| Sept. 16, 1920 | New York: TNT bomb planted in unattended horse-drawn wagon exploded on Wall Street. 35 deaths. Parties responsible: unknown; Bolshevik or anarchist terrorists were suspected. |
| Jan. 24, 1975 | New York: bomb set off in historical Fraunces Tavern. 4 deaths. Parties responsible: Puerto Rican nationalist group (FALN) claimed responsibility. |
| Feb. 26, 1993 | New York: World Trade Center Bombing. 6 deaths. Parties responsible: several Muslim terrorists. |
| 1979-1995 | Unabomber attacks. 3 deaths (16 injured). Party responsible: Ted Kaczynski. |
| Apr. 19, 1995 | Oklahoma City: federal building bombing. 168 deaths. Parties responsible: Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols. |
| Sept. 11, 2001 | New York, Washington: World Trade Center, Pentagon attacks. Unknown number of fatalities, possibly about 5,000. Parties responsible: unknown, possibly connected to Osama bin Laden. |
In addition, some people believe the crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by terrorists, but the National Transportation Safety Board concluded it was due to mechanical failure, so I do not include it above. I also have not included terrorist attacks on American targets overseas.
Notice the dates. Before 1975, only one incident occurred. After that, five, including four in the last decade (or three, depending on how one counts the unabomber). This naturally raises the worry: have we entered a new age of terrorism? As we see below, there is some reason to think the answer is yes.
Next, take the "evil" remark. While the parties responsible were almost certainly evil (or insane), this does not sufficiently explain their actions. For if they were merely hateful and generally evil, why go to all the trouble of planning such an elaborate attack, rather than simply, say, going on a killing spree in their own neighborhood?
Terrorists do not attack targets randomly, nor do they attack out of mere general evil or hatred. They attack because of their political beliefs. The World Trade Center was targeted because it is a symbol of American economic strength, while New York City is perhaps the worldwide symbol of American capitalism (notice that four of the above incidents occurred in New York City). The Pentagon was targeted because it represents American military power. This leads to the first major, underlying cause of terrorism:
1. Extreme moral-political disagreements.
A "moral-political issue," as I use the term, is a moral issue that is also a political one, i.e., an issue about how the state should act.
Example of a moral issue: Consider the issue of whether it is morally permissible to tell 'white lies.' This is not a "moral-political" issue. It is moral, but not political, since it concerns only individual conduct.
Example of a political issue: Consider the issue of how much funding should be allocated to the Boulder police department. For most people, this is not a moral-political issue, but only a political one, because most people would not consider it morally wrong to allocate the incorrect (sub-optimal) amount of funds.
Example of a moral-political issue: Consider the issue of abortion, or capital punishment. Both are moral issues (some believe capital punishment to be morally wrong, and some believe abortion to be morally wrong). They are also political, since they are closely involved with questions about what the state ought to do (should the state execute some criminals; should the state permit abortions?).
Large-scale violence is almost always over moral-political issues, and it occurs because people with opposing moral-political beliefs are unable to resolve their disputes peacefully. Each side typically remains extremely strongly convinced that it is correct. Because of the moral character of the issue, each side commonly believes the other to be "evil", and because of the political character of the issue, each side is commonly unwilling to allow the other side to have its way (i.e., we cannot just agree to each pursue our respective ethics in our own private lives).
Second cause:
2. Lack of respect for rights, and an ends-justify-the-means philosophy.
The idea that "the ends justify the means" means, roughly, that it is morally acceptable to violate others' rights, or commit other sorts of acts usually considered to be wrong, provided that doing so serves the overall greater good. The 'greater good' has usually been interpreted to mean 'the good of society,' but it could also refer to religious ideals (the good of God).
Terrorists target innocent victims. Most normal people, even when they have strong moral-political disagreements, do not believe in trying to get their way by attacking innocents, because most normal people believe other people have rights, and do not believe that the ends justify the means. Terrorists believe that their goal is so important that it is worth committing murder to achieve it. (The same belief has usually been held by governments, with even more terrible consequences.)
Note: I am not saying that all people with an ends-justify-the-means philosophy support terrorism, nor am I saying all people with extreme moral-political views do so. Thankfully, most (in both categories) do not. Nevertheless, I believe that almost all terrorists have such beliefs.
I also am not saying that this proves that all extreme moral-political beliefs are false, nor even that the belief that 'the ends justify the means' is false; although it does seem to me to show that both categories of belief are harmful. Those who believe that the ends justify the means are highly likely to miscalculate the overall good, and political beliefs in general are highly likely to be false.
A natural consequence of the belief that the ends justify the means is the disregard for, or rejection of, individual rights. And a natural consequence of this is the belief that violence is an acceptable means of imposing one's political views on others.
After all, America seems to have accepted the principle, at least as regards violence performed by our government, on our behalf. It seems to have started in World War II; at the start, there was a nominal intention to follow the rules of war, including not attacking civilians. But the Germans attacked civilians, so the Allies followed suit. Few (except Anscombe; see her "Mr Truman's Degree") would venture to brand the allied leaders in World War II as mass murderers, for the firebombing of civilian targets in Germany and Japan followed by the atomic bombing. But those who eschewed Anscombe's "extreme" position are in a poor position now to explain why modern terrorists who target civilians in the pursuit of their political or religious ideals are evil extremists, unless it is only because they have selected the wrong religion or political ideology.
3. The U.S. has many enemies.
Some enemies we have because of earlier, interventionist foreign policies. American intervention in other countries (usually trying to prop up one regime, or topple another) has often caused resentment. I will not attempt to catalog these cases, as I am no foreign policy expert.
Another reason why the U.S. has many enemies is that it is the country in the world most associated with democratic capitalism, and it is the most powerful country in the world, both economically and militarily. Therefore, those who despise either democracy or capitalism see an attack on the United States as an attack on democratic capitalism.
A third reason is that the United States is generally prosperous and free. Most political ideologies are opposed to freedom (though they will not usually say so quite that bluntly), and some include a general hatred of the rich. Included in this category are ideologies which irrationally claim that America's wealth somehow causes the poverty of poorer countries.
a. The increasing concentration of population (large cities). This gives terrorists easy targets.
b. Commonly available advanced technology. Advanced technology--whether weapons or other technology--tends to harness large energies, which, therefore, can become highly destructive if misdirected. Nothing like the destructive force of a plane crash could have been harnessed a hundred years ago.
Not only is technology advancing, but it is increasingly becoming cheaply available to ordinary people. Any ordinary person can buy a plane ticket, a car, or an assault rifle.
c. The anonymity of modern society. Due to the complexity of modern society and the millions of people contained in it, it is easy for a terrorist group to carry on its activities without anyone noticing.
d. The increasing difficulty of fighting modern governments directly. Terrorist groups would be defeated immediately in a direct conflict with the American military. Therefore, their only available strategy is stealth attacks, often against civilians.
Unfortunately, these factors suggest that terrorism will increase in the future. None of the four above factors is likely to go away; instead, all four are likely to become more pronounced.
| 1. | React emotionally. Most of the following would be examples of bad, emotion-based responses. |
| 2. | Make hasty assumptions about who is responsible. Osama bin Laden has been widely reported as the "prime suspect," but no actual evidence has been publicly reported, and there are many other terrorist groups that could be responsible. The Federation of American Scientists' web page lists 370 terrorist or "other para-state entities" throughout the world. |
| 3. | Blame large groups (such as all Muslims) for what only a few individuals are probably responsible for. Most Muslims are not terrorists nor in any way associated with terrorism. |
| 4. | Give in to unjust demands in order to appease our enemies. This would only lead to further demands and further attacks, when our enemies learn that the strategy is successful. |
| 5. | Surrender freedom out of fear. All freedom entails risk. Every time a major disaster occurs in the United States, there are immediate calls for surrendering our civil rights in order to enable authorities to prevent further disasters. But when disasters fail to happen, no one ever calls for decreasing security measures. Thus, the almost inevitable tendency of modern society is to gradually erode freedom, as long as there is any left to erode. |
| The Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause has already been abandoned for the sake of airport security. | |
| President Bush characterized Tuesday's terrorist attack as an attack on freedom. I ask, then, what are we doing but allowing that attack to succeed--indeed, contributing to that attack, and surrendering traditional American values out of fear? |
Here are some other suggestions as to what we might do:
| 6. | In general, try to respond rationally. |
| 7. | Retaliate against those responsible. I favor the method of assassination, as being the most moral and humane method. We may have to assassinate members of the Taliban, in addition to terrorist leaders. This would be a praiseworthy action, for which the people of Afghanistan would probably thank us. |
| Some would object that in this case we, too, would be terrorists. But it is difficult to see why it is more moral to kill large numbers of innocent civilians (war) than to just kill the people who are guilty. | |
| 8. | Alter U.S. foreign policies to make fewer enemies in the future. In general, if we avoid interventions in the conflicts of other countries, we should make fewer enemies. |
| 9. | Let the airlines issue weapons to pilots and flight attendants. After this policy was adopted, perhaps one more terrorist hijacking would occur; and after that, none, because the terrorists would have been stopped without achieving their goals. |
| Ask yourself, how could a few people take control of and subsequently kill an entire airplaneful of people? The answer is that the terrorists were the only ones armed, and Americans have been taught not to defend themselves when confronted by violent criminals but to just comply and leave everything to the Authorities. Since we can't keep people from bringing plastic knives on board (unless we want to strip search every passenger), the only way to even the odds is to arm the good guys. Firearms with frangible bullets would be most effective (these bullets, commercially available already, fragment on impact and can penetrate flesh but not the side of an airplane). | |
| 10. | About airport security: We should avoid security measures that violate civil liberties; we already have too many of those already. But some forms of security do not violate civil liberties and are acceptable. We should use the mechanism of the free market by allowing airlines to choose their own security measures; customers can then choose the airline with the security measures they believe most appropriate. As in all other areas, this would be expected to produce the most efficient outcomes. |
| The above suggestion is also most consistent with the Constitution. Existing security procedures violate the fourth amendment, being federally mandated searches without warrants and without probable cause. They also, of course, violate the tenth amendment (there is no constitutional authority to regulate air travel). And there is no reason to believe that federally mandated measures would be the best even from the standpoint of security. The federal government's track record is not great so far, in this or other areas. One cannot assume that governmental "security" measures actually provide security; for example, the federal government has prevented measures such as #9 above. | |
| However, the concern with airport security is a red herring. The next terrorist attack will not be another airplane crashing into a building: it is too easy to stop that once we know what we're looking for, and there are too many much easier targets. We should stop wasting resources in this area. | |
| 11. | The United States government presently has a reward offer of $5 million for information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden, widely mischaracterized as "a price on his head." I propose that we make it into a genuine price on his head, and increase it: offer $500 million for his body, dead or alive. And do the same (with varying rewards, all in the multi-millions) for every other known terrorist. If someone takes us up on it, we save our military billions of dollars. If no one does, then we lose nothing. |
The World Trade Center attack was an example of a concentrated harm: the victims each suffered a very great harm (death), and the harm happened all in one place and time. This is now almost the entire focus of the nation's attention. This sort of harm can arouse deep and intense emotions.
An example of a diffuse harm would be the 21,000 annual homicide deaths in the United States: these occur at different times, spread all over the country. This harm, though its total magnitude is several times greater than that of the WTC bombing, is not generally reported on the news or paid attention to. (How many of you knew this statistic?) In addition, 2.3 million people (6,300 per day) die annually from all causes, but the 6,300 non-terrorist deaths on September 11th were not reported on the news, because they occurred in different places. (Source: National Safety Council, Injury Facts, 1999 edition.)
An example of an even more diffuse harm is the lost time spent in airports. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, about 290 million domestic airplane trips are taken per year in the United States. Suppose that due to strict airport security measures (old as well as new measures), each passenger spends an average of two hours in the airport. Then the total cost would be 580 million man-hours per year, or about 5,800 lifetimes' worth of labor for each year the measures are in effect. This cost will be ignored by government, news media, and the people, even though its total magnitude, over a period of years, will exceed the total harms due to terrorism to date. This enormous harm will be ignored because it is extremely diffuse: it is spread over a very large number of people, at many different times and places.
The point here is not that we don't need to worry about terrorism. But we need to keep some perspective on how much sacrifice we should be willing to make to stop terrorist attacks. Undoubtedly, we need to go after (and kill) the individuals responsible. But it is not worth starting a major war (wars typically kill at least hundreds of thousands of people); nor is it worth compromising our Constitutional freedoms or fundamentally altering our way of life.
As I see it, we have the following available strategies to respond to the threat of terrorism (these are not mutually exclusive):
a. To modify our foreign policies so people won't get so mad at us.
b. To use diplomacy, negotiation, and reason in general to try to convince terrorists not to attack us.
c. To live with the terrorist threat (give up on trying to eliminate it).
d. To deal with specific terrorists and terrorist groups as a police matter--try to capture and punish them; or, as a variant, try to assassinate them.
e. We attack foreign governments that harbor terrorists. This may have multiple sub-options, corresponding to different ways of attack. But most would amount to war.
I can't think of any other options.
I have hitherto defended (a) and (d). Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently made the case for (e) in his testimony before Congress, which you can read here:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200109/msg00429.html
Netanyahu appears more intelligent and forthright than our politicians; perhaps we can convince him to take over the Presidency. In any case, he makes several factual claims, of which I think the most relevant are the following:
1. The Islamic terrorists are not merely upset about a few specific U.S. policies (support for Israel, etc.); rather, they want to destroy Western culture in general and replace it with Islamic fundamentalism.
As delusional as this goal would be, we cannot on that ground rule it out as the terrorists' actual motivation. As some evidence, consider the fact that they produced no demands, nor did they name anything specific that the attack was in retaliation for.
If this is true, then we cannot stop terrorist attacks by changing American policies in any way that would be remotely acceptable. Option (a) may still be desirable for other reasons, but it would not be sufficient to stop most terrorism.
2. The terrorists are irrationally fanatic.
It seems to me that the events of 9/11, as well as earlier statements by bin Laden, are evidence for this. If this is true, then we cannot hope to negotiate with them or otherwise convince them to stop through dialogue. If (1) and (2) are both true, then option (b) would fail.
3. Terrorists are seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, they will eventually succeed (if we don't stop them), and they will use them as soon as they get them.
Osama bin Laden has previously stated that it is the duty of Muslims to attempt to acquire such weapons, and that it is a duty of Muslims everywhere to kill Americans whenever they can. He is probably not the only one who thinks this.
If this is true, then option (c) is unacceptable, as it would bring enormous casualties on us in the future. The cost of war would be justified to prevent future terrorist acts.
4. Terrorism of this kind requires the support, or at least the consent, of certain foreign governments, and will continue as long as there are governments that support it.
If this is true, then attacking foreign governments would be an effective way of stopping or drastically reducing terrorism, and would also be necessary for doing so. (d) would be insufficient by itself, since pro-terrorist governments will continue to generate a supply of new terrorists.
Not being a Middle East expert, I do not know whether all the above claims are true. I can only say that I don't know anything that conflicts with them, and they seem plausible in the light of what I do know. As a philosopher, I take it as my place to comment on what we should do *if* the facts are as stated. If the facts are as claimed, then I believe (e) is the only rational alternative. I still think (as I think Netanyahu himself would agree) that assassination of foreign leaders is preferable to war, but there may be practical problems with pulling that off. So war may be the only alternative.
In the light of all this, I will say about President Bush the most positive thing I have said about a politician in a long time: I don't know that he isn't doing the right thing.
Lastly, there is one larger point that I want to stress here. It is not possible to have a rational opinion as to what we should do without having *a lot* of empirical evidence. One cannot just tell intuitively, nor on the basis of the information presented by the news media in the past two weeks, whether claims (1)-(4) above are correct. I mention this partly because in the past two weeks, I have heard many people emphatically *assert* things like (1)-(4) (while others deny them), without presenting the sort of detailed evidence (nor indeed, almost any evidence at all) that would be required to verify them. This is a question of fact and, as such, requires facts to resolve it. I attach some credibility to Netanyahu's statements simply because I presume he has a good deal of knowledge and experience pertaining to terrorism.
I also mention this because it is typical of political debates: the issue is extremely fact-dependent, but the partisans are typically extremely fact-deprived. People arguing for one position or another typically just *make up* a host of assumptions about the way the external world is working that they think just 'seem right', in lieu of obtaining actual empirical evidence. I could cite numerous other examples, but I won't do so now. Suffice it to say that I think this remark applies to almost all controversial issues, and goes some way in explaining the enduring controversies.
--Michael Huemer