Terrorism and War
By Debates about the meaning of “terrorism” often feature some odd assumptions, including:
(1) Killing 500 civilians while making some attempt to avoid killing them is less morally problematic than killing five civilians while attempting to kill many more. I suppose this may be true, but it hardly seems self-evident.
(2) While blowing up a 19-year-old civilian walking down the street is either a horrendous crime or a deeply regrettable bit of “collateral damage,” eviscerating that same 19-year-old with a sharpnel bomb a week after desperate circumstances have forced him to put on the uniform of the local security forces is morally A-OK.
The latter assumption seems particularly strange — as if the fact that we claim wars have “rules” makes them less immoral.
Anyway, the editor of my column got mad about my failure to achieve Krauthmaurian moral clarity on these issues, leading to this little back and forth.