On the oh-so-popular subject of terrorism

Reasoning with terrorists might be the easiest and most practical way of solving a problem, but that doesn't make it the most moral. I don't believe in reasoning with evil people. To do so is to accept and validate their views. If you accept evil as valid, you're evil yourself.

If someone was holding a school full of children hostage, and they said "Hey Unne, take this one baby and kill it, right now. If you do, I'll let all these children go. If not, I'll kill a hundred children". Would you say it's right for me to kill the baby? That's what it means to bargain with terrorists. If I allow myself to be controlled by evil people, what does that make me? It makes me evil too. If a government allows itself to be controlled by evil people, what does that make it? That is what bargaining with terrorists is: willfully granting the terrorists control. The only moral thing to do is to stop the terrorists. Never to do what they want.

There's always a choice. You can let the terrorists dictate the terms; that's what negotiating with terrorists is, because that's what they want. If you do so, you're admitting surrender. Good surrendering to evil; what do you think the result of that will be?

Or you can play by your own rules. For example, the rule "Never, ever kill innocent people", or even "Never kill anyone; just talk about stuff". If you do so, you will fail, because the enemy doesn't respect your rules. Wishing for something doesn't make it so. Telling someone to be peaceful doesn't make them do it. Proclaiming killing to be wrong doens't stop killers. If the enemy violates your rules, then what? If you decide everyone should be peaceful, and a terrorist kills people anyways, then what?

The other alternative is to play by the bad guys' rules, and win. The only thing to stop force is force. If terrorists hide in a church and shoot rockets out the window at your troops, blast the church into the ground; it's not you killing any innocents who may be inside, it's the terrorists for forcing you into the situation. If a 4-year-old runs at you with a bomb on her chest, kill her before she gets to you. It's not you who just killed that child, it's the one who strapped a bomb to her. If there's any possible way to avoid killing, then don't kill. If there is no way to avoid killing, then kill, and kill as well as you can kill, because anything less will result in failure.

So far as I'm concerned, there are two rules for war. First rule: Be sure you're right. Second rule: Win. In the case of terrorists, I am sure that I don't deserve to die, because I've done nothing to anyone to warrant death, and someone who is trying to kill me is wrong. What's left is to do what's necessary to win, and that usually involves killing. No more than what's necessary; I don't condone needless destruction. But just as importantly, no less. The difference between us and a terrorist: we are right, and they are wrong. They started it, we'll finish it.

OK, first of all I don't like to talk about good and evil, because it is a moral value dependant on the subject, or in other words, it is relative, and even if the idea of good is the same for us all (Oposite to evil, another created concept), the way of understanding good is different. OK, so let me get your own idea and twist it arround so you understand the problem:

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Reasoning with terrorists might be the easiest and most practical way of solving a problem, but that doesn't make it the most moral. I don't believe in reasoning with evil people. To do so is to accept and validate their views. If you accept evil as valid, you're evil yourself.

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The difference between us and a terrorist: we are right, and they are wrong. They started it, we'll finish it.

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The only thing to stop force is force.

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If terrorists hide in a church and shoot rockets out the window at your troops, blast the church into the ground; it's not you killing any innocents who may be inside, it's the terrorists for forcing you into the situation.

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Well, to start with, terrorist fight you because they feel you are opressing their culture, and truth is, in most cases they are probably right. As an opressor of culture, you're evil too. Sometimes it's not THAT bad to listen to what they have to say. For them, they are right and you are wrong, you opress their culture, then they decide to act in response so you may listen, and are willing to negotiate with evil, in this case, you. Well, thats from the terrorists' perspective. They feel a force (Opression) acting against them, and following your logic, the only force against force is force.
When you shoot that missile into the church, you are killing innocent people, and you say the terrorists force you to do so. I'll let aside my moral understanding of such action (I must only point out that I find it lacks of any value for human life). Well, the terrorist may use as argumentation they had no choice but to do such action of taking people hostage in order to act against opression, thus you forced them to kidnap people in order to be listened. Also, wouldn't blowing uo te church be worse than killing the baby in the school?

Sure, I don't agree with terrorist logic, but sometimes it is positive to try to understand the reasons that leads them to such actions. Once you try to analyze seriously the topic, you see it's not balck and white or right and wrong. Terrorists don't kill because they are Born Evil, only a really simple-minded individual would get to such a ridiculous conclusion. So in the end, this guys that blow themselves up may be bastards, but the goverment that has enforced the situation is not a saint either.

So making a long story short, terrorism tends to be (not always) a fruit of the bad administration of the state. Thus, if a state leads to opression, it must face the consequences, this is either terrorism, revolution or coupe d'etat (Yet this dosen't fall into opression, but awful economical administration). I do not, by any means, defend terrorism, but neither I defend opression, so for me in the end there is no good side, just two sides defending their ideology.

And still, you have't explained how violence could stop terrorism instead of making it rise stronger. I mean, it's my main point in all of this, it's why I believe violence wont work.

OK, first of all I don't like to talk about good and evil, because it is a moral value dependant on the subject, or in other words, it is relative, and even if the idea of good is the same for us all (Oposite to evil, another created concept), the way of understanding good is different.

Morality isn't relative, but that's another topic for another thread, maybe. If your premise is "Morality is relative", then sure, no one has the right to do anything to anyone, or then again, everyone has the right to do everything to everyone; the terrorists are right, since everyone is right; killing innocent people is OK, since there is no such thing as non-OK; etc. etc. I disagree with your premise.

Well, to start with, terrorist fight you because they feel you are opressing their culture, and truth is, in most cases they are probably right.

I "oppress culture", so they get to kill me? That's wrong. Do you think "oppressing culture" is grounds for killing innocent people? If you do, you're insane. What is "culture oppression"? Introducing language, music, customs into an area? Changing people's religion? I don't understand.

If a culture changes, it's because people want to change. You can't change a culture by force, even if you tried, unless you rule a country by force, and we do not rule any other country by force. We enforce human rights, we protect ourselves from threats, that's about it; if that's seen as "culture oppression", if your "culture" includes beliefs and practices which violate human rights and harm human life, tough crap, your culture doesn't deserve to exist.

They feel a force (Opression) acting against them, and following your logic, the only force against force is force.

"Oppressing culture" is not physical force. Force should be used to stop physical force or the threat of physical force which is brought against you unprovoked.

Terrorists don't kill because they are Born Evil, only a really simple-minded individual would get to such a ridiculous conclusion.

No one is born evil. People make choices, and people who make evil choices are evil people. Terrorists kill because they choose to kill. If their reasons are faulty, then they're evil to do it.

So making a long story short, terrorism tends to be (not always) a fruit of the bad administration of the state.

You view people as unable to control themselves, then? The state does something, and that automatically forces people to become terrorists? Interestingly, I thought people made choices for themselves.

And still, you have't explained how violence could stop terrorism instead of making it rise stronger. I mean, it's my main point in all of this, it's why I believe violence wont work.

It will work when the bad guys are dead, or afraid of being dead. You haven't explained how allowing terrorists to do whatever they want, and moreover, rewarding their actions by giving in to their demands, will stop terrorism. I'd say if we have any chance of stopping them, it's by fighting them.

Um....Unne, I believe you think I am thinking about USA when I write this things. No, I am thinking about Russia and Chechenia.

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Morality isn't relative, but that's another topic for another thread, maybe. If your premise is "Morality is relative", then sure, no one has the right to do anything to anyone, or then again, everyone has the right to do everything to everyone; the terrorists are right, since everyone is right; killing innocent people is OK, since there is no such thing as non-OK; etc. etc. I disagree with your premise.

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Morality is not a real thing but a way humans have to understand everything arround them. I do not defend total relativism, I simply defend that good and evil are terms created by us in order to organise. There is a way of acting we can see as negative, and that is based on the whole moral of the categoric imperative, or at least it is my outlook on things, but seriously, moral as an artificial concept, and as such it can be relative, yet most humans agree on a series of basic concepts, and a community will attempt to stop that wich acts against their collective superego. But as you said, this goes into another topic.

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I "oppress culture", so they get to kill me? That's wrong. Do you think "oppressing culture" is grounds for killing innocent people?

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No, I don't.

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What is "culture oppression"? Introducing language, music, customs into an area? Changing people's religion? I don't understand.

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Invading a land and treating the people that used to live in it as second class citizens?

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We enforce human rights, we protect ourselves from threats, that's about it; if that's seen as "culture oppression", if your "culture" includes beliefs and practices which violate human rights and harm human life, tough crap, your culture doesn't deserve to exist.

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Again, please explain how Russia, Israel or China enforce human rights on Chechenia, Palestina and Tibet. Again, I am not talking about USA. I don't think USA enforces human rights either, no way it does, but USA suffers from whats known as international terrorism, it's another whole topic I don't want to go into now.

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"Oppressing culture" is not physical force. Force should be used to stop physical force or the threat of physical force which is brought against you unprovoked.

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Again, think of the army invading the lands of the three countires I mentioned above. That is physical force.

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You view people as unable to control themselves, then? The state does something, and that automatically forces people to become terrorists? Interestingly, I thought people made choices for themselves.

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Exactly, I do. I do not believe people have complete freedom over their actions, and this reflexes in the dialectical nature of history. If the Russian army launches an attack and kills your family, you have a lot of probabilities of becoming a terrorist with thirst of revenge. For example, not long ago during the whole Moscow theatre thing, quite a horrible tragedy, one of the terrorist, a woman, explained how their children were killed by the Russian army. OK, isn't it natural such actions lead to her mental inestability and thus fanatic thirst of revenge, leading to those horrible actions? Of course, what she does may not be right from our perspective and from any reasonable perspective, but she is not doing it just for fun.

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It will work when the bad guys are dead, or afraid of being dead.

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Bad guys being dead- As long as opression and fanatism continues, more bad guys will come.

Afraid of being dead- I don't think someone that enters a bus full of people and makes a bomb he has attached to his body explode is exactly afraid of being dead. They don't fear death because they are desperate people with nothing to loose. Isn't it pathetic?

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You haven't explained how allowing terrorists to do whatever they want, and moreover, rewarding their actions by giving in to their demands, will stop terrorism.

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I don't think "rewarding" is the term, it is probably more like....making peace? And how will it work? Well, it worked with IRA, it nearly worked with ETA.

It is not a reward, it is the only way of dealing with the problem. Probably they don't deserve to be listened, yet probably they didn't deserve to be invaded either. Everyone is a sinner in this game, and I don't believe negotiating is the perfect, ultimate solution, I simply believe it is the less bad one, and the one that spills less blood.

In the perfect world with colourful flowers and happy talking animals, all opressed nations in search of independence work in the style of Gandhi, with peace and wisdom. What a shame it's not the case, sometimes you just have to choose between the less bad of the evils.

There will always be terrorism. Negotiations won't stop it. Violence won't stop it. In a world where people aren't willing to accept responsibility for their problems, there will always be scapegoats, and where there's a scapegoat, there'll be a terrorist to bomb it. It doesn't matter if the US interferes in the Middle East. If we become isolationist, problem regions will still be problem regions, and those who would be terrorists would find a new cause for all their problems, and then bomb it. If Israel didn't exist, some other country would be the cause of the Palestinian hardships. It's always someone else. Saudi Arabian terrorists go on bombing raids because American culture is oppressing them, while not considering their vain abbhorance to manual labor (a result of the oil discovery a few decades ago) is the true source of their ills.

So how do we stop terrorism? We don't. We can't. It's like any other crime. We won't ever stop it. Why bother trying? We should change our focus. When a person is murdered, the victim's family doesn't crusade to stop future murders. They crusade to get vengeance on the criminal. That's all we can do here. We can't prevent terrorism. We can't stop it. We can make ourselves feel better by exacting merciless retribution. It's not about justice, or peace, or any other diplomatic catchphrase world leaders toss around when discussing these issues. It's about making the citizens appeased by avenging ourselves on the aggressor - and winning.

Shadow Nexus: I misunderstood then, I apologize. If a country invades another country without provocation, like I think China and the Russia have in the past, that's not what I'd call "oppressed culture". That's something I do think should be fought against, with force if necessary. However I still disagree with the means of terrorists. Killing innocent people just to get your opinion heard can't be justified if there are other means, and there are. Large-scale resistance to the army who's actually conquered you, for example.

Everyone is a sinner in this game, and I don't believe negotiating is the perfect, ultimate solution, I simply believe it is the less bad one, and the one that spills less blood. --Shadow Nexus

I agree that sometimes (maybe most of the time) it is the case that both sides in a conflict are wrong. When that happens, it's just a huge mess, and probably the only right thing to do is for both sides to stop fighting like a bunch of morons.

But I don't agree that both sides are wrong in all wars. I believe sometimes war can be justified. Self-defense being the example that comes to mind.

it was definitely right for the allied forces to fight against germany in world war ii, i'll say that. there's times when war is justified. but unfortunately, these times are not nearly as numerous as the times war has been fought.

Any war is virtuous if you win.

Garland, are you the reincarnation of Machiavelli?

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it was definitely right for the allied forces to fight against germany in world war ii, i'll say that. there's times when war is justified. but unfortunately, these times are not nearly as numerous as the times war has been fought.

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Yes, I guess it was at the time the allied forces declared war on Germany, because the situation was simply irreversible. Either you fight or you get conquered. However, it would have been better to limit Hitler from the start, that may have avoided all his crazyness. Or...it would have been wiser not to sign that stupid Versalles treaty. But well, that treaty was an error in history and I bet it wont be repeated, WWII was horrible enough to teach us the lesson.

(Not directed at anyone in particular.) Hitler was initally successful because the world feared war, and was willing to give anything (even the nation of Czecheslovakia) to avoid another. It's an example of peace talks at their finest. To avoid the horrors of a crazy dictator conquering all of Europe, Europe's brilliant idea was to give it to him willingly, so that he wouldn't conquer anywhere else. Killing civilians in death camps is one thing, but killing soldiers in battle was apparently too much for politicians to deal with. Is that what should be done with terrorists? Should we, to avoid making them angry, simply give them everything they want? Every war can be avoided. It's as easy as surrendering prior to every argument. Imagine an entire nation of people wearing white flags on their backs to avoid confrontation with aggressors - it's not a nice thought.

Garland makes a startlingly good point. I suppose you could logically compare giving into terrorists' whims to Europe's "appeasement strategy" in the early 1940s.

There's a profound difference between "communicating with terrorists" and "giving in to terrorists' demands".

If someone's holding a knife to your loved one's throat, and says he'll release the captive if you hand over $200, what do you do?

(1) Say "No! I'll never give in to evil lowlife scum like you!"

(2) Hand over the bling-bling.

If you choose (1), then your moral position is certain and clear, but your loved one is certainly dead, and possibly you are too. If you choose (2), then there's a good chance that your loved one will survive, and the criminal will flee, allowing the authorities to set about apprehending him before he can strike again. "Giving in", under such circumstances, has more to do with common sense than with cowardice.

Even better is the art of negotiation.

"Gimme the money or I'll knife him!"

"Take it easy, man. Tell me why you need the cash, and maybe I can help..."

A peaceful solution may result. If not, (2) is still an option. Option (3), "blow his smegging brains out", should only be used if you can be sure it'll free the captive unharmed and completely eliminate the threat posed by the criminal and his associates. If he happens to be a member of a large underground criminal network, you can see how unlikely that result is. Immediate force might have a single short-term benefit, but in the long term it'll only lead to more terror and retaliation.

Good points. Still, I would imagine that a terrorist who's willing to destroy himself for his cause is beyond negotiation. The gravity of the demands that would cause a person to destroy thousands of innocent civilians aren't the sort of demands that A) can be compromised at a middle ground, or B) are reasonable to concede to, even temporarily. I'm under the impression (the IRA being the exception) that terrorist organizations are beyond compromising. It's down to all or nothing. Israel and Palestine demonstrate this mentality. Middle ground concessions that seem reasonable to the rest of the world are insulting to both sides there. Peace talks are best saved for reasonable world leaders between reasonable world leaders. Reasoning with the unreasonable is a sound lesson in futility.

Eh, Garland, I hope you are not offended by the Machiavelli thing, I just said that because in many things you do sound like him. Specially when you said how good war was great to keep people away from internal issues. And take that question mark off your title :b


On the other hand, I don't know if IRA and ETA are the only terrorists you can negotiate with. Well, at least first you'd have to try with all those religious fanatic terrorists, I bet debating with them is not easy, but I can't think of another solution. It's not like ending terrorism is that easy!

Offended? Nah - you always give me good ideas for custom titles. Knight Sophist, Machiavelli Incarnate, they're better than keeping Knight Errant all the time.