Against war as a response to terrorism

Abstract

War is not the answer in the present crisis. If we accept a truly global ethic which takes into account human well being and justice in the broadest way and combine this with the new realities of our global situation, we will make a robust response to the current crisis which emphasizes international law, dialogue and the way of peace and nonviolence, but not war. In short we need what will be for many quite new ways of thinking. In thinking about how to respond to the events of September 11th, we need Ž rst to recognize the enormity of what happened and show our immense sympathy for the American people in their time of collective trauma. It has been said by some that many terrible things have happened in the past—like the genocide of Rwanda or the bloodbath of Srebrenica—and that these have not evoked the crisis we are in. Is it that Americans think American lives matter more than those of others? This is hardly fair. It is the combination of so many deaths of totally unsuspecting innocents, the deliberate symbolic strike at the heart of a powerful country’s military and economic standing and the suicidal intentions of the actors which is without precedent. What is more, these acts must impress themselves on almost any thinking person as repeatable anywhere in the world. Whilst many of us may have severe reservations about vengeance and retaliation (as opposed to bringing the collaborators to justice through due processes of international law), anyone must recognize the utmost importance of trying to stop future terrorist attacks of this kind. The desire to take resolute action against international terrorism is entirely natural and right. The real possibility of other possibly worse atrocities has to be reckoned with. However, the wish to rid the world altogether of international terrorism is unrealistic. It is certainly unrealistic in the short term, since the networks and cells already exist and are highly dispersed. It is probably unrealistic in the long run too, since that which causes people to turn to terrorism will probably never be completely eliminated, so long as humans have different value systems and believe that ends can justify violent means. We must accept that the deŽ nition of terrorism is highly contested (over the terrorism/ freedom Ž ghter distinction, over questions of scale and methods, and over the extent to which forms of state action can count as terrorism). Nevertheless, even if we focus on paradigmatic cases of direct destruction of large numbers of innocents intended to