By Rachel Lu
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
The Islamic State has been backed into a corner. Its
Syrian stronghold is teetering as money, soldiers, and territory all dwindle.
Mosul’s days are numbered. Raqqa is the next target. When these pillars of the
ISIS ‘caliphate’ fall, its prestige will also take a nosedive. But, as the
recent attacks in London show, jihadists have no intention of going gently into
the good night. Their atrocities have pushed us back into an old debate: Is
terrorism cowardly?
Gerard Vowels, the hero of London Bridge, has this one
right. Terrorists are cowards. It makes no difference that they suffer and die
for things they truly believe. When a man takes special pains to savage the
weak and helpless, that is an intrinsically cowardly act, regardless of the
personal price he may pay for his cowardly actions.
Audacious Acts
Aren’t Automatically Virtuous
That terrorism is not courageous
can be easily established. As Aristotle explains in the “Nicomachean Ethics,”
the courageous man stands fast in the face of danger for the sake of what is
good. Since the killing of innocents is a grave moral evil, it clearly cannot
be courageous. Anyone inclined to quibble with this is simply confused about
the nature of virtue. Risk-takers of all sorts may impress us, but of course we
appreciate that people may court danger for any number of reasons. They might
be drunk or on a drug-induced high. They might be overwhelmed by rage, hatred,
or lust. Self-destructive behavior often has deep and complex psychological
roots, but audacious acts are not per se virtuous. That is why we do not honor
the criminal mastermind or the reckless drunk.
Just because terrorism isn’t courageous, though, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is
cowardly. Many risky-but-not-courageous acts are properly viewed as rash. The rash person shows an excessive
willingness to face dangers, and is prone to take risks for inadequate reasons.
When young men goad each other into risking life and limb for the thrill of it,
we scold them for their rashness, not for their cowardice.
Almost certainly, some terrorists are rash. Most are
young, and the young very commonly lack a full appreciation of the gravity of
certain dangers. Evil men are often able to exploit that deficiency in service
of their own ends, and there can be little doubt that ISIS recruiters and
terrorist cell leaders are experts in this kind of manipulation. Rashness,
however, is not the terrorist’s primary
deficiency.
Terrorists are cowards in the fullest and most proper
sense of that term. They deliberately avoid honorable forms of combat,
preferring instead to prey on the weak, the innocent, and those who are not in
a position to defend themselves. This is the terrorist’s modus operandi, and we should not allow his eye-popping audacity to distract us from the deep moral
depravity that lies at the heart of this stratagem. He is the kind of fighter
who prefers whenever possible to shoot his enemies in the back. After all, who
knows? Given a chance to turn around, they might prove quicker on the draw.
It’s Possible To Be
Both Audacious And Cowardly
Whenever this question arises, there are inevitably a few
“defenders” who step forward to insist that terrorism, however evil, is at any
rate not cowardly. Two points typically arise in this context. One is that
terrorists show a serious disregard for their own lives, which is not a feature
we typically connect with cowardice. The second is that they genuinely believe
in the causes for which they fight.
I grant both of these points, but neither addresses the
central issue at hand. It is perfectly possible to be both audacious and
cowardly. Consider, as an example, a man who has a grievance against a much
wealthier and more powerful employer. Perhaps the employer has fired him
without just cause, blaming him for a mishap that was the employer’s own fault.
The situation is unjust, but because he lacks money and connections, he fears
that any effort to pursue legal redress will be unsuccessful. Accordingly, the
enraged employee gets his revenge by physically beating his (former) employer’s
teenaged daughter. He knows that the girl herself has done nothing, but hurting
her is simply the easiest and most effective method of hurting her father.
This man is a coward. It does not matter that he has
strong convictions. It makes no difference if he acts with full awareness that
he will almost certainly be punished, by the law or even by a lynch mob. He
chooses his target because she is weaker than himself, and because she is
innocent; he knows that these two considerations will exacerbate the injury to
his true enemy. He can’t bring himself to confront that person in an honorable fashion, because he fears that he would
lose such an exchange. This is the epitome of cowardice. It’s also exactly
the sort of thing that terrorists do.
We Fall For
Terrorists’ Sales Pitch
Terrorism has long been a preferred military tactic for
the weak and the desperate. Insurgent groups turn to terrorism when their
resources are obviously too limited to put conventional victory within reach.
That is their motivation for “choosing soft targets”, or (to put the point less
gently) for murdering children and shooting unarmed people in the back.
Why is it so hard for some people to acknowledge the
cowardice intrinsic to terrorism? In the main, it’s because we fall prey to the
terrorist’s “sales pitch”. Terrorist organizations typically have a sense of
drama. They know how to turn heads with their ruthlessness. Primarily this is
meant to instill fear, but it can also instill a kind of qualified respect,
which psychologically sustains the organization and helps with recruiting. Even
in our horror, we can’t quite put aside the dark fascination that we feel when
the Islamist’s fatalistic vision springs to life before our jaded Western eyes.
We shouldn’t give them that advantage. But it’s hard to
help ourselves.
Our own societies are currently plagued by a
philosophical and spiritual malaise, which cripples our confidence and leads us
to second-guess our every action. Juxtaposed against that background, the
deadly resolve of the terrorist is doubly impressive, and even perversely
appealing. He believes in something,
enough to die and kill for it. We, by
contrast, are roiling in self-loathing and existential angst. Who are the real
cowards?
Terrorists Are Not
Worthy Foes
By defending terrorists as not-cowardly, figures like
Bill Maher can provocatively express their disgust with the West’s spiritual
torpor. There may also be a certain attraction to declaring the enemy a worthy
foe, since noble enemies can inspire heroic deeds. Winning a war against
cowards doesn’t do much to bolster our own flagging confidence. “Clash of
civilization” rhetoric carries more punch.
But terrorists are not worthy foes, and it’s important
that we not forget. No such honor should be granted to the sort of “soldier”
who stabs unarmed women and murders children. Taken in full context, the
jihadists orchestrating the attacks in London and beyond are sore losers who
want others to be as miserable as they are themselves. They are losing their
battles and their war, so preying on
the weak is the only sick pleasure that is left to them.
For Western governments, zealous counterterrorism efforts
are the primary response. The rest of us can help, though, by keeping moral
perspective. Terrorists don’t merit our respect, qualified or otherwise. They
are cowards. Don’t let anyone forget it.
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