There’s a lot of confusion about the perpetrators of the Madrid terrorist bombings, with a letter, purportedly from Al-Qaeda, claiming responsibility, and leaders associated with ETA disclaiming it. There’s evidence pointing both ways and, of course, it’s possible that more than one group was involved. Meanwhile, another letter, also purportedly from Al Qaeda, disclaimed responsibility for the even bloodier atrocity in Karbala last week.
I don’t think it’s necessary to come to a conclusive finding as to who set up which bombs. All groups and individuals that embrace terrorism as a method share the guilt of, and responsibility for, these crimes. Both in practical and symbolic terms, terrorist acts by one group provide assistance and support to all those who follow in their footsteps. The observation of apparent links between groups that seemingly have nothing in common in political terms (the IRA and FARC, for example) illustrates the point. Denials of particular accusations are beside the point unless they are accompanied by a renunciation of terrorism.
This point isn’t only applicable to terrorists. For example, governments that engage in, or endorse, torture in any context share in the guilt of criminals like Saddam, whether or not they were directly complicit in particular crimes.
John Quiggin 
I was thinking how serendipitous this is for the Bushmen. Terrorists extraordinaire.
“I don’t think it’s necessary to come to a conclusive finding as to who set up which bombs.”
Erm … except maybe so you can prevent them from doing it again?
It’s the right sentiment John. At this time, one can only stand aghast, again, at this continuance of horror. All the culprits do share each other’s shame.
I never thought the Prof would be the one to justify the US’s claim of links between al-Qaeda and Saddam:
“All groups and individuals that embrace terrorism as a method share the guilt of, and responsibility for, these crimes. Both in practical and symbolic terms, terrorist acts by one group provide assistance and support to all those who follow in their footsteps.”
You angling for a Washington speechwriting job, John?
That would be true if ETA had done this before. But they haven’t – not on this scale and not without warning the police first.
ETA respects some moral limits that Al Quaeda has gone beyond. ETA, for instance, is purely domestic.
If they were arrested and tried in Australian courts we would not expect the same scale of punishment.
Another example – the Bush regime is guilty of torture in the treatment of the Guantanamo bay prisoners. But they don’t physically mutilate prisoners. There is a difference.
David One of the british prisoners just released had difficulty walking.( From Gitmo that is.)
David is correct that the domestic-only nature of ETA-terrorism makes it different. While I’d be very careful of getting too carried away by such observations – they can reek of NIMBYism at best, and callousness at worst – the more important difference, for me, is that Madrid had low production values: see http://paulwatson.blogspot.com/2004_03_07_paulwatson_archive.html#107905748288387785
I don’t mean this flippantly; “low production values” also means relatively low body-counts – the Madrid toll is shocking, but it ain’t even close to 9/11’s
“I don’t think it’s necessary to come to a conclusive finding as to who set up which bombs”
Wow. As a European living in Spain I find this very scary indeed. I am clinging to the Eta hope, as it would seem in vain. I am clinging to it because if it is well founded this is going to be the end of something. In the other case it is the begining, and the begining of something much more difficult to beat.
I’m afraid I’m not re-assured by your statement.
Maybe this shouldn’t surprise either of us too much as I’m not very re-assured by your economics either.
We live in troubled times it seems. The question I sometimes ponder is whether this bears any similarity to the threat to democracies in the 1930s?
Edward and PK. I think you have missed my point pretty thoroughly. Of course, for a range of practical purposes, including the likelihood of future attacks, it makes a difference who committed this crime. But I thought it was pretty clear that I was talking about our moral evaluation of the groups potentially concerned.
You can read a lengthy discussion in the comments thread for the crosspost at Crooked Timber. Although plenty of commenters disagreed with me, none of them misconstrued it in the way you have.
John
I understood your point fine, thanks – All terrorists are morally equivalent.
You’re descending into ivory tower speak when you start saying…
“I don’t think it’s necessary to come to a conclusive finding as to who set up which bombs.”
..though. Perhaps it doesn’t matter up there, but down here on the ground it does.
No offence and I’m sure that’s not what you meant, that’s just how it sounds.
quiggin, your statement on moral grounds is as ridiculous as it would be on practical grounds.
in fact the link between moral and practical is exactly where your understanding fails.
to be more specific:
“All groups and individuals that embrace terrorism as a method share the guilt of, and responsibility for, these crimes”
is utter nonsense.
first, lets address what you mean by terrorism. lets say you mean the intentional killing of civilians.
as was understood by all sides during world war 2, total war was as much about civilian production of armaments as it was about what was happening on the front line.
if you could cripple your enemy by destroying his “morale”, world war 2 code for strategic bombing of civilian population, and thus shorten the war, then this was as justified as machine gunning enemy troops.
lets not doubt the effectiveness either. nagasaki and hiroshima resulted in hirohito surrendering within a week. (nagasaki was atomic bombed on august 9, hirohita cited “a new and most cruel bomb” in surrendering on august 15, (the making of the atomic bomb, richard rhodes)
also, in ending the war, does not mean im unaware of the horrific casualties of both these bombs. looking at the photographs in the above book of charred corpses makes one feel physically ill at the destructive power man has discovered.
your argument is basically that any act, so defined, is morally equivalent irrespective of its motivation. i am overwhelmed by the sheer naivete and ridiculousness of this notion.
it would equate terrorist groups who say just want to see maimed children, with one that uses attacks on civilians to make the cost of the war on their enemies unbearable. that both can never be justified is simply childish, and untrue.
i regret the incompleteness of this rebuttal, but theres so many problems here i dont know where to start.
The above comment exuberantly stretches and twists the intent of the post beyond recognition.
Let the original points stand. Terrorism is not to be countenanced no matter who, how or where.
That c8to has, in an fit of emotion, claimed that some historic acts are instances of terrorism and are also good, is to verge on hysteria.
The many shades of grey to be encountered if one were to actually get into such a line of discussion would quickly render ridiculous the claim that JQs position was evidently untrue.
It is a commonplace now with our recent experiences of the past 2.5 years that people lash out and attack most unreasonably those around them when confronted with the enormity of the terrorist crimes. It is I suppose to be quietly borne.
Many people lose all perspective and feel affronted when anybody even starts to make less than totally chest-beating and mouth-frothing comment.
my comment was completely unemotional.
since humans are intentioned creatures, to remove intent from an act and call it morally equivalent is naive.
sure its popular these days to denounce all terrorism, but its merely a more specific case of pacifism which is pure idealism (in the pejorative sense)
i think my post above clearly outlines that while i think terrorism (attacking civilians for political gain) is clearly horrific, it is a) a real fact of modern warfare, and b) effective at gaining those aims (althoug not always)
to remove intent from moral judgements is both foolish, and childish. many things are legitimate or not based on the motivation of the act.
unless you come up with a definition of terrorism different to mine, and that does not involve mere us and them distinction you have no argument.
wbb, you almost make an argument:
1) “terrorism is not to be countenanced no matter who, how or where.” define terrorism, and explain why this is true.
2) ” That c8to has, in an fit of emotion,” play the ball and not the man. i hardly think its hysteria.
wbb, you conflated my shock at quiggins claim with shock at the act. i have no emotional reaction to the spain attacks, save for “no man is an island” type sentiment.
finally, to readress quiggins point. i reiterate that you cant have a consistent definiton of terrorism which will make this claim even vaguely sound.
if force is legitimately used by us, to achieve our political aims, terrorism is simply labelling to deny our enemies the right to use force to achieve theirs.
(not this does not mean i think we shouldnt try to destroy groups like al qaeda and ETA. it just means its us versus them, as opposed to some struggle between good and evil.)
to my detractors, answer these questions:
was it right for the allies to bomb hamburg and other civilian targets to reduce nazi germanies ability to wage total war? was this terrorism? does it matter that germany was the agressor, or that they bombed london first?
was it right for the US to bomb nagasaki and hiroshima killing hundreds of thousands of civilians to force japan to capitulate? was this terrorism?
was it right for zionists to wage a terrorist campaign to establish the state of israel?
was it right for the tzarists to be murdered in revolution in russia?
whatever your answers to these questions, i think you are extremely short sighted if you believe they are morally equivalent acts.
Cato is playing the ball and not the man. Since he is an intentioned human I am left to wonder why.
“ridiculous… childish… utter nonsense.”
Does c8to really mean Cato? I always imagined him/her as some kind of cute little robot, related perhaps to C3PR and R2D2. What’s the extra t for anyway? Eight already ends in t.
Sorry. C8to. That’s better. Of course “David Tiley” is actually an online identity too. It is really a collective of Peruvian astronauts which notes that it should not have assumed that the C8to robot chooses masculine form.
the idea is foolish, not the person.
in fact this is clear from tiley’s quote: “utter nonsense” only an idea can be nonsense, not a person.
at any rate, no-one has responded to my actual thesis, namely that:
1) you cant categorize all terrorism as the same without considering motive.
2) you cant rule out attacking civilian populations because a) it works, and b) our side has used it to great effect historically.
without addressing these concerns (even if you dont agree with my position), anyones moral evaluation of terrorism is empty.
I think we can very easily rule out all terrorism.
Just because “our side” has used it to “great effect” does not rule it in by any means. Nobody is arguing that it does not work, merely that it should be avoided. Sure, you can find extreme scenarios and play semantics but there is a simple and broad concept that we can surely all agree on. The post did no more than to make that point.
c8to’s response to the post was to charge in on the attack as tho some thought crime had been committed.
The terrorism under discussion was the kind where the motive cannot be used as justification. That was why it was condemned. To list certain actions that you both define as terrorism and yet as justifiable is to go in to the gray area which must always exist but which was not meant to be covered by the post, which was a general statement of principle.
It still strikes me as an unwarranted and hasty attack on a reasonable post. I withdraw the hysteria crack!
no problems wbb.
to assure you im no thought policeman either.
you do well to point out the grey area which always must exist, and i sympathise with you because people unnecessarily pointing out the grey area, is one of my pet hates.
you are right that the grey area always exists, and this doesnt mean we are doomed to never make any meaningful statements. (as so many first year philosophy students seem to think, whatever you say they just say “well what about this [insert grey area]”)
i take the more general point of the post, and agree that we shouldnt bow down to terrorism, or condone it in some cultural and moral relativism nonsense.
i still think there is a flaw (in my mind, oversimplification) in the collective guilt thesis. to say everyone who uses terror is in the same basket, seems a specific case of a pacifist argument.
as analogy, you can imagine a pacifist saying “all people who use force share the collective guilt of the most evil people that use force.”
since i dont want to rule out attacks on civilian populations as justified (say in precisely the “grey”, but significant cases (eg hiroshima nagasaki)) and dont think you can do this unless you define terrorism in an us verse them way, i must take into account motive.
while i agree my cases are the ever present grey areas, i submit that they are non-trivial grey areas, and thus valid as the thrust of my thesis.
i think we should hunt out and kill those who threaten our way of life, and condemn them in moral terms. in fact, that we can condemn terrorism, and yet kill terrorists is proof that moral judgements supervene on notions of intention.
it is more morally justified to kill agressors, since killing in response to agressors is stable.
thus, if palestinians (for example) could kill settlers and make the cost of settlement too great to bear by the israelis, and result in the establisment of a palestinian state, then why would this not be a morally justified act. (i havent even cited standard utilitarian reasons) israelis, and us perhaps would probably label this terrorism but thats just a label.
(once again apologies for rambling…my only excuse is these are comment boxes and im not writing a formal paper)
Yeah well I understand what you’re saying – enough anyway to know we have to agree to disagree – i’m against Hiroshima – could have been done otherwise with far less killing.
If terrorism is the solution then the goal is not worth the candle. nb I’m not a pacifist. But only do not imagine requiring a terroristic solution by a state actor in any circumstance. You try and try until you find another way. What could you possibly be solving by taking innocent life. You are surely not protecting other innocent lives. I am extremely unnationalistic even in that regard.
Talk of killing terrorists is a different point. That is a war situaton or a capital punishment issue. Neither comes under the heading of terrorism.
Killing settlers is NOT justified. That IS terrorism. It may be just a label but then so is everything labelled. We can assume that we are discussing the realness underlying the label.
You utilitarianism provides you with a very foreign and seemingly amoral worldview to me.
“Killing settlers is NOT justified. That IS terrorism”
How so? It isn’t terrorism but atrocity, since terror is only incidental, and as for the justification, that comes down to whether the means are matched to the ends. If you once conclude that the ends are justified, the only question on the means front is whether they are proportionate. Without a peaceful way of removing settlers, what means remain? Notice, this isn’t justifying the means from the ends, but rather acknowledging that the justice of the means must be included in the whole answer – and, if you do factor that in, you have already answered it.
In this case, how is it better for settlers to perpetuate the successes of their atrocities than for the Palestinians to learn from their example?