Determining moral rectitude in thwarting suicide terrorist attacks: Moral terra incognita

Abstract

It can be asserted without controversy that one of the principal concerns of the US government must be endeavoring to thwart suicide terrorist attacks - to actually prevent their happening, and not just to clean up the carnage, and prosecute any surviving perpetrators. It can also be asserted, and also without controversy, that in endeavoring to thwart suicide terrorist attacks, the United States could act in ways that are morally upright - or, alternatively, it could act in ways that are morally wrong.1 However: distinguishing morally permissible endeavors from morally impermissible endeavors is no easy matter; that is not without controversy. For as a moment's reflection will reveal, to (genuinely) thwart an attack by suicide terrorists is, quite inevitably, to engage in preventive actions. And preventive actions are, notoriously morally problematical. How, then, is the determination to be made; how can the morally permissible endeavors be distinguished from the morally impermissible? The most general thesis of this chapter is that we are entering uncharted moral territory. I attempt to secure that thesis by arguing that the threat posed by suicide terrorists is sui generis; in consequence, it does not comfortably "fit" extant moral models. In an earlier paper,2 I argued that suicide terrorists are neither "common criminals," nor soldiers; I synopsize those arguments in Section 1. In Section 2, I sketch a response to the sui generis threat posed by suicide terrorists that seems, intuitively, morally permissible. I then look for more solid moral grounding: in the distinction between prevention and preemption (Section 3), in just war theory (Section 4), and in a Kantian argument (Section 5). None of these seem to apply to this sui generis threat; there is much work here to be done by moral philosophers. © 2007 Springer.