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International Relations http://ire.sagepub.com On Fighting Terrorism JustlyMichael Walzer International Relations 2007; 21; 480 DOI: 10.1177/0047117807083073 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ire.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/4/480
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480
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 21(4)
On Fighting Terrorism Justly
Michael Walzer
Abstract
This article is about the war on terror as an actual war and as police work – and then as something in between these two. The in-between space, where special forces operate, is critically important. We don’t have clear standards that apply to it, and we need to begin to think about what those standards might look like. Keywords: assassination, Elshtain, jus in bello, just war, peace, war on terror
In 2002 Jean Bethke Elshtain wrote a book (published in early 2003) that was exactly right for its moment, the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the Afghan war, and that continues today to provide intellectual and political guidance of a critically important kind. The academic and religious arguments that she criticized then – the apologies for terrorism and the refusals to accept the use of force against terrorists and their allies – still need to be addressed and criticized, and the terms of her critique are still the right ones. But standard just war theory, which Elshtain expounded and defended, and which fit the Afghan case very neatly, does not always fit the larger ‘war against terror’ as it has developed since 2002. This