Are Terrorists Cowards?

North American Philosophical Publications

Are Terrorists Cowards?Author(s): Michael WeberSource: Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Oct., 2005), pp. 331-342Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical PublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441421 .

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Public Affairs Quarterly Volume 19, Number 4, October 2005

ARE TERRORISTS COWARDS?

Michael Weber

has become commonplace to call terrorists such as those who carried out the 9/1 1 attacks and suicide bombers in the Middle East cowards. It is not just

President Bush who uses this description, though for obvious reasons he may be the best known for doing so. In the United States, many leading Democrats and other leading Republicans, both those in favor of the war in Iraq and those opposed, level the charge.1 Other world leaders also describe terrorists this way, including leaders in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and members of both the provisional government in Iraq and leading contenders for the post-election government. But are terrorists really cowards, or is this talk mere political propaganda, an attempt to stick an unflattering label on enemies whether it really fits or not? Some think that it is obvious that this is the case - that those who call terrorists cowards do so in a loose and unreflective sense, and that this usage is so obviously political that it is hardly in need of debunking. But such matters are rarely so obvious. If Bush and those who make similar claims are wrong, it is worth making clear why they are wrong. It is worth getting beyond the political rhetoric and examining the question carefully.

I

It seems likely that those inclined to believe that terrorists are cowards think so because terrorists target defenseless civilians, rather than fighting on the field of battle against armed members of the military.2 The problem, however, is that the traditional reason for thinking that attacking civilians is cowardly is that when one attacks civilians, typically, one does not put oneself at significant risk as one does when fighting armed members of the military, just because civilians are defenseless. But the terrorists that are the source of debate today, such as the 9/1 1 terrorists and terrorists in the Middle East, are typically "suicide bombers" who virtually guarantee their own deaths in carrying out their terrorist plans.3 So if there is a case for calling terrorists cowards, it can't be this simple. The terrorists of today are more than willing to not just risk their lives, but to assur- edly sacrifice them.

331



332 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY

It might be argued, however, that there is a related conception of cowardice that might apply to terrorists in virtue of the fact that they target civilians. People are sometimes called cowards if they pursue or play (only) "safe bets."4 A bet is safe if the odds of success are high, but the reward is low compared to an alternative bet with lower odds of success.5 A poker player who draws for one or two pairs instead of an inside straight, for instance, is sometimes called a cowardly player. If the game is bridge, the cowardly player does not bid "slam" when there is a reasonable chance that slam can be made. A club tennis player who challenges only weaker players is similarly sometimes described as a coward. This usage is not restricted to games, however. Sometimes people say that pursuing an academic career is courageous because it is such a competitive profession, with many more highly qualified job candidates than jobs. The person who most values an academic career but demurs in favor of law school or some other career path, then, is a coward. Of course, pursuing law school or some other career might just be smart (given the academic job market), even if one is very attracted to an academic career. Similarly with bridge: in some instances it might be just stupid to bid slam. Drawing back from bidding slam is only a candidate for cowardliness if, as suggested above, there is reasonably good reason to think that if one bids slam one will make slam. So too, then, with choosing a law school or some other career path over an academic career: this is a candidate for cowardliness only if there is at least a reasonable chance of success in the academy. But this still leaves room for the charge of cowardliness in these cases and others.

It might be suggested, then, that terrorists are cowards in this new sense, and primarily because they attack civilians.6 What gets this started is the thought that, generally, civilian targets are "soft targets," in the sense that they are not heavily defended and thus are easy marks - much more likely to be successfully attacked. For instance, buses, restaurants, and clubs, common targets of terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere, are typically soft targets. Military and other strategic targets, in contrast, are hard targets, since they are, typically, better defended. Of course, with the rise in terrorism, and especially since 9/11, efforts have been made to better protect civilian targets. But most agree that many are still extremely vulnerable.7 Many civilian targets, then, remain soft.

The first problem with this line of argument is that, while it may be true that in general civilian targets are more likely to be successfully attacked than military or strategic sites, civilian targets are not necessarily easy targets. Perhaps the frequency of suicide attacks on buses and restaurants in Israel (before the recent cease fire) suggests that these are in fact easy targets, though that will of course depend on how many such attempted attacks fail. However, in the case of the 9/1 1 terrorists and the attacks on the World Trade Center, surely the prior probability of its success was quite small. We bemoan our unpreparedness, outlined in the 9/1 1 Commission report. Still, there are so many places where the plan might easily have failed. It required getting terrorists into the country, through



ARE TERRORISTS COWARDS? 333

flight training, through the airport and onto the plane with box cutters hidden; it required the hijackers successfully taking charge and maintaining control of the plane, and finally correctly navigating to the targets before any defensive response was possible. Each of these elements had a substantial chance of failure, such that the probability of ultimate success was surely very low. Sometimes hindsight can mislead, as we can easily move from the fact that something did happen to the conclusion that the odds of it happening were high. One suspects that it is this kind of mistaken inference that leads people to believe, falsely, that the 9/1 1 attacks was easy in the sense that such an attack had a high probability of success. The World Trade Center was no easy target (nor, for the same reasons, were the other targets of the 9/1 1 attack).

The second problem is that the argument requires further that the targets of terrorists such as the 9/1 1 hijackers are lower- rather than higher- value targets, when it is far from clear that this is the case. Whether a terrorist target is high- or low- value depends, of course, on what is taken to be the purpose or function of terrorism. If the purpose or function of terrorism is to raise the cost of various policies, e.g., the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, or the stationing of United States troops in Saudi Arabia, then a target is high- value if there is the prospect of significant casualties and destruction of property. On this view surely the 9/1 1 targets were high-value. The attack on the World Trade Center brought previously unimaginable death and destruction. Although not as dramatic in this regard, the other targets of the 9/1 1 attacks also promised considerable loss of life and damage to property. Similarly, the targets of suicide bombers in the Middle East (and elsewhere, e.g., Indonesia), such as crowded buses and restaurants, result in terrible losses of life.

If, instead, the purpose or function of terrorism is to harm the people and institutions thought responsible for alleged injustices, then once again the World Trade Center, as well as the other targets of the 9/1 1 attack, come out as high value. AI Qaeda and the 9/1 1 attackers seemingly have numerous complaints and goals, but high among their complaints are American support for Israel, the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia, and the alleged pernicious influ- ence of American capitalism in Islamic nations. The Pentagon, the United States Capitol, and the White House are, of course, highly relevant to American support for Israel and the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia. The World Trade Center, on the other hand, was, if not a center of international capitalism, a major symbol of it.8 So here, too, the targets of the 9/1 1 attacks seem clearly to be high-value.

If the purpose or function of terrorism is to create a politically and economi-

cally crippling terror, then again the 9/1 1 targets seem to be well-chosen, though of course the jury is still out on how crippling the attacks will be in the long run. Indeed, if the purpose of terrorism is to create crippling terror, then the civilians in the World Trade Center are surely particularly well-chosen, as that attack left nearly all Americans feeling vulnerable. Compare this attack with, for instance,




the Unabomber. Since the Unabomber targeted a special class of people he thought particularly responsible for something he saw as destructive, for the most part, ordinary citizens did not feel vulnerable. Since the 9/1 1 attacks used commercial airplanes as weapons and attacked a commercial center, nearly everyone could imagine himself or herself as a victim of this kind of attack.

Loren Lomasky interestingly argues that it is a mistake to think of terrorism as a means to some political end, be it desired policy changes or creating political and economic instability. He argues, instead, that the purpose or function of terrorism is better seen as expressive: the purpose is fundamentally to express a point of view, or express a grievance. His reasoning is that if terrorism is seen as a means to some particular political end, then terrorists have to be reckoned complete idiots, since terrorism has such a bad record of in fact effecting such change. He says, for instance, that the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1 972 Munich Olympic games, one of the most notorious terrorists acts prior to 9/11, "did not even put a halt to the Olympic games, let alone persuade the government of Israel to alter its policies."9 Indeed, he points out, the effect of terrorism is more often to set back the terrorists' alleged political aims, as the terrorism so often inspires a hardening of views and even stronger counter-measures against the terrorists and their agenda (by the typically more powerful government).

There are contentious issues here about the efficacy of terrorist attacks. There is at least some recent evidence that they do not always fail to produce the ap- parent desired political outcome. The 3/1 1 attack on Spanish commuter trains had the express aim of getting Spanish troops out of Iraq. Only a few days after the attack, Spanish voters elected a candidate who promised a pullout from Iraq. In other cases it is harder to be sure of cause and effect. However, it seems at least plausible that suicide bombers sent by Hezbollah got Israel out of southern Lebanon, that the bombing of the army barracks in Beirut led to the US with- drawal from that region, and that the recent attempts by Ariel Sharon to abandon some settlements in the West Bank is in part the result of Palestinian terrorism. So Lomasky's analysis seems not to apply to all cases. It fits better with the more random (and bizarre) attacks that he begins by discussing, e.g., the 1972 attack at the Lod airport in Tel Aviv, in which Japanese commandos attacked civilians.

Nonetheless, it does seem that, insofar as some terrorist attacks are expressive, or in part expressive, civilian targets might well be the best targets, since attacks on civilians are more dramatic and much more likely to be widely reported in the media. Thus, such attacks seem to most effectively express whatever it is terrorists aim to express. So even on this alternative, non-teleological account of the purpose or function of terrorism, the World Trade Center and other civilian targets come out as especially good targets.10

The discussion here of the aims or goals of terrorism is surely not exhaustive. Rather, it is meant only to suggest that, on a number of the most familiar ac- counts of the aims or goals of terrorism, the targets chosen by the 9/1 1 attackers,




as well as typical suicide bombers in the Middle East, come out as high- rather than low- value. It is implausible, then, to suggest that such terrorists are cowards because they play (only) safe bets - that they choose low- value targets that there is a high probability of hitting successfully over high(er) value targets that there is a low(er) probability of hitting successfully.

II

A very different and perhaps more philosophically sophisticated line of argument suggests that terrorists are cowards because, insofar as they attack innocent civilians, they are vicious or evil, or at least unjust or unfair.11 Their actions can't be courageous, it is said, just because they are evil or unjust - because they so obviously lack other virtues, such as wisdom or a sense of justice. Put this way, the argument invokes the ancient doctrine of the unity of the virtues, maintained in different ways by both Plato and Aristotle, according to which one cannot have any one virtue unless one has them all.

To some, the unity of the virtues is obviously false. After all, it is said, some people, for example, are honest without being kind or caring. Or, more to the point, doubters of the unity of the virtues say that surely virtues can be displayed in the service of bad or evil, e.g., burglars can surely display courage (or inven- tiveness) in their crimes.

Those with more patience for the unity of the virtues think this alone is in- adequate. Virtues, they say, are reliable dispositions to do what is morally right under certain conditions that are the domain of the particular virtue. So courage is a reliable disposition to do what is morally right in the face of danger. Temper- ance is a reliable disposition to do what is morally right in the face of (sensual) temptation.12 Thus, by definition, virtues cannot be exercised in the pursuit of bad or evil.

Surely such an appeal to definition can't win a substantive debate. To win, one must give good reason for employing this definition. Grounds must be given for requiring that a virtue must be in the service of doing what is morally right. Gary Watson aims to provide just such grounds. Watson contrasts what he calls "the straight view" and the "due concern view" of virtue. According to the straight view, the stronger the tendency to, for example, tell the truth, the more honest one is. Similarly, the stronger the tendency to sacrifice (goods, money, or time) for others, the more generous one is. The due concern view, in contrast, has it that honesty is a matter of having "due concern" for telling the truth, and generosity is a matter of having due concern for the well-being of others. The problem with the straight view, according to Watson, is that it has the absurd result that one can have an excess of virtue, one can be, for example, too honest or too generous. For example, one would be too honest if one told the truth even when this involved telling a homicidal maniac the hiding place of his intended victim. Honesty, then,




can lead to wrong action if excessive. But Watson thinks this is absurd, because virtues are "constitutive excellences of character; states that systematically lead to good desires, deliberations, choice, and action." The problem with the straight view, he says, is that it "must sever the connection we ordinarily suppose to exist between developing a virtue and moral improvement."13

John McDowell has made a similar case in defense of the unity of the virtues. He asks that we consider kindness. Kindness, he says, is a matter of proper at- tentiveness to others' feelings. But sometimes, McDowell suggests, it is wrong to indulge A's feelings because it would be unfair to B. For instance, it would be wrong to award an essay prize to a student who did not submit the best essay just because he would be more hurt by losing than the student who did submit the best essay. In cases like this, McDowell suggests, a straightforward propensity to be gentle to others' feelings would not lead to right conduct. And for this reason it can't be a virtue:

If a genuine virtue is to produce nothing but right conduct, a simple propensity to be gentle cannot be identified with the virtue of kindness. Possession of the virtue must involve not only sensitivity to facts about others* feelings ... but also sensitivity to facts about rights [or what is fair]. ... So we can't disentangle genuine kindness from the sensitivity which constitutes fairness. And since there are obviously no limits on the possibilities for compresence, in the same situation, of circumstances of the sorts proper sensitivities to which constitute all the virtues, the argument can be generalized: no one virtue can be fully possessed except by a possessor of all of them, that is, a possessor of virtue in general.14

Both Watson and McDowell are making a version of a point familiar from Kant, who argues that only the good will is good without qualification because qualities that can be helpful to the good will, e.g., moderation or self-control, may become exceedingly bad without the principles of a good will: "the . . . coolness of a scoundrel," Kant says, "makes him, not merely more dangerous, but also immediately more abominable in our eyes than we should have taken him to be without it."15

It might seem that Watson and McDowell are simply begging the question, since they assume that for a trait to be a virtue it must always or at least systematically lead to morally right action or conduct. But surely they are right that there must be some connection between the trait and value for it to count as a virtue. A better, more subtle line of criticism, then, would suggest that the problem is the assumption that the only kind of value is moral value - and thus for a trait to be a virtue it must lead to morally right action.16 But insofar as terrorists are engaged in moral/political action, this shouldn't matter. If the traits necessary to carry out the actions in question are to be counted as virtuous, then plausibly they must be somehow connected to morally right action. The charge of question-begging then, though it does raise difficult and complicated issues about value, need not slow us down here.




What is more important for the present argument is that, as both Watson and John Lemos argue, McDowell's appealing comments do not establish the unity of the virtues, even if one agrees that in order to have (fully) the virtue of kindness one must be sensitive to considerations of fairness in circumstances where others' feelings are at stake (in contexts relevant to kindness). Their argument is that although (proper or "due") kindness here requires that one is sensitive to fairness in this context (in cases where kindness might be exercised), having such a sensitivity in this context does not require that one will have it in other contexts, while (fully) having the virtue of justice or fairness requires sensitivity to fairness reliably across contexts.17 In other words, (proper or "due") kindness requires that one is sensitive to fairness where kindness might be called for, but being sensitive to fairness in such contexts does not require (logically) that you will be sensitive to fairness in other contexts.18 Thus, (proper or "due") kindness, at most, requires that in order to have any one virtue you must have at least some sensitivity to the concerns of other virtues. You must have all virtues "to some degree": "At most," Watson says, "this reasoning establishes that to have any particular virtue, you must at least be alive to the moral considerations that pertain to the other virtues. If you were totally insensitive in one respect, then you could not reliably show due concern for considerations of any kind. Hence this reasoning favors only a weak unity thesis: If you have any virtue, you . . . [must] have some sensitivity for considerations relevant to others - you . . . [must] have, in one sense, all the virtues 4to some degree.'"19

Now this weak unity thesis might be thought to be sufficient to deny that terrorists, even those that nearly guarantee their own deaths in a suicide attack, are courageous, because insofar as such terrorists target innocent civilians they show total disregard for fairness and justice. But it is exactly here that we must be very careful. If we accept the weak unity claim, which will not be challenged here, then there does seem to be grounds for saying that terrorists are not coura-

geous. However, to say that someone is not courageous is not the same as saying that he is cowardly or a coward. Not everyone who fails to be courageous is a coward. To say that someone is a coward, or cowardly, surely must require that the person cower, flinch, or flee in the face of danger. And there is, of course, strong evidence that this is not the case with the terrorists in question - this is

just what their suicide missions show. So while it might well make sense to say that terrorists, insofar as they are evil in attacking civilians, are not courageous, this does not warrant calling them cowards.

It might be argued that this is unfair or is just nit-picking, because what people mean when they say that terrorists are cowards is just that they are not courageous. It is not nit-picking though, because it is precisely in this equivocation that the talk turns importantly political (in the derogatory sense). The emphatic insis- tence that terrorists are indeed cowards seems to be an attempt to get something unearned - to paint the terrorists in a particularly bad light that is not cast if they




are simply described as not courageous. It suggests that they are somehow weak, in the way that people who cower, flinch, and flee in the face of danger are weak. Whether it is deliberate or not, it is deceptive, and inaccurate, strictly speaking. Terrorists may be a lot of bad things, e.g., evil, brutal, callous, and an offense to the true spirit of the religion they claim as their own, but it is more than a stretch to say that they are cowards.20

Ill

If terrorists are not courageous because they are evil, brutal, or unjust, but are also not cowardly, what are they? Those that carry through with their suicide missions surely have a "quality" or trait that most of us probably lack - something akin to courage. Like courageous people, terrorists do not cower, flinch, or flee in the face of danger. Perhaps, then, we should describe them as steadfast, or, following David Pears, as "tough" and "enduring."21 Of course the situation with courage is not unique. It seems that if we accept the weak unity thesis, then for each virtue there must be a corresponding quality or trait that can be had in the absence of sufficient sensitivity to all the other virtues. Aristotle's discussion of courage does include a section on things that are like courage but are not in fact the genuine article.22 It unfortunately does not include courage's corresponding trait. How this bears on Aristotle's account of courage and his commitment to some kind of unity thesis, however, is a matter that will not be addressed here.

IV

It must be asked whether any of this really matters other than to an academic debate. Does it really matter in the real world, as people like to say, that President Bush and other world leaders call terrorists cowards when, it has been argued, they are not, strictly speaking? It does. First, there is a pitfall. Continually describing them as cowards may lead us - and similarly the leaders who describe them this way - to believe that the terrorists that target us are not as formidable as they in fact are. Insofar as it suggests that they are likely to cower and flee in the face of danger - that when pushed they will fold - it can lead to a serious underestimation of what we face in the war on terror and what will be required to win. Perhaps this can be avoided by, at the same time, saying that they are steadfast and deter- mined. Indeed, since shortly after 9/11, President Bush has emphasized that the war on terror will be a long and difficult one. But there's a worry that this gets lost in the more explosive talk of the courageous and the cowardly, and that false expectations are nonetheless created. It is perhaps worth noting in this context that, with the exception of former Secretary of Defense Colin Powell, President Bush and leaders in his cabinet seem to have been taken somewhat by surprise by the resolve of the resistance in Iraq, and to have provided insufficient troops to deal




with the consequences of toppling Saddam Hussein.23 This is perhaps evidence that they have in this way fallen victim to their own rhetoric.

What, then, is the point of labeling terrorists cowards? What is thought to be gained? Surely one thing is simply that calling terrorists names, whether they really fit or not, rouses support for an aggressive reply to terrorist attacks. Any negative label that can be attached to the terrorists raises the level of anger and dislike. But why specifically call them cowards (instead of, or in addition to, for example, "evil-doers")? The answer, I think, is that, insofar as calling them cowards suggests that they are likely to flinch and flee in the face of danger, it breeds confidence that the war on terror is a war in which we will triumph because the enemy is weak. This is a message, I suspect, that is intended both for the voting public and for those members of the military deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.24

There is a curious feature to the rhetoric once we reach this point in the analysis. On the one hand, the terrorists are labeled cowards, suggesting that they are weak. On the other hand, it is emphasized that the war on terror will likely be long and arduous, suggesting that the enemy is formidable. There is a very mixed message here. But perhaps such a mixed message is just the point, since while it prepares us for a long and arduous fight, it provides reassurance that, if we remain commit- ted, it is a fight that we can ultimately win.25 If this is right, and intentional, then

perhaps Bush and other leaders who insist that terrorists are cowards are smarter than we think they are, however much we might hate to admit this.

Yale University

NOTES

1. Indeed, it has proven dangerous to suggest anything to the contrary, as television talk-show host Bill Maher found out when his show, Politically Incorrect, was cancelled

apparently because he suggested that the 9/1 1 terrorists were courageous rather than cowardly.

2. The targeting of civilians plays a central role in other aspects of the philosophical treatment of terrorism. Two central philosophical questions dominate the philosophical discussion of terrorism: 1) What is the definition of terrorism? 2) Can terrorism ever be

morally justified? Some suggest, in reply to 1), that part of the definition of terrorism is that civilians are targeted. Most of those who think that terrorism cannot be justified think so just because terrorism targets civilians. See, e.g., J. Angelo Corlett, Terrorism: A

Philosophical Analysis (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press, 2003), for a comprehensive discussion of both these issues.

3. The 9/1 1 attacks, of course, had several targets, only one of which is civilian, namely the World Trade Center. The other targets were military and government administrative centers, namely the Pentagon and probably either the White House or the United States




Capitol. These latter targets, though not civilian, are not "in the field of battle," which might make targeting them in the same dubious class as attacking the World Trade Center. This issue will not be addressed here. Instead, the focus here will be on terrorist attacks on strictly civilian targets, since the charge of cowardliness usually begins - perhaps because it seems strongest - with attacks on civilian targets.

4. This conception is related to the first because in both cases cowardice has to do with eschewing risk.

5. It might be suggested, alternatively, that the safeness of a bet is relative, and a bet A is safe relative a bet B if A has a smaller reward than B and a higher probability of success. This alternative is problematic, however, because a bet A that is safe relative to B might still be very risky (with a high value for success), such that it would not warrant calling a preference for A cowardly. It may be less courageous, but it is not cowardly (unless in the mitigated sense of being cowardly relative to a preference for B).

6. The crucial thing to see here is that this new conception of cowardice is different. The difference is that a person can be a coward in this new sense even if he puts his life at great risk, even if he nearly assures his own death - in other words, even if he is not a coward in the traditional sense. This is because while he is willing to risk his life, he is not willing to risk the failure of his mission. An unwillingness to take risks is what links the two conceptions. What distinguishes them is what one is unwilling to risk.

7. It is also true that prior to 9/1 1 some strategic targets were extremely vulnerable, and some still likely are. But this just means, according to the argument under consid- eration here, that targeting any such strategic target would also be cowardly. The equal vulnerability of military and other strategic targets does not undermine the argument being presented here. Rather, it only widens the scope of the argument to include the vulnerable military and other strategic targets.

8. Most people will insist that the majority of the people in the World Trade Center on the day of the attack were just "ordinary" people with little to do with anything in the Middle East and other parts of the Islamic world. The argument here, then, might require some version of the thesis of "collective responsibility," according to which ordinary citizens are responsible for the alleged wrongs of the government and its armies as well as the actions of the corporations based in their country. On this view, "there are no in- nocents" - or at least very few, e.g., very young children. Whether and to what extent the occupants of the World Trade Center can be construed as responsible for the alleged wrongs identified by AI Qaeda and the 9/1 1 terrorists is a large matter that will not be addressed here. See, e.g., Burleigh Taylor Wilkins, Terrorism and Collective Responsibility (London: Routledge, 1992), for an in-depth examination of the issue.

9. Loren Lomasky, "The Political Significance of Terrorism," in Violence, Terrorism, and Justice, ed. R. G. Frey, and C. Morris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 90.

10. To say that a terrorist target such as the World Trade Center is a "good target" or "high- value" is not to suggest that attacks on such targets are in any way justified. Rather, it is just to say that relative to a proposed aim or goal of terrorism, they are apt.

11. In case it is not obvious, the suggestion is that they are unjust or unfair because the civilians targeted are held to innocent: it is not just or fair to target people who have nothing to do with one's grievances. For purposes of this discussion, this essay assumes that




the civilians targeted by terrorists are indeed innocent, though, as noted before, some will deny this, most notoriously, Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado.

12. See John Lemos, "The Unity of the Virtues and Its Defenses," Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 31, no. 1 (1994), p. 86.

13. Gary Watson, "Virtues in Excess," Philosophical Studies, vol. 46, no. 1 (1984), p. 58.

14. John McDowell, "Virtue and Reason," The Monist, vol. 62, no. 3 (1979), pp. 332-333.

15. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1956), p. 62.

16. An emphasis on this point is most closely associated with Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints," Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79, no. 8 (1982), pp. 419-439. This opens the door to saying, plausibly, that mountain climbers, some X-Games competitors, and others who engage in such risks are courageous in the pursuit of an exquisite thrill. Similarly, it allows us to describe a comedian as courageous who risks offending for the sake of humor.

17. See Watson, "Virtues in Excess," pp. 59-60; and Lemos, "The Unity of Virtues," pp. 90-92.

18. Watson, "Virtues in Excess," pp. 60-62, argues that while such context-specific sensitivity might be logically possible, there is, he thinks, reason to think that it is not psychologically/epistemologically possible, because what you need to understand to be sensitive in the specified context is exactly what you need to be sensitive to outside that limited context. Watson (p. 6 1 ) insists that while moral understanding may be fragmentary in certain respects, "[m]oral understanding is not fragmentary and isolated in this manner." Recent authors, e.g., John Doris, Lack of Character (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), have emphasized that our moral psychology is much more fragmented that previously appreciated. A careful examination of this recent work would be necessary to evaluate Watson's claim.

19. Watson, "Virtues in Excess," p. 60.

20. This essay does not address a different option, which is to argue that terrorists are intellectual/political cowards, insofar as they are unwilling to pursue their aims through (normal) politics - insofar as they are unwilling, for the most part, to defend their views in a public forum and promote their aims via persuasion. This might be done, as Ted Hinchman suggested (in conversation), by linking courage to honor (as Aristotle in some way suggests), and honor to dealing with conflict through politics. This is a fruitful line of thought, but one requiring more elaboration and evaluation than is possible here.

21. David Pears, "Aristotle's Analysis of Courage," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 13 (1988), p. 274.

22. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1 1 16al5-l 1 17a28.

23. This may be jumbling things together here, since the link between the insurgents in Iraq and AI Qaeda is still unclear, though there is now general agreement that at least some, in particular those who follow Al-Zarqawi, have formed a link with AI Qaeda. But what justifies bringing up the insurgency in Iraq is not so much this supposed link, but the fact that the Bush Administration freely describes the insurgents in Iraq as terrorists and as cowards.




24. Even if, as is almost surely the case, the war in Iraq is misguided, insofar as the Bush Administration has sold the war in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism, the rhetoric can be seen as having the function of inspiring the troops in Iraq. Of course the Bush Administration has changed its tune of late, de-emphasizing the original grounds given for the war (Saddam Hussein's link to international terrorism, and the presence of weapons of mass destruction) in favor of the promotion of democratic freedom. Nonetheless, the point at least applies to Bush's rhetoric early in the war in Iraq.

25. This kind of reassurance is thought to be crucial in the post- Vietnam era, since that war left people with a deep worry about un-winnable wars, and concerns about the commitment both of the public and the fighting troops waning if there is a sense that the war is un-winnable.



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Are Terrorists Cowards?