# Resolved: terrorism is sometimes justified
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [June 5, 2017, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155 "2017-06-05T04:43:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/21 "2017-06-05T16:35:02Z")
Moral relativism aside, I’m inclined to believe that BOTH the _end_ and the _means_ matter in this world.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/22 "2017-06-05T16:39:11Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#):
>
> Nothing that he can say, even if he were backed by every Muslim in the country, will have the slightest effect on the course of the great powers. They will continue to kill, to torture, to mutilate his fellows abroad. Nothing will deflect them or even command any attention at all. Except perhaps …
>
> And here our friend may pause and deliberate for a long time. He is not a violent man, he detests killing, he has no desire to act in the same fashion as the murderous powers of the West. And yet what else is there? He needs to attract the attention of the powers that be, he needs to force them to listen, to show them to what desperate measures they are driving him and others like him. They may not change their policies and in fact are very unlikely to change them but in the name of Allah they will not be able to ignore him.
Except terrorism has never worked. It is more likely to bring more bombings that stop them.
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### Author:  [@ganthet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ganthet)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/23 "2017-06-05T16:41:37Z")
> [@puddleglum](#):
>
> Terrorism could be justified is the end goal was a better, freer country, and if the terrorism is both likely to achieve the goal, and the least destructive way of achieving the goal. Since the terrorists goal is evil, nothing done in the name of that evil can be justified.
So the ends can justify the means? That is the issue at the bottom of this thread.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/24 "2017-06-05T16:45:20Z")
> [@octopus](#):
>
> Asymmetric warfare works to the degree that the more powerful side has empathy and restraint or isn’t too dependent on needing to keep the status quo in a state that is provocative to the terrorists. So yeah, terrorism can work. But it can also lead to near eradication if employed carelessly.
I would suggest that “asmmetric warfare” is not an adequate synonym for “terrorism.” Guerrilla tactics aimed at military targets are asymmetric warfare but are not terrorism.
[QUOTE=aldiboronti]
Limit themselves to military targets? When those targets are the most powerful military forces on the planet? Who in their right mind would do that?
[/QUOTE]
Someone looking to garner sympathy for their cause.
Attacking military targets in an asymmetric manner is certainly HARDER than just blowing up kids at an Ariana Grande concert, but no one said fighting wars was easy.
It’s also far more likely to gather a head of steam in terms of ongoing political support, or even foreign aid.
I would also point out that terrorism can, in a sense, be done through conventional military means. During World War II both the Axis and the the Allies deliberately killed civlians in an effort to frighten them, crush morale, and drive them away from cities and industry. Their efforts were sometimes quite successful, and sometimes not. In Korea, the USAF quite deliberately engaged in a bombing campaign that bordered on the genocidal, again, in part, to shatter the civilian morale of their enemy; they were certainly very successful in annihilating people, though in terms of civilian morale the civilians who really mattered were in China.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/25 "2017-06-05T16:47:34Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#):
>
> L The Provisional IRA, whose members are now seated in positions of authority in Northern Ireland and are rightly treated with great respect, are the very men directly responsible for murdering innocent men, women and children. .
Except that the IRA tacitly admitted violence was doing nothing, and went to hunger strikes, peace talks and negotiations. Nor are any of the famous IRA leaders now in a position of power in the Irish government.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/26 "2017-06-05T16:48:56Z")
> [@up\_the\_junction](#):
>
> What was Iraq if not terrorism by foreign states?
“War”.:rolleyes:
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/27 "2017-06-05T18:40:10Z")
> [@ganthet](#):
>
> So the ends can justify the means?
Well, I’m kind of at a loss as to what _else_ could.
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### Author:  [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/28 "2017-06-05T18:58:51Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> Except terrorism has never worked.
That is an astonishing assertion. Of course it’s worked in the past, as [this instructive article from the Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/22/actually-sometimes-terrorism-does-work/) makes clear. The study it mentions shows conclusively that the more acts of terrorism you commit the more likely a government will eventually negotiate with you.
> [@](#):
>
> The popular adage that governments “do not negotiate with terrorists” appears to be untrue, at least in civil war. In a new study published in the American Journal of Political Science, I find that governments embroiled in domestic conflicts in Africa between 1989 and 2010 are more likely to hold negotiations with rebel groups when they engage in more acts of terrorism. Rebels are also likely to gain more concessions from their governments when they execute more terror attacks.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/29 "2017-06-05T19:05:13Z")
I think the bulk of the Western nations’ reactions to terrorism over the last 20 years should have reinforced in “our young Muslim”'s head that killing a bunch of random civilians wasn’t going to achieve his political aims. I think they’re motivated less by some cold, calculating rationalism about what actions are necessary, regrettable-as-they-may-be, to achieve their aims than they are by religious fervor.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/30 "2017-06-05T19:07:01Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#):
>
> That is an astonishing assertion. Of course it’s worked in the past, as [this instructive article from the Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/22/actually-sometimes-terrorism-does-work/) makes clear. The study it mentions shows conclusively that the more acts of terrorism you commit the more likely a government will eventually negotiate with you.
I’m not sure a study of African civil wars is a good measure for how America and it’s allies will react to terrorism. So far we seem to get more involved when there are more terrorist attacks.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/31 "2017-06-05T19:07:49Z")
> [@adaher](#):
>
> TThe world has tended to coddle terrorists, as long as they don’t go too far. But that coddling led directly to Al Qaeda and ISIS, who have no moral limits. .
??
On what basis is this said?
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/32 "2017-06-05T19:22:45Z")
**Resolved: Terrorism is sometimes justified**
I don’t believe the OP has substantiated his prima facie case. As stated, the motivations of the young Muslim friend do not correspond with what we know as the motivations of the recent ISIL terrorist attacks. These attacks are not retaliatory for actions they perceive are happening to fellow Muslims in the Middle East. They are religious zealotry, they find the western freedoms, lifestyle, etc. an affront to their religion and are seeking to usher in the End times. They want the Western nations to come and attack them in the Middle East in an attempt to fulfill prophecy.
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### Author:  [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/33 "2017-06-05T19:25:49Z")
> [@adaher](#):
>
> However, it doesn’t REALLY work. No one has yet achieved any useful objective through terrorism. Palstine is still occupied. The caliphate hasn’t returned.
However, if Palistine does at some point achieve an independent state it will likely be due, in part at least, to terrorism. Without terrorism the issues of the Palestinians would be trivially easy to ignore. The same goes with the IRA. The Belfast agreement had much to offer the Irish and may not have happened without the troubles. The hard part is that in order for it to work, there has got to be a way to turn it off once useful negotiations have started. So that what started as a means to get noticed and force negotiations devolves to hate for its own sake.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/34 "2017-06-05T19:37:41Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#):
>
> However, if Palistine does at some point achieve an independent state it will likely be due, in part at least, to terrorism. Without terrorism the issues of the Palestinians would be trivially easy to ignore.
I’d say it’s the opposite. Whatever sympathy I might have had for the Palestinian cause has been completely undermined by their terrorism campaigns.
ETA: it’s a pretty powerful position to be viewed as the victim of a historical wrong (just ask the Jews!), but targeting civilians for random murder and mayhem is a quick way to undo that.
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### Author:  [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/35 "2017-06-05T20:49:28Z")
One argument is that civilians aren’t morally responsible for the actions of their government and so aren’t legitimate targets, but the people who say that likely preach democracy and would argue against the notion the West is an oligarchy where regular people have little power, which means the population is indeed responsible for their government’s actions. This criticism also applies to the West, since they attack all sorts of countries and civilians who didn’t attack them, and then use Orwellian terms like “collateral damage.”
That also ignores the cultural component. If you think the West is a degenerate society then attacking concerts and shooting up gay night clubs makes sense, especially since the West loves pushing its culture on other countries.
> [@Kobal2](#):
>
> There’s a moral justification for blowing up the Pentagon or the White House. The twin towers ? Not so much.
I guess you weren’t impressed by Ward Churchill’s [little Eichmann argument:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Justice_of_Roosting_Chickens)
> [@](#):
>
> True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire - the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved - and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to “ignorance” - a derivative, after all, of the word “ignore” - counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in - and in many cases excelling at - it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it
If you want to hurt America then attacking its financial system seems like a good idea. The 9/11 attacks had incredible ROI, a couple hundred thousand dollars vs. trillions, especially if you count the resulting wars.
> [@adaher](#):
>
> However, it doesn’t REALLY work. No one has yet achieved any useful objective through terrorism.
The Middle East is on fire, large segments of the American population are skeptical of foreign intervention, America itself is a declining power and is increasingly isolated from the rest of the world, and millions of Muslims have immigrated to Europe and soon enough terrorist attacks there may be about as newsworthy as a mass shooting in America. They seem to be doing OK.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/36 "2017-06-05T21:04:34Z")
> [@marshmallow](#):
>
> If you want to hurt America then attacking its financial system seems like a good idea. The 9/11 attacks had incredible ROI, a couple hundred thousand dollars vs. trillions, especially if you count the resulting wars.
If “hurt America” / ROI was OBL’s goal, he succeeded. However, I think the consensus was that OBL wanted to get America out of the Middle East, and if that view is correct, it would appear that 9/11 was a spectacular failure.
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### Author:  [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/37 "2017-06-05T21:42:24Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#):
>
> He has come to his decision. He declares himself on his Facebook page, bids a final farewell to his family and friends, packs the explosive device firmly in his backpack, checks that his weapons are fully loaded, gets into his car and drives off for his appointment with Destiny. The more people he kills, the more horrific the mutilations, the more the world will be unable to ignore his cause. As we sadly watch him drive away who can say he is wrong?
That would be everybody who has at least two functional brain cells. There is no excuse for terrorism. There is no justification for terrorism. It’s nothing more than an attempt by people who want to commit murder to “justify” their actions, and they can’t.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/38 "2017-06-05T21:52:11Z")
I’d like to hear from **alidboronti** on what exactly this hypothetical young Muslim’s goals are. If it’s to provoke a war with the West, like ISIS seems to want to, he’s probably on the right track. If it’s to get the USA out of the Middle East, like OBL wanted to, he’s doing it wrong, and he should know better.
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### Author:  [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/39 "2017-06-05T22:12:22Z")
Maybe we need to define things a bit more. Most terrorists don’t define themselves that way, they are called such by their enemies and targets. Some of the attempts to justify some acts, are really more about tactics for a specific situation, which were called terrorism by some, but not by others. Some people have, in other discussions like this, labeled things like the world war 2 firestorm bombing of Dresden to be an act of State terrorism. It could be said, that terrorism was behind the idea of the so-called Shock and Awe campaign during the second Iraq war. And of course, President Trump has proposed (at least, before he was President) that the US fight terrorism with terrorism, with the idea that we would try to murder the wives and children and other relatives of anyone who we decided was a terrorist.
If we go with “justified = effective,” as someone suggested above, we’ll run into other problems immediately. Because “effectiveness” then needs to be carefully defined, since in many ways, it depends on how soon after an act labeled as terrorism, the attackers gain their goals.
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### Author:  [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-terrorism-is-sometimes-justified/788155/40 "2017-06-05T22:18:26Z")
terrorism and insurgency are not the same thing. Terrorism is the targeting of civilians to inflict terror on a population, insurgency is the targeting of military targets. Insurgents in Iraq fighting coalition forces was not terrorism, 9/11 was terrorism.
Also I disagree with OP. People who are prone to terrorism are not driven by injustices of the west, they obsess over injustices of the west because they have a very insular social group, and when you have an insular social group you exaggerate the crimes of those you consider outside of or a threat to your group (that is why some people in the US wildly obsess over every crime committed by a muslim for example, in group/out group dynamics. Or why in slavery times or Jim Crow times the crimes of whites against blacks were ignored but the crimes of blacks against whites were reported on endlessly).
But anyway, the biggest target of Islamic extremists are other muslims. I think comparing Islamic extremists to the KKK is a fair assessment. Both are conservative right wing authoritarian movements that believe in using terrorism to terrorize people into submission. Looking at them from the outside in, they appear to have very simplistic forms of hate (KKK is whites against blacks, Islamic terrorism is Muslims against Jews and the West). But it is more nuanced than that.
There are a lot of divisions within Islam that Islamic extremists are concerned with. Monarchists and other governments vs theocrats. Sunni vs. Shia. Various ethnic tribalisms, secularists, reformists and moderates vs hardliners. Aren’t something like 90-95% of all victims of Islamic terrorism other Muslims?
By comparison, the KKK wasn’t a monolith of whites against blacks, it was a very narrow group of whites against everyone else. Being white wasn’t enough. You had to be a christian, but the right kind of christian (protestant). Couldn’t be Mormon or Catholic. Couldn’t be atheist or any other faith. Couldn’t be a communist, labor organizer or any kind of liberal. Had to be anglo-saxon, couldn’t be another ethnic group. To be in with the KKK you had to be not just white, but the right kind of white with the right kind of faith, ethnicity and ideology.
When Osama Bin Laden lived in Afghanistan his son said he had a multi step process he wanted to implement. First he wanted to conquer Afghanistan. Then conquer the muslim world. Then conquer Israel. Then conquer the west. Then conquer the world. The problem was that the muslim world is full of ideological, religious and ethnic divisions. Bin Laden faced mistreatment in Afghanistan because he was an Arab. Meanwhile Arabs treat other ethnic groups like shit. The muslim world is too divided to be a monolith that supports terrorism against the west the way the OP describes it.
To me, terrorism in the Islamic world isn’t about fighting for freedom or democracy by any means. It is a RWA group fighting anyone outside that group, which includes other RWA groups fighting them (Sunni vs Shia terror groups fighting each other, etc).
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