Can Terrorism Be Morally Justified

1365 Words6 Pages
What is terrorism? The definition of terrorism is the “use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce” (www.dictionary.com). There are other definitions of the word terrorism, but I think this is the best definition. This is not what people think of when they hear the word terrorism, they think of things much worse; but for this essay I will be using this definition of terrorism, because I believe terrorism is dealing specifically with terrorizing people. Most people have become more aware of terrorism, since September 11th 2001, on this date members of the al-Qaeda terrorist group managed to hijack American Airlines Flight 11 and drive it into the World Trade Center, located in New York City. The attack caused 2,819 people to die; some were working in the towers, some were just very unlucky and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and also some of the emergency personnel died that day trying to rescue others (www.nymag.com). There were a few other attacks that day, each one killing more innocent people. These horrible acts of terrorism caused the United States to go into panic mode. Americans evacuated buildings, shut down airports, and rushed to see their loved ones because they were terrified of what might happen next . After that tragic day, terrorism has become more of an alarming topic than ever before. So many questions arose after the attack on the United States. Why would someone want to commit such a horrible act? Why would a person kill themselves only to kill others? What were their reasons for targeting only the United States? Can their actions be morally justified? Because many of the terrorists killed themselves while committing the terroristic act; and others were killed or died later on, we will never be able to answer all of our questions. However, we can decide if there is a way to morally justify terroristic actions.The two

More about Can Terrorism Be Morally Justified

Open Document