Publication date:

10 December 2002

Length of book:

112 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Dimensions:

238x160mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780742514676

What are the limits of justified retaliation against aggression? What actions are morally permissible in preventing future aggression? Against whom may retaliation be aimed? These questions have long been part of the debate over the ethics of warfare. They all took on new meaning after terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners on September 11, 2001.

War after September 11 considers the just aims and legitimate limits of the United States' response to the terrorist attacks. Six essayists from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland pair off to discuss ethical questions such as, What are the moral challenges posed by terrorism? Can modern terrorism be addressed within the existing paradigms of just war and international law? Should the U.S. respond militarily or by some other means? Taken together, the essays in this volume ask the fundamental question: How should the United States use its power to combat terrorism?
The essays in War After September 11 make clear that anyone who is smugly confident about the rightness of U.S. responses to terrorism simply hasn't understood the difficulty of the issues involved. Those who boast about moral clarity have not looked at these complex moral issues with the care of the authors here.