IPB*, 05 MAR 2008

By Ry on March 5, 2008 | | Comments (5)

A small IPB as it returns to the rotation (no, not *that* Rotation, Maggs, sheesh, I know you’ve got a ‘floor’ and I’m the equivalent of four sub-basements. ;) ). Emiko leaves this week, more people are showing up to help out, and so I’ve got more time (Sucks, huh? I bet you were wishing I’d simply disappear, huh? No such luck.).

Today we’re doing philosophical treatments of the morality/ethicalness and definition of terrorism. No, I don’t claim to understand or follow all of it (it’s my flesh and blood older brother who’s got the degree in philosophy). Some of the time reading these three selections I find myself in high levels of agreement and other times I find myself thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of $1000 words to say something like ‘war is bad’ or ‘war is almost the equivalent of terrorism’ type double-speak.” In all, these are worth looking at. It never hurts to measure your own dogma against a very formal and structured argument from the other side.

Personally, I think much of this is simply wrong. Terrorism is a legal term, and so much of this is counting angels on the heads of pins because they aren’t arguing about a legal term. To paraphrase an old quote: You may be compelled to make war, but you are not compelled to use poisoned arrows. Terrorism is a subset of war crimes which comes into play when people choose to conduct war but not play by the rules (this doesn’t mean you can’t be a revolutionary, or a guerilla, or anything like that. It just means you have to play by certain rules to keep the whole thing from spiraling out of Control and become a giant Vortex of Destruction----or Clausewitz’s definition of Total War.). One can be a war criminal but not be a terrorist, but all terrorists are war criminals. (Hideki Tojo for example, or, dare I say it, Gen Curtis LeMay, who in an interview I just read of his from way back said, to the effect, that he was glad the US won because if we didn’t he’d probably have hung next to Tojo. Meaning, he knew he broke the rules and was enjoying a bit of ‘victor’s justice’.) This seems to be a large exercise in ‘is political violence ever justified?’ Those around here know/or believe the answer to be yes; but there are limits to what you can do, the whole Control/Destruction thing. Sometimes we eggheads need to remember this stuff doesn’t just happen on the white board in our offices, and exists beyond the symbol logic we use to try and map it all out. Over reduction can be almost worse than saying something is to complex.

First up is an attempt to define terrorism.

Next up is a combination piece that is more like a chapter from a 101 like class. It covers some of the history of what terrorism is/was over time and then goes into the various realms of philosophy and the arguments in a pro-con fashion about the ethical nature of terrorism.

The last one deals entirely with the ethical nature of terrorism, and makes a special claim that the very unethical nature of terrorism leads to the break down of ethical behaviors. It also provided a very interesting logical argument about whether or not unilaterally adopting a value set makes sense. It could be a dangerous argument because I could see this same one being applied to the use of torture. I wouldn’t mind seeing someone present the argument to Sen. McCain, to see how he handles it though. T’would be interesting.
ry

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5 Comments

By SangerM on March 5, 2008 4:29 PM
Ry, there are all sorts of problems with that last paper you linked, and if I have time, I will write about it, but I'll start with this: Mr. Smith wrote "For example, all brutal acts are morally objectionable." This is not a fact, even when semantic variations are accounted for. I do not agree at all that all brutal acts are objectionable, morally or otherwise, regardless of which definition one uses for brutal. I also have a problem with the term morally objectionable, which is really a bit of fluff, no matter how you attempt to (re)define it. Something morally objectionable could be objectionable as much because it is good as because it is bad, though we do all tend to think of moral as meaning good, right? Unfortunately, that's a rather large term to use when all you really want to say, as does Smith is that being mean/ruthless/cruel is not nice. And even then, I could make a good argument for cruelty and ruthlessness, just as I suspect many of us here could. Hmmm... I need to think this through some more, 'cause there are a lot of assumptions underlying his premises, huh? And not all as clear cut as he presents them... V/R
 
By John of Argghhh! on March 5, 2008 4:51 PM
Well, that's why I asked Ry to do this kinda thing - keep us thinking. Not that Sanger needs any prodding, mind you.
 
By kat-missouri on March 5, 2008 5:42 PM
I just saw on the news where a lady ran over a would be hi-jacker and dragged him a mile. He had a shot gun. She had a car. Certainly, the act of hitting him with her car was brutal. So was the dragging. However, "morally objectionable"? Nope.
 
By AFSister on March 5, 2008 8:36 PM
I'm sorry Emiko has to leave. I wish she had more of a choice in the matter. Maybe some day she'll be able to come back. Such a sad, emotionally draining situation, Ry.
 
By ry on March 6, 2008 6:19 AM
Actually, and this is just from contextual reading over the years, the term brutal is not just 'a spectacular violent act', or merely harsh. The concept of proportionality is involved here. Brutal acts are those that go beyond what is necessary, are animal like in the desire for inflicting pain and seeing blood. So the lady hits the car-jacker with her automobile. Is it brutal? Not in the philosophical sense. If she backed over him 5 times. Got out and kicked him repeatedly in the nads and face, and then shouted to the crowd "are you not entertained?" that would be brutal. That would be going beyond what a rational human being would understand as necessary violence to end a threat. In the vernacular brutal is often taken to mean 'harsh' or 'severe'. A harsh act may be brutal but it is not by definition brutal. There is a distinct level of incivility and malice involved. (oh, now I'm going to get schooled by Sanger 'cause I think he's got more formal philosophy training than me. This is gonna hurt. (dons the hockey helmet)). But I'm surprised, I liked the third one the most. The first one I almost couldn't stand (Terrorism can be justified, at times, if the 'need' is sufficient.). You're really most upset with the third one? I thought that one the tamest and the most correct: having multiple sets of rules for different parties, those you have for the strong and those for the weak, undoes all the rules for everyone, and therefore 'welcome to the jungle, baby.' He second was useful as a primer of the history of 'terrorism' and the various arguments, even if it did leave on feeling that the author believed that terrorism is sometimes justifiable. but the first just seemed wrong on many levels. The whole taxonomy makes mistakes in warfare into terrorism. That's just so much egghead preening if you ask me. There's a difference between a mistake by a conventional force(too large a weapon, weapon fell outside CEP) that results in accidental deaths of civilians and war crimes(Bomber Harris specifically targeting population centers with the intent of killing as many civilians as possible, which didn't achieve what he want either(google the US Bombing survey).) which it seems the first guy is basically trying to do, say all war crimes are acts of terrorism.