Morality Moving Front and Center

In a talk the other day entitled "Remarks by National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley at the Proliferation Security Initiative Fifth Anniversary Senior Level Meeting " the intellectually undistinguished but long serving White House factotum made one interesting point. It was buried in the usual mass of bureaucratic twaddle. To see the entire thirty minute preparation of pap, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/05/20080528-3.html.

The point that struck the Geek came about twenty-seven minutes into the evolution. It is worth quoting in full. "Second, many terrorists value the perception of theological legitimacy for their actions. By encouraging debate over the morality of WMD terrorism, we can try to affect the strategic calculus of the terrorists and discourage them from resorting to these weapons."

The vapid Mr Hadley you will recall stepped up to his current position when his organizational chart superior, Condolezza Rice exceeded her Peter Principle Point by becoming Secretary of State. Like SecState Rice he has excelled to date by defending the indefensible and seeking after the unattainable in the service of the current administration.

However, presumably by the same technique that would allow an infinitude of monkeys with word processors to eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare, Mr Hadley has proposed an interesting, albeit far from unique idea. We ought to debate the morality of WMD terrorism.

Actually, the National Security Advisor seems to be taking a leaf from the book(s) written by the adversaries of the US in the current Great Global War On Terrorism. The basis for this assertion is found in an excellent piece of reportage by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker. On line, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_wright/?yrail.

Wright parses the semi-subterranean debate over terrorism which finds the original ideological fountainhead for the likes of al-Qaeda changing his views on the morality of terrorism or at least the indiscriminate sort practiced by the followers and imitators of Osama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri. He has done an exceptional job. The Geek commends his work to your attention.

The Geek prefers to speak of "ethics" as there is no need to invoke the power of the Great Juju with spectres of eternal punishment to reinforce it. However, since the adversaries of the US in the GGWOT are addicted from infancy to visions of hellfire and Mr Hadley correctly notes the theological legitimacy quest of the jihadists and their Islamist cohorts, the Geek will use the word "morality."

The will and intent of the Great Juju is and always has been subject to the interpretation of less than omniscient humans. Humans subject to the whims, passions, fears and exigencies of any and every passing moment.

This is brought out in detail both excruciating and exciting by the Wright article focusing on the key intellectual-theological figure of al-Jihad and its successors, the man born Sayyid Imam al-Sharif. Without going into the details where, as always, the devil resides, al-Sharif went from being a run-of-the-souk radical kid to being an extremist's extremist who subsequently retracted from his blanket Islamist justification for killing all "infidels" and "apostates," much to the vexation and dismay of al-Zawahiri.

Minds as well as values are mutable. Beliefs as well as morality are mutable. Herein lies not only the basis for the perceived decay of al-Qaeda but also the tar pit hidden inside Mr Hadley's call for debate on the morality of WMD based terrorism.

Of course a debate on morality presupposes an agreement on terms.

Lots of luck on that one!

Despite years of trying no consensually accepted, universal definition of "Terrorism" has emerged. The world still seems intellectually mired in the ancient cliche, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Dr al-Zawahiri in his audiotaped responses to roughly one hundred of the nine hundred questions emailed to him would not even concede that al-Qaeda had undertaken illegitimate terrorist actions against Muslim civilians. Instead he erected a stonewall of denial. All who were killed were somehow either apostates or infidels. Anyway, the "crusaders" were the real terrorists.

Even "reformed" extremist, al-Sharif cannot bring himself to agree that the 9/11 attack was either illegitimate or immoral. No. He sees the real terrorism as residing in the US cruise missile strike on the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan incorrectly perceived as a chemical weapons production facility which resulted in the death of the nightwatchman.

As he explains, the plant was built with Muslim money. The dead man was a Muslim. The World Trade Center was built with "infidel" money and all who died were "infidels."

OK. We're off to a great start in a debate over the morality of WMD terrorism.

Then there is the problem of defining a weapon of mass destruction. Sure, the term is conventionally understood to mean nuclear, radiological, biological or chemical employments which result in massive numbers of killed and wounded. Of course, some statutory definitions lower the threshold so that a an individual weapon or a small explosive charge constitute a WMD.

We sure are getting somewhere now. Right.

We can't even agree on what terrorism might be.

We can't agree on just what constitutes an "immoral" weapon when employed by "terrorists."

In the West we have a long history of trying to ban weapons as "immoral." Consider the crossbow.

Compared with the longbow the crossbow as an ineffective piece of equipment. It did have a couple of very real advantages over the longbow.

First, it was easy to use. Unlike the longbow which took years of practice literally from childhood to master, any peasant could be trained in the crossbow quickly and easily. An ambitious ruler or wannabe princeling could recruit a bunch of peasant kids or denizens of the slums and turn them into an efficient unit of knight-killers in a matter of weeks.

Second, the crossbow could be fired easily from concealed locations. It could be cocked and loaded in advance. It was an excellent ambush weapon.

Can we say a "weapon of terror?"

The Catholic Church did. The crossbow was prohibited from use in "Christian" wars but was permitted in combat against the Muslims.

Morality can be a slippery critter, can't it?

Then there is the question of "mass destruction." Just what does it take to inflict "mass destruction" on a target?

Yeah, we usually think of heaps of bodies in charred ruins. Hiroshima, Dresden, Hamburg or the rubble at Ground Zero.

But ask yourself: what about a cyberattack on the electric grid? What about a cyber hit on the financial institutions of the West?

No heaps of bodies. No rubble except in the virtual sense. The destruction would nonetheless be real and massive--and not impossible for a terrorist organization or the state which wishes to masquerade as one.

Finally consider how understandings of morality change under the pressure of events. In 1939 His Majesty's Government prohibited air attacks of German private property--even German state owned forests. Less than four years later the goal of government and air force alike was the killing of the greatest number of German civilians in the least amount of time with the smallest possible friendly losses.

The British called it "worker de-housing."

The Germans called it Luftterror.

They were both right.

Stephen Hadley missed that.