that Washington would side with India against Pakistan if it did not, and in the hope that siding with (or appearing to side with) the United States against the Taliban would strengthen Pakistan vis-à-vis India. Anticipating that the United States would not remain in Afghanistan, and that the Taliban and perhaps even al-Qaeda might prove useful to Pakistan vis-à-vis India later, Pakistan tolerated and even supported their presence on its territory in the region bordering Afghanistan.

It would have been difficult for Pakistan to do otherwise. Pakistan has long supported radical Islamist groups that are primarily concerned with Kashmir and India. How could it draw a distinction between these “good” Muslim radicals, on the one hand, and “bad” Taliban ones, on the other — especially when Pakistani public opinion views both favorably? But at the same time, the Pakistani government has not wanted to alienate the United States either (at least not too much). So Pakistani policy since 9/11 has been a confusing mixture of supporting, sheltering and tolerating the Taliban and al-Qaeda to some extent, but also supporting U.S. actions against them at the same time.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. government has grown increasingly frustrated with Pakistan; its support for the Taliban has frustrated American military efforts in Afghanistan. But many Pakistani Islamists, especially the Pushtun, condemn the Pakistani government for cooperating with the United States at all. A Pakistani Taliban has arisen, mainly among Pakistan’s Pushtun population, which has fought against Pakistani government forces.

Pakistan’s too-clever-by-half policy of supporting the United States against the Taliban and supporting the Taliban against the United States has not only frustrated American efforts in Afghanistan; it has contributed to the rise of a radical Islamist threat inside Pakistan itself. At this point, a Pakistani government decision to turn against these radical Islamist forces — or just end its support for them — might result in accelerating the threat that they pose to the Pakistani government.

Despite this, the Pakistani leadership has, characteristically, remained focused on its rivalry with India. With the United States and NATO having announced that they will withdraw from Afghanistan between mid-2011 and the end of 2014, Pakistan seems more worried than ever that the Karzai government will ally itself with India to the detriment of Pakistan. And so, Pakistan has continued to support the hard-line Afghan Taliban. The irony, of course, is that if the Taliban returns to power in Afghanistan with Pakistan’s help, the Taliban is hardly likely to be more amenable to Pakistani influence after it has less need of it — just as occurred during the 1990s. Indeed, if the Afghan Taliban decides to help its Pushtun bretheren across the border in Pakistan, the Pakistani government may find itself faced with its own very serious Islamist insurgency — along with an unsympathetic international community as a result of the policies Pakistan is pursuing at present.

Mark N. Katz is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Middle East Policy Council and a Professor of Government at George Mason University. Links to many of his publications can be found on his website: www.marknkatz.com

To read more articles in this series, click here .

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War Against Terrorism Essay

Table of Contents

The systematic approach adopts here while writing War Against Terrorism Essay. We have the idea that it is the need of those students who want higher studies rooted in violence and perceived injustices. The lead goes with the psychological determinants of the terrorist act. The Western media put light on terrorism and war specifically after 9/11. Violent radicalization is the result of such a mindset. Terror thinking finds a way to search Pakistan’s history, even the current geopolitical situation, and social scenario. It is the core issue reflected in the best way.

Every government has its own interpretation and struggle to define terrorism. There is no standard definition indeed. United Nations did not ponder to articulate a full-fledged definition that can make the standard for all countries. The event of 9/11 has impacted the Muslim community specifically.

Essay On Corruption

Event of 9/11:

The incident directly creates the feeling In Muslims that terrorism has a direct impact on the so-called Muslim extremist groups. In simple words, it can say that terrorism is what these groups are doing. The same mindset makes the wrong interpretation of Islamic Jihad as well. Social, economic, and human costs due to terrorism heavily affect the Pakistani stand at an international level. The purpose of the narrative is to show the same in this War Against Terrorism Essay. Pakistan is the first country made with the name of Islam on the world map and obviously, it faces the same mindset on the frontline.

Soviet-Afghan War 1979:

The Western media never missed a chance to mention the first step of Pakistan toward terrorism in the region. A fundamental change was witnessed that altered the very character of the existing Pakistani society. The withdrawal of the Soviets revealed a Pakistani society that had been forced into havoc. There are many direct and indirect events in terrorism linked to the War Against Terrorism Essay. It assures that how every event including the event of 9/11 and the first step of the Soviet-Afghan War in 1979 are some facets of the Essay On War Against Terrorism.

Pakistan Stock Exchange Attack

In 2020, some terrorists attacked the Pakistan Stock Exchange which is located in Karachi. When work hours started then some of the people who are completely loaded with the latest guns and bombs attacked the main branch then some of the Pakistan arm forces soldiers were taken action against them and shot all the terrorists.

Now, you can get the War Against Terrorism Essay in English because some people do not understand Urdu literature so all information about terrorism is mentioned on this page. Students can read the War Against Terrorism Essay with Quotes.

Moin akhtar

I am committed to helping Pakistani students craft successful career paths by merging their individual passions with market trends. As a career counselor, we'll explore both well-established fields and modern industries to find the best fit for you. With personalized counseling and strategic planning, we aim to transform your educational journey into a thriving professional future.

63 Comments

this essay iz better for grade8

Nice essay for standard class8

is this essay is not good for grade 9 please reply me i m waiting for your answer

This essay is very best eassy

Niceee essssssay i like this essssssay. …..

A veryyy good eassy

This essay is very nice and I really like this essay

It is short essay for getting 13 marks out of 15…..

Extremely good !

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Nice essay.

its a good essay for geting good marks

i like it. its ok.

Good effort

nice essay 🙂

eassy bht acha ha

Nice essay Keep it up! God bless you!

Nice but useless for me

good job !! very well done

perfect essay bro (Y)

i like this essay this is really a great search

easy sassy & very nice words

very nice beautiful wording

Very helpful essay …

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goooooooooooood effort

this is arrgant essey

its not what i wanted….:(

very helpful essay on terrorism on pakistan

fantastic essay

it helps me in my intermediate exams 2013

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Very go0d c0llecti0n 0f p0ints… 🙂

marvellous essay and also dabang

Very go0d c0llecti0n 0f p0ints ….. 🙂

I HAVE TO WRITE AN ESSAY UPONE “WAR AGAINST TERRORISOM” AND I FOUND IT “THANKS”……..

good essay..!!!:)

yah essay bilkul thek hai pakostan ke lihayas se vveeeeerrrrrryyyyyyyy goooooooooood

good essay..!!!

really good essay..!!!

it’s very good eassy on terrorim in pakistan

niceee nd good eassy i think the date of incident of lal masid on may be 2005 in musharafs period

Nice’essay.

really a gooood essay.,,.,!!

Lal masjid incident happened in July-2007 while the suicide attacks start from Airstricke on a Madrassa at Bajaur Agency, the tribal area of Pakistan. It results 82 Madrassa students.

this is really nice essay

i dont think the incident of lal masjid brings terrorism in pakistan

i wanna say that incident of lal masjid was not in late 1999s

hey plz if u know than reply me the actual date of this incident………

@batool right

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Today's Paper | May 12, 2024

‘war against terrorism’: weighing up the pros and cons.

Bombing in Kabul, suicide bombers in Gaza, street fighting in Baghdad and hatred in the streets of Cairo — don’t you think it is about time we re-evaluate the war against terrorism? Don’t you think it is time to change strategy — time to introduce a new form of warfare — one aimed at hearts and minds?

With every bomb we drop we have only produced potential new recruits for Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Don’t you think it is time we got engaged in sane dialogue — one based on justice, humanity and love — instead of Tomahawk missiles and dumb soldiery?

Serious mistakes have been made in the campaign against Al Qaeda, but there have also been considerable successes. Exaggerating the setbacks and errors will only be grist to Al Qaeda propaganda. The good news is that the Taliban regime which gave valuable safe haven to Osama was swiftly overthrown.

A new interim government, backed by the UN, was swiftly established, and Al Qaeda lost key training camps and many of its arms caches. Roughly a third of Al Qaeda’s top leadership has been captured or killed.

Thousands of Al Qaeda suspects have been arrested, and international intelligence-sharing, the key to success against Al Qaeda, is at the highest level ever attained in the history of counter terrorism. The bad news is that recent attacks have shown Al Qaeda is still in business as the most lethal international terrorist network ever.

You are correct in claiming that the hearts and minds campaign against terrorism has been neglected, but it is not by itself sufficient. There is no simple military or political solution. We need a far more complex intelligence-led, multinational, and multi-pronged strategy to unravel this elusive global terrorist network.

The fact is Osama bin Laden remains free, and the causes which created him not only remain but have actually increased. Even in “liberated Iraq” he is more popular than either Bush or Blair. Together with the thousands jailed as Taliban suspects are thousands of other innocent Muslims: in jails in the US, Europe and in “friendly Muslim countries”.

Fighting terrorism with terrorism is not a moral or intelligent thing. There is no weapon of mass destruction we can come up with that can destroy the human spirit in its calls for freedom and justice. Our smart bombs and dumb tactics will only provoke the same. We need an end to the gung-ho mentality; to appreciate the cries and pain of people who continue to suffer because of policies adopted by the west.

Until we do that we will continue to be hated. Otherwise we should expect to reap what we are sowing: violence and terrorism.

Osama at large remains a potent symbol and mentor of Al Qaeda’s global network. However, I believe that Al Qaeda’s so- called holy way would continue even if he is killed or captured. The coalition against terrorism has failed to provide the vital economic assistance to the interim government in Kabul. The peacekeeping force is too small to maintain peace beyond the environs of Kabul. Already residues of Al Qaeda and Taliban, in collaboration with war lords, are moving back into country and constitute a huge danger to the survival of Mr Karzai’s government.

I share the relief of the huge number of Iraqis freed from Saddam’s brutal tyranny, but I believe that to defeat Al Qaeda the money would have been better spent on creating a more stable and economically viable Afghanistan. It is also true that Al Qaeda was able to use the invasion of Iraq as a potent weapon for propaganda, recruitment and for increasing donations.

I also believe that the US, the UK and other democracies should not suspend basic human rights and the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism. We can respond effectively and maximise vital multinational cooperation while remaining true to liberal democratic values.

Yes, the death of Osama bin Laden would be of no great significance; the one thing the war against terrorism has achieved is to make Osama bin Laden and what he represents the mainstream in most Arab states. Mr Karzai and the strategy of terror and occupation he represents (in the eyes of many Afghanis) cannot be sustained much longer. I would suspect the Taliban are today more sophisticated and organised than before and are ready to make a comeback of some sort.

Today Afghanistan is as lawless and violent as it ever was; in Iraq, though many are relieved at being freed from Saddam’s brutal regime, there are even more who are now gearing themselves up to fight against the occupation, subjugation and exploitation of their country.

“War on Terrorism” is a very misleading and unsatisfactory label. It creates expectations that there is a military “solution” to terrorism and it implies that we can shut down every terrorist campaign of any international significance within the foreseeable future. Both these assumptions are false.

More dangerous still, the label is being used as a justification for draconian and oppressive counter-terrorist measures by countries such as Russia, Israel and India to deal with deep-seated ethnic or ethno-religious conflicts which are potentially corrigible by political and diplomatic efforts. However, the current belated but welcome efforts to rejuvenate a meaningful Israeli-Palestinian peace process are a sign that western leaders are becoming more aware that the search for a military solution to such problems only leads to more deaths of the innocent on both sides.

As regards the invasion of Iraq, I believe this has provided a major boost to Al Qaeda and has intensified anti- Americanism in the Muslim world. However, I fundamentally disagree with your claim that the war against terrorism has made Osama and what he represents the mainstream in most Arab states. This is certainly not the case in Iraq, despite its sufferings, or in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia or even in Palestine. Most people in the Muslim world want to live in peace and be free of terror, which has so often brought death and destruction to their own people.

But what else could the “war against terrorism” be labelled as? What would have justified the random bombing of Afghanistan, one of the poorest nations on earth? You omit to point out the draconian laws embraced by the United Kingdom and the US. Thousands are in jail in these two countries under new laws which allow the arrest and detention of any suspect without trial. Recently, a Zimbabwean official told me there are “more political prisoners in Britain and the US than in my country”. And who would argue with him; we don’t even know how many there are ourselves.

Does anyone believe the innocent shepherds, farmers, women and children killed in Afghanistan have helped in the war against terrorism? Does anyone believe that the 10,000-plus civilians killed in Afghanistan are any less a source of pain and grief to humanity than the 3,000 killed in New York and Washington?

Sometimes I wonder to what extent Al Qaeda is more a figment of Washington’s imagination than a piece of reality. Despite my travels and contacts in the Muslim world I have never come across anything that one could associate in a tangible way with such a super-structure such as Al Qaeda. I am one of those people who have an allergy to the CIA and the like: I can never forget that both Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were instruments of the American intelligence services and neither is the product of traditional Islam.

I would, though, bet my last penny that Osama would now win any vote against any Muslim leader in any country in the Arabian peninsula. And his reach is now, unfortunately, much wider — Osama posters are hanging up in the rooms of young people in West Africa, the Far East and in the Midlands here in Britain.

The failed war against terrorism should be stopped; the aim should be not to batter people to submission but to listen and act on their genuine grievances, injustices and pain. Otherwise, “the chickens” — as Malcolm X pointed out — “will come home to roost”.

I agree with you that draconian measures only undermine democracy and help people like Osama in the long run. We need moral courage and maximum international cooperation and support to help find peaceful pathways out of violence. To do this we must ensure that the UN is given a more central role and the resources to support the peacekeeping, peacemaking and economic development so tragically missing at present.

A Boer general once said: “Peace is a thousand times more difficult to make than war.” This is surely true, but it is no reason for us to abandon the effort.

(—Fuad Nahdi is publisher of the Muslim magazine Q-News.

—Paul Wilkinson is director of the centre for the study of terrorism and political violence at St Andrews University)—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.

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The United States’ Entry into World War II: Causes and Impacts

This essay about the United States’ entry into World War II explores the complex factors that influenced this pivotal decision. Despite initial isolationist sentiment and the aftermath of World War I, events such as the Lend-Lease Act and the attack on Pearl Harbor compelled America to join the global conflict. Geopolitical tensions, economic interests, and ideological differences with fascist regimes all played a role. The essay highlights how America’s involvement reshaped the course of the war, ultimately leading to the defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan.

How it works

The ingress of the United States into the maelstrom of World War II delineated a pivotal juncture that wielded a profound impact on the denouement of the conflict. However, the rationale underlying this momentous decision proved far from simplistic. Despite the cataclysm engulfing Europe and Asia in the waning years of the 1930s, the U.S. hesitated to intervene. Numerous factors contributed to this hesitancy, encompassing prevalent isolationist sentiment and the specter of World War I. Nonetheless, the unfolding events in the early 1940s precipitated a shift in both public sentiment and governmental policy, propelling the United States into the global fray.

A paramount rationale for the initial abstention of the U.S. from World War II stemmed from the prevailing isolationist ethos that permeated the nation. The aftermath of the First World War, merely two decades prior, imbued Americans with a wariness of entanglements abroad. A substantial segment advocated for the avoidance of European and Asian conflicts altogether. This conviction found reinforcement in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s, which sought to forestall American entanglement in external wars by proscribing arms sales and loans to belligerent nations.

Notwithstanding these constraints, President Franklin D. Roosevelt discerned the looming threat posed by the Axis powers, particularly after Germany’s incursion into Poland in 1939, which precipitated the outbreak of hostilities. He cautiously sought avenues to bolster Allied nations while officially preserving U.S. neutrality. The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 facilitated the provision of military assistance to Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and other allies without the direct involvement of American troops, marking a significant stride towards involvement while ostensibly upholding the veneer of neutrality.

The tide turned decisively on December 7, 1941, when Japan launched a surprise assault on the U.S. naval bastion at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This audacious attack, resulting in the loss of over 2,400 American lives and the decimation of a substantial portion of the Pacific Fleet, served as a catalytic force that galvanized the American populace against the Axis powers. It obliterated any vestiges of lingering isolationism and prompted Roosevelt to petition Congress for a declaration of war against Japan the ensuing day. In response, Germany and Italy, as Japan’s allies, reciprocally declared war on the U.S., thus entangling America fully in the maelstrom of World War II.

While the attack on Pearl Harbor constituted the immediate impetus for American entry into the conflict, underlying factors had been inexorably nudging the United States towards involvement for a considerable duration. The expansionist aspirations of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan imperiled the global balance of power and America’s economic interests. By 1941, Germany had already annexed the lion’s share of Western Europe and posed a looming threat to the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, Japan aggressively expanded in Asia, annexing territories in China and Southeast Asia. These belligerent actions jeopardized crucial trade routes, resources, and American allies.

Moreover, the ideological chasm between democracies and fascist states rendered cooperation increasingly untenable. Nazi Germany’s expansionist agenda, disregard for international norms, and egregious violations of human rights stood in stark contrast to American values. For Roosevelt and other policymakers, supporting the Allies constituted not merely a strategic calculation but also a moral imperative aimed at thwarting the hegemony of totalitarian regimes.

America’s ingress into World War II wrought a seismic transformation in the trajectory of the conflict. Its vast industrial capacity and human resources played a pivotal role in buttressing and fortifying the Allied war effort. The United States played an instrumental role in tilting the scales in Europe, ultimately culminating in the defeat of Nazi Germany, and extending decisive support in the Pacific theater, culminating in Japan’s capitulation following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In conclusion, while the assault on Pearl Harbor served as the proximate trigger for American entry into World War II, a confluence of geopolitical, economic, and ideological considerations had been exerting a gravitational pull on United States policy for an extended duration. The amalgamation of national imperatives and global exigencies compelled the United States to align itself with the Allies in combatting the Axis powers. The ramifications of American ingress were profound, irrevocably shaping the outcome of the war and laying the groundwork for the post-war geopolitical landscape.

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). The United States’ Entry into World War II: Causes and Impacts . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-united-states-entry-into-world-war-ii-causes-and-impacts/ [Accessed: 13-May-2024]

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Reading and Protesting on Campus

Readers discuss a column by Ross Douthat.

To the Editor:

Re “ What Students Read Before They Protest ,” by Ross Douthat (column, April 28):

Historians in the future are unlikely to attribute worldwide protests against Israel’s war in Gaza to the syllabus for Columbia’s required “Contemporary Civilization” course. Yet Mr. Douthat somehow suggests that a handful of anticolonial texts read in the yearlong course are fueling widespread antisemitism.

Mr. Douthat fails to explain how students go from Gandhi’s passive resistance or Bhimrao Ambedkar’s civic liberalism to condoning Hamas’s terrorism. Nor does Mr. Douthat account for the diversity of the authors’ views (Frantz Fanon’s book “The Wretched of the Earth,” which has been on the syllabus since the ’60s, is followed by Hannah Arendt’s powerful rebuttal, “On Violence”).

Even a course as expansive as “Contemporary Civilization” cannot cover everything. But this hardly justifies Mr. Douthat’s claim that the syllabus is narrowing students’ understanding of the issues of our time. “Contemporary Civilization” requires that students think critically about a wide range of ideological commitments, including classical liberalism, civic republicanism and Judeo-Christian-Islamic thought.

Before Mr. Douthat, the most vocal critics of “Contemporary Civilization” were those students who called on us to “decolonize” its syllabus — conflating the study of a text with an endorsement of its views. One can forgive a college student for not appreciating the distinction. Mr. Douthat should know better.

Larry Jackson New York The writer is associate dean of academic affairs for Columbia College and director of its Center for the Core Curriculum.

Ross Douthat suggests that U.S. students are protesting Israel’s war on Gaza but are not as concerned about other wars and crises (in Sudan , the Democratic Republic of Congo , Armenia , Myanmar , Yemen ) because university reading lists are biased. The more likely reason is that the U.S. government is funneling billions of dollars in armaments to Israel, which are being used to kill thousands of Palestinians.

Joel Andreas Baltimore The writer is a professor of sociology, director of undergraduate studies and director of the East Asian studies program at Johns Hopkins University.

Nestled among an otherwise well-reasoned and incisive argument from Ross Douthat lurks a puzzling observation: that academic syllabuses channel impulses “that anyone with eyes to see will notice all across the meritocracy, from big Ivies to liberal arts colleges to selective high schools and middle schools.” Such impulses, he suggests, may inform the mind-sets of students leading current protests at some of our nation’s college campuses.

Yet Mr. Douthat seems not to see the numerous events, teach-ins and civil debates occurring across the range of learning environments outside his cited meritocracy, where approximately three-quarters of those enrolled in higher education study.

Contrary to the curriculums Mr. Douthat bemoans, my own philosophy syllabuses at a public flagship university feature Robert Nozick as readily as Michel Foucault, Kwame Anthony Appiah as prominently as Frantz Fanon. But perhaps he does not naturally perceive students beyond the meritocracy as viable leaders of our collective future.

Mr. Douthat might consider widening the aperture on how he understands merit — and tomorrow’s leaders — should he wish to avoid being caught in the very trap he critiques: presenting one aspect of a diverse, complex landscape as the whole.

Cheryl Foster Kingston, R.I. The writer is a professor of philosophy and political science at the University of Rhode Island.

Ross Douthat writes, “Climate change looms over everything, but climate activism is expected to be merged somehow with anticolonial and antiracist action.”

If there’s such as a thing as God’s own work in 2024, it’s ending carbon pollution. Those most at risk from climate chaos are disproportionately those least responsible for causing it, including people in Africa, Pacific island nations and the Asian subcontinent.

That said, activism divorced from political reality is not only futile but also counterproductive. One hard example is reparations for climate victim nations. The moral case is overwhelming, but in a U.S. presidential campaign, it’s a loser.

William Faulkner’s line about race in America still rings true: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” But Mr. Douthat’s caution is well taken. Integrity and effective messaging are not mutually exclusive. Too often, progressive climate activists risk losing potential supporters and members of the broad-based movement we must have to succeed.

David Scott Columbus, Ohio The writer is a member and former president of the Sierra Club board.

I taught 20 semesters of “Contemporary Civilization” (or “C.C.”) at Columbia — as a graduate student, lecturer and faculty fellow. I also served on the committee that proposed some of the curricular changes that Ross Douthat criticizes.

He builds his critique of this course on a perusal of the required texts posted to Columbia’s website and an imagined propagandistic teaching style.

Hardly an exercise in brainwashing, C.C. foregrounds texts of the ancient and early modern world that make it impossible to, as Mr. Douthat maintains, “simplify and flatten history” around 21st-century sloganeering.

My students would view Frantz Fanon’s arguments for anticolonial violence as a reflection of Plato’s call in “Republic” for mass infanticide in the name of Socratic “justice. ” They considered topics like “sex and gender” not by regurgitating mantras from “Gender Trouble” but by weighing the views of its author, Judith Butler, against those of John Stuart Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft and Rousseau.

Especially in my later years teaching the course, I often omitted Michel Foucault and included instead Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism,” one of Mr. Douthat’s suggested additions. Many instructors still teach Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents” (long a required text) and Thomas Kuhn as critiques of modern technological progress. Some spend a day on Marilynne Robinson .

Mr. Douthat would find that many of Columbia’s instructors include the very texts and topics he wants to see taught there.

Charles McNamara Minneapolis The writer is a lecturer in the department of classical and Near Eastern religions and cultures at the University of Minnesota.