The Burdens of Terrorism

Abstract

When we first come to think about terrorism, we might suppose that moralists would simply condemn the practice. If we think of terrorism as a policy of coercive intimidation designed to achieve some political end,¹ we might also suppose that moralists who cannot show that such a policy is almost always wrong are not much good for anything. It is not as if in condemning terrorism they were being asked to make close moral calls, as when in baseball the runner and the ball arrive at first base within a fraction of a second of one another. Condemning terrorism, it would seem to the ethical novitiate, is more like calling a runner out when he is still half way to first base while the ball has already nestled in the first baseman’s glove.