Terrorism: Meaning of Life and Oxford University Press

Terrorism In his article “Terrorism,” Michael Walzer describes terrorism as the indiscriminate murder of innocent people. He goes on to explain that terrorists have the objective of destroying the morale of a nation and instilling fear within a society by not targeting a specific group of people, but rather, targeting the population as a whole and killing “random” people. Walzer and many like-minded philosophers share the view that terrorism is wrong and is not justified under any circumstances; thus rendering it akin to murder. The preceding view is referred to as the “the dominant view,” as labeled by Lionel K. McPherson, because it is common to a great deal of people – many of who are not philosophers. McPherson attempts to discredit the notion that terrorism is wrong by relating it to modern warfare and showing the ways in which it is better in comparison. After reading the opposing arguments presented by Walzer and McPherson, I will be proving that although terrorism is not as immoral as war, it is still wrong. The first premise to my argument is the fact that terrorism is not as immoral as war; the majority of proof collected to support this premise is obtained from Lionel K. McPherson’s article, “Is Terrorism Distinctively Wrong?” McPherson raises a rival view to Walzer and suggests, “terrorism is the deliberate use of force against noncombatants, which can be expected to cause wider fear among them, for political ends[1].” The first piece of evidence lies in the fact that noncombatant deaths contribute to between 75 and 90 percent of all war deaths. McPherson points out that we do not know the reason of these deaths, but because it happened during the period of war, it can safely be said that whether it be directly or indirectly, war leads to a high number of civilian casualties. Moreover, terrorism is considered wrong because of the fact that it instills fear in the civilians, but as McPherson asserts, civilians have more to fear when it