The reason why we have terrorism is because we don’t have a moral consensus that labels killing people as bad.
The US does a lot to convince Arabs that killing people is just when there’s a good motive.
Switching to a value based foreign policy where the west doesn’t violate it’s moral norms in the mind of the Arabs could help us to get a moral consensus against terrorism but unfortunately that doesn’t seem politically viable at the moment.
I’d find this pleasant to believe, and I’ve been a longstanding critic of US foreign policy, but:
Terrorism isn’t a big problem, it should be a long way down the list of problems the US needs to think about. It’s interesting to speculate on what would make a difference to it, but it would be crazy to make it more than a very small influence on foreign policy.
Terrorists are already a long way from the moral consensus, which is one reason they’re so rare.
It seems incredibly implausible to me that they’re taking their moral lead from the US in any case.
And of course while killing people is bad all other things being equal, almost everyone already believes that; what they believe is that it’s defensible in the pursuit of some other good (such as saving lives elsewhere) which I also believe.
Terrorists usually aren’t a long way from the moral consensus of their community.
If you take polls asking people what they think of the US the answers radically changed in the last ten years in the middle east.
In Iran the Western ideals of democracy work enough to destabilize the government a bit. Our values actually work.
They are something that people can believe in and draw meaning from.
The reason why we have terrorism is because we don’t have a moral consensus that labels killing people as bad. The US does a lot to convince Arabs that killing people is just when there’s a good motive.
Switching to a value based foreign policy where the west doesn’t violate it’s moral norms in the mind of the Arabs could help us to get a moral consensus against terrorism but unfortunately that doesn’t seem politically viable at the moment.
I’d find this pleasant to believe, and I’ve been a longstanding critic of US foreign policy, but:
Terrorism isn’t a big problem, it should be a long way down the list of problems the US needs to think about. It’s interesting to speculate on what would make a difference to it, but it would be crazy to make it more than a very small influence on foreign policy.
Terrorists are already a long way from the moral consensus, which is one reason they’re so rare.
It seems incredibly implausible to me that they’re taking their moral lead from the US in any case.
And of course while killing people is bad all other things being equal, almost everyone already believes that; what they believe is that it’s defensible in the pursuit of some other good (such as saving lives elsewhere) which I also believe.
Terrorists usually aren’t a long way from the moral consensus of their community. If you take polls asking people what they think of the US the answers radically changed in the last ten years in the middle east.
In Iran the Western ideals of democracy work enough to destabilize the government a bit. Our values actually work. They are something that people can believe in and draw meaning from.