Ari Kohen has a thoughtful piece up regarding the Boston Bomber that addresses a common notion: that people who commit acts of terror are, by-in-large, “cowards.”  

Ari takes note of a blurb from Bill Maher, who rejected the notion that the people who flew planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11 could possibly be defined as cowards.  Given that all rational human beings have a fear of death, carrying out a plot that is sure to cause one’s death would undoubtedly require a steel resolve that is uncommon amongst the broader throngs of humanity.  To borrow Ari’s paraphrasing of Maher, “Terrorists who flew planes into buildings might be called a great many things but “cowards” shouldn’t be one of them.”

Ari then notes the following question from one of his students:

I’m interested in the fact that terrorists and criminals are consistently referred to as “cowards.” Obviously, the actions of such people are the opposite of heroic, but does this mean these people are not courageous?

Ari responds:

The crucial difference between the 9/11 terrorists and the Tsarnaevs is that there wasn’t anything at all courageous to point to in Boston in the way that Maher could point to the courage of the 9/11 terrorists who gave up their own lives in the pursuit of their murderous ideology.

In Boston, the bombers indiscriminately attacked people who were helpless and unaware, and they did so in a way that, at least in the moment, presented no risk to themselves. They set down explosive devices on a sidewalk full of innocent people and they walked away from them.

There’s no doubt that this is cowardice.

That said, I think it’s fairly straightforward to make the argument that terrorism is always cowardly, even if particular terrorists take actions that might appear courageous under different circumstances. The circumstances matter a whole lot.

I think unpacking this subject actually takes some serious thought, because there are a number of ways to approach this question.  

First, I think we need to define what courage actually is.  In my mind, courage requires a person to proceed with an action in the face of a recognizable risk.  I would place particular emphasis on the recognizable portion of that definition, since a failure to apprehend risk necessarily means it does not get factored into your decision-making process.  If I don’t think that I’m putting myself in danger, then I have no incentive not to proceed.  Proceeding despite knowledge of the risk to one’s self seems to be the gravamen of what “courage” actually means.  This definition will have to be augmented for reasons that will become apparent later, but we’ll stick with this for now.

When we apply this definition to a discussion about acts of Terrorism, we necessarily have to talk about what might be called the “fear of death” factor.  The 9/11 Hijackers seem to have been unafraid of death.  Most ordinary people would not have the courage to see such a plot through.  But if a person qualitatively does not possess a fear of death, then is it really courageous for them to act in a manner that is consistent with that lack of fear?  Is it really courageous to die when you have no fear of death?  

Regardless of the answer to that question, our analysis would certainly be different when we talk about the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.  I’d like to reprint a part of Ari’s response here:

In Boston, the bombers indiscriminately attacked people who were helpless and unaware, and they did so in a way that, at least in the moment, presented no risk to themselves. They set down explosive devices on a sidewalk full of innocent people and they walked away from them.

True enough.  But I’m not sure this gets us to the finish line, so to speak.  The Tsarnaevs were undoubtedly committing a malum in se act.  Their minds may have been polluted with dark influences, but it seems preposterous to think that they had zero apprehension about getting caught.  In most U.S. jurisdictions, murdering even a single person will probably get you life in prison, and possibly the death penalty.  Did the Tsarnaevs act in spite of their knowledge of these heavy sanctions, or did they simply have no qualitative fear of them at all?  It’s difficult to say without knowing the mind of the Tsarnaevs themselves, which we may come to know as time progresses.

But Ari’s response also raises other interesting issues.  For example, why wouldn’t Ari’s analysis also apply to an American drone pilot?  They too attack people “who [are] helpless and unaware, and they [do] so in a way that, at least in the moment, present[s] no risk to themselves.”  Thomas Knapp recently asked a related question regarding the classification of the Tsarnaevs’ pressure-cooker bombs as WMD’s.  Knapp’s article is a bit overwrought at places, but the following juxtaposition is on point:

When a US drone fires a Hellfire II missile with an 8-pound fragmentation/anti-personnel warhead into a wedding party in Pakistan, that’s just cricket. When Dzhokhar Tsarnaev allegedly sets off two pressure cookers filled with black powder and ball bearings at the Boston Marathon, that’s “using a weapon of mass destruction.”

If the Tsarnaevs had fired two Hellfire II missiles into the crowds gathered at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the loss of life would’ve been equally, if not more horrendous.  And the same moral calculus would undoubtedly apply: they’d be attacking innocent people with little or no immediate risk to themselves.  So what changes when we’re talking about drone pilots?

A couple obvious distinctions jump to mind: (1) the drone pilot is acting under orders, and has no independent desire to harm innocent people, (2) the drone pilot, even when he does kill innocent people, does not necessarily intend to kill innocent people, and would certainly like to minimize “collateral damage” when possible. 

And yet neither of these distinctions actually address the meat of the question: is the drone pilot acting in spite of a perceived risk to themselves?  Clearly not.  And the drone pilot’s intentions are probably cold comfort to the innocent lives that are actually lost.  The criminal law of every state makes negligent homicide a crime for a reason—there is a general consensus that one’s failure to take reasonable precautions to protect the lives of others from our own reckless behavior is a criminal act.

And yet there is still one way in which we might call the drone pilot courageous.  What if he is a conscientious drone pilot?  In other words, what if the drone pilot actually does  fear killing innocents every time he fires a drone missile?  Would that make the drone pilot courageous?  What of his intrinsic moral struggles, his tortured internal monologues, his trepidation over “pressing the button”—what would it tell us if the drone pilot proceeds in spite of his fear?  

This is where our expanded definition of courage comes into play: whatever moral compunctions or judgments we may make about the conscientious drone pilot for proceeding despite the risk that he’s killing innocent people, I think there’s still a sense in which he’s being “courageous.”  When you have a genuine fear that incentivizes you away from performing an action, but you act in spite of it, I think you’ve demonstrated courage, flatly defined.  

This conclusion may make some people uneasy, because nobody wants to imagine that somebody who intentionally places innocent lives at risk is acting courageously.  But I think what the “conscientious drone pilot” example tells us is that courage, by itself, tells us absolutely nothing about the moral content of a person’s actions.  A Nazi soldier who charged an American machine gun nest in WW2 was, without question, demonstrating extraordinary courage.  But the cause he is fighting for is a wretched one.  His courage is a means to a repugnant end.  And we could say the same about the conscientious drone pilot: his willingness to proceed with a drone strike in spite of his own trepidation about killing innocent people is courageous in a sense, but it tells us nothing about the moral content of his actions.  He’s still exposing innocent people to the loss of life, even when he acts hesitantly.  That’s still a repugnant moral act.

Could we say the same about the Tsarnaevs as well?  As I mentioned above, it’s difficult to know without knowing what was going through their minds at the time of the bombing.  If they really didn’t care about the risks of getting caught, then I don’t think anyone can argue they were acting with courage.  If they acted in spite of apprehending that risk, however, then I think there’s a case to be made that they acted with courage.  This tells us nothing about the moral content of their actions, because a courageous person can act courageously in pursuit of morally repugnant goals.  But I do think it’s possible for us to say they acted “courageously” if they acted in spite of their fear of official retribution.  If they had no such fear, then I think it’s fair to say there was no courage in what they did, anymore so than the courage of men who fly planes into a building, but have no fear of death to stay their hand.