HOME / chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

In What Sense Are Terrorists Cowards?

Timothy NoahPosted Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at 6:08 PM ET

The conventions of American political rhetoric oblige presidents to denounce terrorist attacks as "cowardly." Ronald Reagan called the 1983 terrorist bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut "cowardly." Bill Clinton called the 1998 terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar-es-Salaam "cowardly." So one can hardly single out George W. Bush for calling today's destruction of the World Trade Center and a portion of the Pentagon, which killed hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, "cowardly."

RSS

Terrorism is inhumane and unforgivable--an offense to morality, patriotism, international law, and almost everything else we hold dear. Put Chatterbox down for favoring swift and terrible punishment for the perpetrators of today's crime. But is terrorism cowardly? The terrorists who commandeered the planes that leveled the World Trade Center and struck the Pentagon are mass murderers. In committing murder, they also committed suicide. That hardly makes them heroes. But in what sense does it make them cowards?

Perhaps we need to distinguish between moral cowardice and physical cowardice. A physical coward is afraid to risk his life or well-being. Chatterbox is a physical coward. So are most of his friends. A moral coward, one could argue, is afraid to face the burdens of living. Thus anyone who commits suicide is a coward, whether or not he kills others in the bargain. But Chatterbox somehow doubts that George W. Bush equates terrorists with people like Judy Garland and Michael Dorris. Perhaps Bush has a more expansive and political idea about what it means to face life--to work through the system with patience and firm commitment to an ideal. But diplomacy and coalition-building and other political forms of persuasion, worthy though they are, don't strike Chatterbox as being distinguished very often by heroism.

Perhaps the idea is that it is cowardly to make a sneak attack, especially on a defenseless civilian target, rather than confront an armed enemy face to face. But no one seriously expects Osama Bin Laden to invite the 101^st Airborne to fight his terrorist organization on equal terms. And besides, the reason we usually consider it cowardly to make a sneak attack is because the attacker avoids facing the consequences. But the people who participated in today's terrorist attacks paid the ultimate consequence. Perhaps terrorists are cowardly for not claiming responsibility for their terrorist acts, as seems to be the case here. Often, though, terrorists do claim responsibility and get called cowards anyway. If someone steps forward to claim credit for today's bombings, it seems unlikely any politician will praise him for bravery.

In truth, notions of "cowardice" and "bravery" are entirely irrelevant when we contemplate the horrors of terrorism. To call a terrorist "cowardly" is to substitute testosterone for morality. Somehow it isn't enough to abhor an act of terrorism or even to promise to make the terrorist pay dearly. The rules demand that the terrorist be branded a sissy. This is not only a childish reflex, but one that weakens the moral force of the condemnation and thereby dishonors terrorism's victims. After all, we don't want brave people to slaughter innocent people any more than we want cowardly people to do so. Still, the public seems to demand that our presidents call terrorists cowards, and our presidents are too--well, cowardly--to deny them.

E-mail Timothy Noah at .

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

COMMENTS

Reader Comments From The Fray:

[Notes from the Fray Editor: It has to be said that neither of the posts below is typical of readers' views on the article. Most Fraysters hated the idea that terrorists aren't cowardly--Tony Sunbar here, at least brought a dictionary definition to support his protest. And in true Fraycentric style, one poster said "Cowards don't sign their name!"]

It is of course absurd to call someone who murders thousands a coward, as though being a cowardly mass-murderer is significantly worse than being a brave mass-murderer.

But I think it reflects a characteristic of our moral sensibility--that some crimes are so large that we cannot relate to them directly. Instead we need to label the perpetrators with minor personal defects in order that we can then feel contempt for them.

--Penry

(To reply, click here.)

The horrible terrorist attacks on America today were reprehensible and worthy of our fullest retaliation. However, they were acts of soldiers, not terrorists (assuming, for now, that Bin Laden or the like was the mastermind). These are people who believe in things and ways that we cannot even begin to comprehend, and who find America as morally repugnant as we find the Taliban (although at least we value human life).

What we call these acts is less important than our achieving a shared understanding of who we are up against and of what kind of situation we are facing. All U.S. Presidents to date, including Pres. Bush this evening, have referred to terrorism as a "crime", or in Bush's case, "mass murder." If so, then every battle in the history of warfare must be declared to be just the same.

These were not crimes committed by criminals, but rather military acts of war committed by soldiers (be they uniformed or not)--be they a small group, of individuals, a so-called "terrorist" organization or a nation state. Until we begin approaching these acts as military, and not criminal acts, we shall never gain the upper hand--just as we have never brought any more than the lowest level functionary to justice for the past ten plus years of "terrorist" attacks on America and its interests. (I pause to consider the absurdity of Scotland Yard and the FBI defeating the Third Reich.)

In summary, these attacks were "cowardly" exactly to the same extent that it was for the Minutemen to shoot from behind trees and rocks at the perfectly aligned, numerically superior British Redcoats, or for U.S. special forces of all kinds to use cover, stealth and overwhelming firepower to defeat vastly greater forces. Let us now focus of addressing this attack as a military one, and investigate it and resolve it as such.

God bless America, with special prayers to all those brave American souls lost today ... we shall persevere, avenge and conquer.

--David Gier

(To reply, click here.)

(9/11)

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES