CMI Exam Review: War&TerrorismOnline version Wasserstrom, Primoratz, Sinnott-Armstrong, Dershowitz by Kristen Ekstrom 1 Wasserstrom 2 Primoratz 3 Sinnott-Armstrong 4 Dershowitz A commonly-held belief that "starting a war is always morally impermissible" is wrong because there are instances in which we might go to war to save thousands of innocent people from some human rights atrocity like concentration camps or slavery. Self-defense is not retributivist: it doesn't involve exacting revenge or getting even; it's only action required to protect oneself *during* an attack. Self-defense is not consequentialist: while self-defense is about preservation against an attacker, ending the war "ASAP by any means necessary" can't count as self-defense. Self-defense only involves the absolute minimum amount of action required to stop a present attack; it doesn't allow for something like bombing an entire country to utterly obliterate an enemy, even though that might be an effective way to stop an attack. "Innocence" is a much more nuanced term than simply pointing at the divide between combatants and non-combatants: we must look at the subject through a "lens of culpability". If innocence is internally-based, involving one's state of mind, then no one can tell who is and is not innocent just by looking. Without a reliable way to see, visually/physically, who is or isn't innocent, some innocent people will inevitably be killed during war, whether on purpose or mistakenly. If war *inevitably* involves the death of innocent people, then anyone who willingly engages in war is knowingly engaging in something that will kill innocent people. So, participating in war is virtually never morally permissible, even doing so out of self-defense. Terrorism is inherently violent: there's no such thing as a nonviolent act of terrorism. A terrorist technically has two targets. The direct target (the one who gets hurt or threatened directly) is a person or group that the terrorist himself sees as innocent -- this target is only of secondary importance to the terrorist. A terrorist technically has two targets. The indirect target, while not suffering anything itself, is the primary focus of the terrorist: it's this third-party that the terrorist wants to influence into some action by harming or threatening his direct target. The directly-harmed target of a terrorist act doesn't necessarily have to be a human being: a terrorist might destroy a town's only clean water supply, and this counts as an act of terrorism as well. Terrorism can be defined as follows: an act of terrorism is an act of violence -- or a threat of one -- against an innocent party, committed in order to persuade a separate target to do something which they would not normally do. Terrorism isn't just about causing fear: a terrorist has a further goal, beyond terrorizing people, which is to influence or coerce someone into doing something. Primoratz's definition of terrorism is too broad, in that non-terrorist things like bank robbery or a criminal justice system end up included/labelled as terrorism cases under his view. Primoratz's definition of terrorism is too narrow, in that it fails to label cases like the bus bomber (who blows up buses just because terrorizing people is fun) or the abortion clinic bomber (who sees his victims as guilty murderers) as acts of terrorism when they pretty clearly seem to be. From a cost-benefit analysis standpoint, it seems clear that giving pain to one guilty person is a much lower cost than the expense of hundreds of innocent lives. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if torture is morally right or wrong: torture works, and the US government/its intelligence agencies are going to keep using it. So, what we ought to focus on is legitimizing/legalizing the practice of torture so that it receives reliable, constant oversight and regulation rather than being allowed to operate in the dark. While the Geneva Convention Against Torture bans all torture, the US only signed up to adhere to the convention to the extent that it applies to the 8th amendment (thus leaving our existing loophole intact). From a cost-benefit analysis standpoint, allowing torture in the one specific case of the time-bomb terrorist opens the door to much more commonplace/widespread practice of torture worldwide. This seems like a higher cost than letting one bomb go off, since it could eventually lead to the extreme suffering of thousands over time. The Constitution (8th and 14th amendments in particular) fails to provide a proper/unevadable legal basis for banning the practice of non-lethal torture.
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