The Trouble with Terror: Liberty, Security and the Response to Terrorism

by Tamar Meisels

• ISBN13: 9780521899482
• ISBN10: 0521899486
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

What is terrorism and can it ever be defended? Beginning with its definition, proceeding to its possible justifications, and culminating in proposals for contending with and combating it, this book offers a full theoretical analysis of the issue of terrorism. Tamar Meisels argues that, regardless of its professed cause, terrorism is diametrically opposed to the requirements of liberal morality and can only be defended at the expense of relinquishing the most basic of liberal commitments. Meisels opposes those who express sympathy and justification for Islamist (particularly Palestinian) terrorism and terrorism allegedly carried out on behalf of developing nations, but, at the same time, also opposes those who would tolerate any reduction in civil liberties in exchange for greater security. Calling wholeheartedly for a unanimous liberal front against terrorism, this is a strong and provocative attempt to address the tension between liberty and security in a time of terror.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Defining and Defending Terrorism	p. 5
Defining terrorism - a typology	p. 7
The apologetics of terrorism: a refutation	p. 30
Freedom, Security, and Rights in a Terrorist Age: Liberal-Democratic Dilemmas	p. 55
How terrorism upsets liberty	p. 57
Combatants - lawful and unlawful	p. 90
Fighting Terrorism	p. 127
Targeting terror	p. 129
Torturing terrorists	p. 165
Torture and the problem of dirty hands	p. 196
Bibliography	p. 228
Index	p. 234
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