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

by Tamar Meisels

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.

239 pages, ebook

First published September 18, 2008

Reviews

[Andrew Shapter · Rating 2 out of 5]

A heavily academic thesis pondering and arguing a very unpleasant and real, raw issue. Of course it was never going to solve anything but it is something to start a conversation and make people think. Maybe that could make the change or at least a step in the right direction. In theory.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a philosophical look at the problems that Terror poses for liberal societies. The book is a synthesis mostly of what other writers had written (it is loaded with block quotes from other works. Meisels begins with defining terrorist. Then proceeds to discuss the moral problems that terrorism poses because it free-rides on moral conventions of war, more so that guerrilla war. Then she discusses the appropriate responses to terror, specifically issues around indefinite detention, interrogation and torture.

The book in general is colored by the Israeli experience of terror in Second Intifada. In a sense it is counter to Ted Honderich's After Terror, who defends Palestinian terrorist tactics as legitimate warfare.