by Matthew Smalley

Created on: July 11, 2008

It is wrong to give an "OK" to the possible deaths of innocents when fighting terrorism.

The deaths of innocents is exactly the tactic terrorism uses. There are two obvious strategies to terrorism. The first is to demoralize a country by targeting civilians and instilling fear. The second is propaganda. These organizations wish to be seen as freedom fighters in a bold war against oppression. Martyrdom is their best weapon. That is why they die in suicide attacks. And that is why they hope to drive our governments to ever more extreme anti-terror measures: to make us into the oppressors.

Therefore we may liken the hypothetical terrorist to the schoolyard bully. The best way to get rid of a school bully is to ignore him. The situations are not entirely analogous (it is clear that suicide bombers are not cowards) but nevertheless our response to terrorism must be measured, rational and responsible. The more we lash out, the more reactionary we become, the less damage we do to the terrorists in question, as it is very easy to deceive an angry man, but the more damage we do to ourselves. We must remember that terrorists target the innocents to demoralize us: suicide bombers will die in the attacks in any case, they have no long-term survival instinct. Thus to kill innocents in an attack on a terrorists is to rescue someone from a murderer by killing both the murderer and the prospective victim.

Cases such as this, coupled with such euphemisms as "collateral damage", are typical of a Western world attempting to strip itself of liberties in response to terrorists trying to do the same. We are doing their job for them. In the UK, it seems likely that the government will be able to lock up anyone for forty-two days without charge - without a shred of evidence. This is counter-productive in the extreme. In the USA, we hear stories of such places as Guantanamo Bay, which produce rumour mills just as terrifying as the rumours of terrorism and the scare stories trotted out to accompany them.

The question, here, "When attacking terror suspects, is it ever OK to attack when innocent people may also be killed?" is worrying in its use of the word "suspects". If one sticks rigidly to the question, we see that everybody voting "Yes" on the debate is essentially accepting that innocent people will be killed in an attack on a person who may be innocent. When the case is thus laid out in black-and-white, the question seems ludicrous and the answer an obvious "No". Such is the logical answer.

Learn more about this author, Matthew Smalley.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.