When is terrorism justified? Can taking away someone's rights be justified?

[Lorgar-Aurelian]

When is it justified to use terror tactics to achieve a goal? When does it become the obvious next step to take hostages or plant bombs? Is it possible to threaten civilians and still remain justified?

If you religion is being oppressed? If someone is mocking everything you hold sacred? Is it when you can see no other way to get your government to change it's stances on an issue that is of vital importance to you?

The other side of that coin might be when is it okay to take away the rights of your citizens? Can you ever reasonably justify taking away part of the right of privacy or free speech? Should we stop places like Saudi mosques from being opened in the western / eastern world?

Is there ever a time when it is okay to don the jackboot in the name of safety? Should you stop places like the westboro Baptist church from protesting at funerals or is that not far enough to warrant government intervention? When would the acts of a religious organization or their teachings warrant intervention?

Does it just fuel the fire when you try to strike back against an oppressive regime? Is it better to go about any protest peacefully?

 

[Sunstone]

Almost by definition, terrorism involves attacking innocent people. So, for it to be justified, you would first need to justify attacking innocent people.

 

[Skwim]

And as for justification for taking someone's rights away, certainly. We do it all the time when we sentence people to prison. The justifications being punishment, rehabilitation, and protection.

.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Almost by definition, terrorism involves attacking innocent people. So, for it to be justified, you would first need to justify attacking innocent people.

This is easily done when one can paint entire populations as "not innocent."

 

[sun rise]

Terrorism, defined as deliberate attempts to create terror and panic in people is never justified. If successful it results in replacing one kind of oppression with another one which could be even more odious than the one replaced.

Whether violence or non-violence is better to oppose an oppressive regime is another question. Personally I think non-violence is better.

But I also think the rationale for such opposition has never been said better than it was in the US Declaration of Independence:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

 

[Quintessence]

The way I typically view ethics, the specific behavior in question isn't actually important to how I approach it. As someone whose view of ethics hinges around cultivating personal character that reflects desired virtues and values, it basically comes down to answering these questions with "yes:"

• Am I currently sound of mind and unclouded in judgement?
• Is there a specific purpose or goal that this action is intended to achieve?
• Will this purpose or goal be reached by taking this course of action?
• Am I comfortable with the methods I have chosen for reaching this goal?
• Have I considered the full ramifications of this goal being reached, and of the methods being used to get there? That is to say, have I carefully weighed how these behaviors and outcomes will impact the environment?
• Am I prepared to accept the costs associated with this goal and behavior? In particular, am I prepared to deal with allies and opponents alike?

If all "yes" then you are justified... for you. And that last bit there is important. For you. This is not other people's measure of you being justified, it is your measure of you being justified. No matter what you do in life, someone will always consider who you are and what you do objectionable or unjustified. The point here is to be comfortable within one's own skin, true to one's character, true to one's nature.

When I go through this list thinking about options like terrorism for causes that I would find warranting it, I never get down this list of questions with "yes." So for me, terrorism is never justified.

 

[McBell]

Using this as a reference of what "terrorism" can be:

Terrorism - Wikipedia​

I suspect it will be difficult for me to agree with a justification.

 

[Nietzsche]

Ehhh.

Sometimes there's a need to be indiscriminate in your display of power. The most successful resistance against the Nazis were the French Resistance, and only after the Poles threw away their "no civilians" clause did they achieve anything of merit, the Warsaw Uprising.

On the flip side, this goes for governments too. You want to pacify an area? Wreck everything. The Luftwaffe bombing of Rotterdam made the Dutch realize the Germans were not ****ing around. The Allies did the same to German cities.

It's kind of effective.

So. Sometimes, yes.

 

[Sunstone]

The issue of whether violence is justified in achieving political, social, religious, or economic ends is a separate one from the issue of whether terrorism is justified.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I think there may be an underlying assumption for many people that "justified" has some sort of objective sense. However, "justification," as it relates to human behaviors, is nearly always rooted in subjective perceptions, motives, and criteria.

 

[Sunstone]

The Allies did the same to German cities.

If I recall, US Military studies done after the war concluded that allied bombing of cities hardened German civilian resistance, much as the Blitz had done to harden British civilian resistance.

 

[Sunstone]

I think there may be an underlying assumption for many people that "justified" has some sort of objective sense. However, "justification," as it relates to human behaviors, is nearly always rooted in subjective perceptions, motives, and criteria.

Of course. But are you able to offer some objective standard that would prohibit people from at least attempting to place justification on a rational basis? I suspect not.

 

[Sunstone]

The way I typically view ethics, the specific behavior in question isn't actually important to how I approach it. As someone whose view of ethics hinges around cultivating personal character that reflects desired virtues and values, it basically comes down to answering these questions with "yes:"

• Am I currently sound of mind and unclouded in judgement?
• Is there a specific purpose or goal that this action is intended to achieve?
• Will this purpose or goal be reached by taking this course of action?
• Am I comfortable with the methods I have chosen for reaching this goal?
• Have I considered the full ramifications of this goal being reached, and of the methods being used to get there? That is to say, have I carefully weighed how these behaviors and outcomes will impact the environment?
• Am I prepared to accept the costs associated with this goal and behavior? In particular, am I prepared to deal with allies and opponents alike?

If all "yes" then you are justified... for you. And that last bit there is important. For you. This is not other people's measure of you being justified, it is your measure of you being justified. No matter what you do in life, someone will always consider who you are and what you do objectionable or unjustified. The point here is to be comfortable within one's own skin, true to one's character, true to one's nature.

When I go through this list thinking about options like terrorism for causes that I would find warranting it, I never get down this list of questions with "yes." So for me, terrorism is never justified.

There were plenty of people who were comfortable in their own skin gassing the Jews. How do you deal with that?

 

[Nietzsche]

If I recall, US Military studies done after the war concluded that allied bombing of cities hardened German civilian resistance, much as the Blitz had done to harden British civilian resistance.

Eh. Those studies were taken after the rebuilding had begun. You could afford to be a little obstinate to an occupying power when you knew they weren't going to literally burn down your world. The British did not face the same kind of utter devastation, the Germans were never able to completely isolate the island and remove their food supply. The Germans were starving en masse, their cities were being turned into mausoleums and they were losing on every conceivable front. The world was literally closing in on them.

Had they been able to do the same in Britain, they would've crumbled. They didn't.

 

[Sunstone]

Eh. Those studies were taken after the rebuilding had begun. You could afford to be a little obstinate to an occupying power when you knew they weren't going to literally burn down your world. The British did not face the same kind of utter devastation, the Germans were never able to completely isolate the island and remove their food supply. The Germans were starving en masse, their cities were being turned into mausoleums and they were losing on every conceivable front. The world was literally closing in on them.

Had they been able to do the same in Britain, they would've crumbled. They didn't.

Speculative.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Of course. But are you able to offer some objective standard that would prohibit people from at least attempting to place justification on a rational basis? I suspect not.

There's a fine and fuzzy line between rational and rationalized. And often, none at all.

 

[Sunstone]

There's a fine and fuzzy line between rational and rationalized. And often, none at all.

Are you seriously suggesting that because some people rationalize, rather than reason, all attempts at reason are somehow bogus? Come one now, be reasonable! You are indulging in flippancy.

 

[Nietzsche]

Speculative.

Sure, they could've fought on until literally every man, woman and child on the island was personally shot by the Wehrmacht or died of starvation. You'll forgive me if I don't think that's very likely. For the Germans, I think the German people saw the writing on the wall when the Luftwaffe was incapable of defending cities even within the heart of the Reich. Maybe they would've been accurate had they only been talking about German cities in the Rhine and Ruhr being bombed. But when the Americans and British could send thousand-bomber raids into Brandenburg, Saxony and Silesia, I think the crushing depression and realization that there was no hope for victory, and that they were fighting an enemy that could literally bomb them back to the stone-age, ended any notions of wide-scale post-war resistance movements like the "Werwolf".

 

[Sunstone]

Sure, they could've fought on until literally every man, woman and child on the island was personally shot by the Wehrmacht or died of starvation. You'll forgive me if I don't think that's very likely. For the Germans, I think the German people saw the writing on the wall when the Luftwaffe was incapable of defending cities even within the heart of the Reich. Maybe they would've been accurate had they only been talking about German cities in the Rhine and Ruhr being bombed. But when the Americans and British could send thousand-bomber raids into Brandenburg, Saxony and Silesia, I think the crushing depression and realization that there was no hope for victory, and that they were fighting an enemy that could literally bomb them back to the stone-age, ended any notions of wide-scale post-war resistance movements like the "Werwolf".

While you would know more about it than I would, I am inclined to think the findings of the US military were significant.

 

[columbus]

Almost by definition, terrorism involves attacking innocent people. So, for it to be justified, you would first need to justify attacking innocent people.

Which is easy to do.
You estimate that your techniques will result in fewer innocent people being attacked.
That's how the USA justified bombing Hiroshima. And "Shock and Awe" in Iraq.

All you do is redefine innocent people dying as unfortunately necessary collateral damage.
Tom