Article in sais review · January 005 doi: 10. 1353/sais. 2005. 0011 citations 49 reads 3,483 authors

SAIS Review W
INTER
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2005
Under certain conditions, it is morally justified to perform an act of
targeted prevention of terror that involves killing terrorists even if collat-
eral damage is expected.
26
We reject the view that such acts are always un-
justified because they inflict collateral damage. In order to firmly grasp the
grave problem under consideration, consider circumstances under which
you have to press one of two buttons that are in front of you and solely
shoulder responsibility for the results of your decision to press one of them
rather than the other. If
you press button 1, the
state does nothing
against an ongoing act of
terror, and, as a result, a
bomb explodes in a mall
and citizens of the state
are killed. If you press
button 2, the state per-
forms a military act of
targeted prevention of
terror, which kills the terrorist in addition to bystanders who are not in-
volved in terror, but no citizen of the state is injured since the act of terror
has been aborted. Which button should you press? Indeed, such circum-
stances are of a tragic nature. Each course of action involves death of people
who have jeopardized the life of nobody. Each course of action involves a
painful toll to be lamented. Each course of action ought to leave us with
strong guilt feelings, even if it is the right course of action. According to
norm B.2(d), of priorities on grounds of state duties, if you represent the
state, you ought to press button 2 for several moral reasons.
One reason rests on the so-called “common-sense view,” according to
which our obligations to help others differs based on the relationships in
which we stand to them, such as being their parents, relatives, friends, mili-
tary subordinates, fellow citizens, and so on.
27
Another reason rests on the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) in one
of its appropriate variants.
28
For such an act to be justified by DDE, the
following conditions should obtain:
(1) The act is intended as an act of self-defense;
(2) The collateral damage is not intended;
(3) Efforts are made to minimize collateral damage;
(4) The collateral damage is not a means to the end of the act;
(5) The collateral damage is proportionate to the importance of the mission.
Clearly, conditions (1) and (3) obtain when part (d) of the proposed Prin-
ciple of Distinction (B.2) is applied. Conditions (2) and (4) obtain when
the principle of Military Necessity (B.1) is applied. The Purpose Condition
of the Principle of Military Necessity (B.1(1)) rests on the Principle of Self-
Defense Duty (A.1), which in turn requires respect for the human dignity
of every person (A.1(3)).
Condition (5) of DDE is actually a requirement that a jus in bello prin-
ciple of proportionality be applied. If condition (5) is interpreted in terms
Under certain conditions, it is
morally justified to perform an act of
targeted prevention of terror that
involves killing terrorists even if
collateral damage is expected.

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of our conception of priorities, then an act of targeted prevention of ter-
ror that involves killing the terrorist and is expected to cause collateral dam-
age is, under certain circumstances, justified on grounds of DDE.
29
Under such circumstances, a state may give preference to the duty to
protect the life of its citizens over the duty to respect the life of persons in
the vicinity of a terrorist. To be sure, the state does have the moral duty to
respect the human dignity of those bystanders; however, the state has the
moral duty to respect the human dignity of its citizens as well as the addi-
tional moral duty to protect their civil rights, including their right to have
an effective state defense of their life. The resulting balance is morally com-
pelling. It does not involve any extent of disrespect for the human dignity
of anybody.
A common objection to targeted prevention of terror takes seriously
the quantitative connotation of the notion of “proportionality.” Accord-
ing to the proposed norm of priorities on grounds of duties (B.2(d)), the
state has to give preference to saving the life of a single citizen even if the
collateral damage caused in the course of protecting him or her is much
higher in number. This result seems unacceptable to some people. Our re-
joinder rests on the distinction between a moral evaluation of a single act
and a moral evaluation of an activity. It is well known that terrorists are
usually not reluctant to operate in the vicinity of persons not involved in
terror. This is their mode of operation, not accidentally, but deliberately
and regularly. We are familiar with the terrible phenomenon of terrorists
using their children and neighbors as human shields. If such behavior
grants a terrorist, who is known on grounds of appropriate intelligence to
play a crucial role in activity of terror, an immunity from military attack,
it would mean that he or she has thus mastered a mode of operation that
enables terrorists to kill as many citizens of the state as they wish. Hence,
when only a single act of targeted prevention of terror by killing the ter-
rorist is considered, the possibility exists that the number of casualties of
the collateral damage is much higher than the number of saved citizens who
are jeopardized by that single act of terror. However, consideration of a
single act rather than the whole mode of activity is morally wrong. It is not
the benefit gained by preventing a single act of terror that should be con-
sidered but the cumulative benefits gained by preventing a series of acts of
terror to be committed if the terrorist enjoys immunity from military at-
tack. Consideration of accumulative benefits will obviate the difficulty
raised by the apparent disproportionality.