1. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
David Rodin, “The Problem with Prevention”
Preemptive vs. preventive war
Preemptive: “Preemption consists in a first strike against an enemy who has not yet attacked but whose attack is clearly imminent.”
Preventive: “Prevention, on the other hand, involves a first strike against a potential future aggressor who does not yet pose an imminent threat.”
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2. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
David Rodin, “The Problem with Prevention”
Consequentialist approaches
Act-based: Particular actions are judged in relation to their consequences.
Problems with knowing the balance of consequences
Problems with counterfactual historical judgments
Rule-based: Rules are judged in relation to their consequences (i.e., the consequences of following them). Acts are judged in relation to those rules.
Not enough data to justify rules
The impasse problem
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3. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
David Rodin, “The Problem with Prevention”
Self-defense approaches
Psychological necessity: X kills Y in self-defense. X is excused because it would be unfair to expect X to act otherwise.
The Caroline doctrine
Requires imminent threat, so cannot justify prevention
Rights-based: X kills Y in self-defense. X's action is justified because Y gave up his right to life when he unjustly attacked X.
Requires that X unjustly attack Y, so cannot justify prevention.
Supporting thought experiments
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4. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Preventive War – What Is It Good For?”
Problems with the act-consequentialist approach
Rodin's argument that this approach fails even in “clear” cases like the Allies' war against Nazi Germany
Responses that this is not an “easy” case
Rodin's argument that it is unclear would count as empirical evidence
Sinnott-Armstrong states that “every bit of pain, death and disability” is clear evidence
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5. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Preventive War – What Is It Good For?”
The jus ad bellum concerning the moral justification of going to war—which causes can justify war?
Discussion of principle “Until you have been wronged, you have no have no good enough reason to use force”
Discussion of Neta Crawford's self-defense view
Sinnott-Armstrong's “basic disagreement” with Crawford
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6. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Preventive War – What Is It Good For?”
The imminence condition: Future aggression must be imminent for (preemptive) attack to be justified.
Crawford's criterion
Correlation of time and probability
Sinnott-Armstrong's argument that temporal imminence cannot be necessary
Conclusion: Preventive war might not be wrong when “it is too dangerous to wait.”
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7. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Preventive War – What Is It Good For?”
Implications of consequentialism regarding preventive war
No justified preventive war against conventional weapons
Bush's attack on Iraq
Bart Gruzalski's nonmilitary alternative
Sinnott-Armstrong argues that some nonmilitary alternative would have been better overall, and thus Bush's attack was wrong.
Bush's general policy of preventive war
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8. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Michael Walzer, “Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses”
Excuse 1: Terrorism is a last resort.
“The resort to terrorism is ideologically last, not last in an actual series of actions, just last for the sake of the excuse.”
Excuse 2: Terrorism is needed because of a weakness.
Difference from “last resort” excuse
Two kinds of weakness
Terrorists as not representing the weak
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9. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Michael Walzer, “Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses”
Excuse 3: Terrorism is effective on behalf of oppressed groups.
Walzer claims that, strictly speaking, this is a consequentialist argument, and this is a justification rather than excuse.
“The third excuse does not work unless it … [is] possible to say that the desired end could not have been achieved through any other, less wrongful, means.”
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10. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Michael Walzer, “Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses”
Excuse 4: Terrorism is a proper response to aggression. “All politics is (really) terrorism.”
Walzer claims that this excuse “relies too heavily on our cynicism about political life.”
A “more restricted form” of the argument: oppression (rather than politics generally) is always terroristic.
Walzer objects that this kind of reasoning just leads to more oppression.
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11. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Michael Walzer, “Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses”
Best ways of responding to terrorism
Repression and retaliation
The risk of repeating the wrongs of terrorism and how to avoid it
Addressing the oppression that terrorists claim to oppose
Does this excuse the terrorism as being caused by oppression?
Does this excuse inaction against oppression?
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12. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Michael Walzer, “Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses”
The link between terrorism and oppression
“Oppression is not so much the cause of terrorism as terrorism is one of the primary means of oppression.”
Breaking out of the cycle between oppression and terrorism
“Genuine liberation can come only through...”
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13. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Andrew Valls, “Can Terrorism Be Justified?”
Double standard with state and nonstate violence
Defining “terrorism”
Difficulties: question-begging and overly revisionistic definitions
Virginia Held's definition
Valls modified definition: terrorism is “violence committed by nonstate actors against persons or property for political purposes.”
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14. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Andrew Valls, “Can Terrorism Be Justified?”
If just war theory can justify violence committed by states, then what else can it justify?
Provisions of just-war theory:
jus ad bellum (right to go to war):
Just cause: Both states and nonstate actors can justify violence by appealing to self-determination.
Legitimate authority: Both states and nonstate entities can have legitimate authority if they represent a people and are seen by the people as doing so.
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15. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Andrew Valls, “Can Terrorism Be Justified?”
Provisions of just-war theory (cont'd):
Jus in bello (conduct of war)
Discrimination: Both states and nonstates can discriminate to different extents.
Principle of double effect and implications for the debate.
Conclusion, if just-war theory can justify violence committed by states, then:
“Terrorism committed by nonstate actors can also, under certain circumstances, be justified by it as well.”
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16. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Alan M. Dershowitz, “Should the Ticking Bomb Terrorist Be Tortured?”
Answer to the title question: Yes
Why? “The simple cost-benefit analysis for employing nonlethal torture [in cases like this] seems overwhelming...”
This is an application of act utilitarianism.
Dershowitz mentions the risk of a slippery slope whereby act utilitarianism is used to justify intuitively wrong actions.
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17. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Alan M. Dershowitz, “Should the Ticking Bomb Terrorist Be Tortured?”
To avoid the slippery slope, Dershowitz suggests we respect certain constraints, such as limiting torture to “convicted terrorists who had knowledge of future massive terrorist attacks.”
Dershowitz also argues that the existing law should allow for torture in particular cases, and he proposes a system of judicial “torture warrants” as a way to do this.
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18. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Marcia Baron, “The Ticking Bomb Hypothetical”
Ticking bomb terrorist cases (two versions)
How is it supposed to weaken an absolutist commitment to torture?
What the problem isn't: Ticking bomb cases and artificiality
What the problem is:
Traditional philosophical cases involve a large “distance” between the case and the supported point. But the ticking bomb case does not have this distance.
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19. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Marcia Baron, “The Ticking Bomb Hypothetical”
Why artificiality is a problem for these cases
Traditional philosophical cases involve a large “distance” between the case and the supported point. But the ticking bomb case does not have this distance.
The assumptions we make in the ticking bomb cases “give the case away,” such as the assumption that only torture will work to prevent the disaster.
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20. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Marcia Baron, “The Ticking Bomb Hypothetical”
Evidence that “interrogators can successfully interrogate without relying on violence, humiliation, degradation [etc].”
Problems with treating the ticking bomb case as “a single instance of torture.”
Justifying one instance will require justifying a practice.
“Virtually impossible for torture to be limited to just one instance.”
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21. Chapter 13: War, Terrorism and Torture
Marcia Baron, “The Ticking Bomb Hypothetical”
What it means to deny the morality of an action “on principle.”
Comparison with a hypothetical rape case: innocent subject must be subjected to rape in order to prevent catastrophe.
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