Very interesting points, but isn't there more than one issue at stake here? Responsibility for committing acts of violence is surely more complex than you imply. What about the situation where a woman who has been consistently terrorised by her partner for many years, one day murders him? Even if the murder is premeditated, can we say simply 'SHE is responsible' and then think we have fully summarised the situation? That's not to say that the perpetrator *isn't* responsible though. But it is to say that this statement *alone* does not suffice. This applies to all sorts of situations, not just the present one in London. On the other side of the political spectrum, we cannot understand fully what is going on in Israel/Palestine without looking at the broader historical contexts. These include the reasons the State of Israel was founded - ie the Nazi Holocaust and also the British involvement in Palestine. They also include the current oppression of the Palestinian people. None of this *justifies* suicide bombing or Israeli state terror. But it does make the moral situation more complex.
The London bombers *are* responsible for the slaughter; but would anyone argue that this happened in a moral or political vacuum?
Does any of this matter? Well, if we want to end such acts it might do.
Thanks for making me think,
B
# posted by  b.r.o.k.e. @ 12:43

 

broke: That's all fine, if you think that murdering innocent people, on purpose, is ever an acceptable response to a political problem.

And this is where someone traditionally reprises the Bush-n-Blair, moral equivalance of terrorism to the Iraq war, cluster-bombing of innocent people, depleted Uranium, argument...
# posted by  Andrew @ 14:52

 

broke:
1. Your battered woman doesn't work, though. Yes, she is responsible for killing her husband. But she has mitigation. Unless, say, the London bombers can show mitigation against 70+ dead Londoners and 700-ish wounded, that defence falls apart.

2. On your other stuff, I think we have to get away from muddying the waters like this. I can believe:
(i) Poverty tends to breed crime
(ii) Poverty is no excuse for stealing my car
...at the same time. Yes, environmental factors are important in a broad analytical sense (though I'd certainly dispute the relevance of Israel in this case), but not when it comes to assigning responsibility. For me, individual moral agency is pretty simple.
# posted by  Jarndyce @ 15:17

 

There has always been a sort of double standards in these matters.

For example;

1. IRA sets off a terrorist bomb; British Government denys IRA charge that British policy is responsible, says it is the fault of the terrorists.

2. Britain drops bombs on Serbia / Afghanistan / Iraq; Britsh Governement denys responsibility, says it is the fault of Milosevic / Taliban / Saddam.

Personally, I think the responsibility lies wholly with whoever plants or drops the bombs; you can cite all manner of excuses and reasons if you like, you may justify it to yourself and others, there may be mitigating factors, but in the end the responsibility lies with the bombers.
# posted by  Quinn @ 15:25

 

And this is where someone traditionally reprises the Bush-n-Blair, moral equivalance of terrorism to the Iraq war, cluster-bombing of innocent people, depleted Uranium, argument...

Andrew, can you expand, please. I'm not trying to be provocative - I'm genuinely confused and trying to come to my own conclusion on this.
# posted by  Justin @ 16:38

 

Justin: I've just seen a lot of commentary over the last few days about how we brought this on ourselves by our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and further back, in the US's support for Israel. It seems to me to be both trivially true in a sense, but ultimately, totally unhelpful, given that we aren't going to change our policies on the whim of a bunch of fanatics and murderers. Even if those fanatics and murderers had coherent, sensible demands and grievances, which they seem not to have.

I guess it boils down to what you believe the answer is to this question: Why did they do this? And the answer, for me at least, is 'because they could.' Frustration with modern, Western society manifests in plenty of ways, and this one is just at the extreme end of that distribution.

Note that this isn't a justification for the Iraq war, or a denial that we've done some really bad things in our time, but nothing is equivalent to, and nothing can excuse the placing of bombs deliberately onto crowded trains, and calmly walking away.
# posted by  Andrew @ 16:57

 

Great post, J, nails it.

Quinn: of course there's a double standards - States have rights that private individuals or their associations do not. The principle is central to the Peace of Westphalia, and is embodied in the original Geneva Convention.

That's not to whitewash the acts of States at all - think of Hitler's Germany alone - but only to say that functionally the world's been a lot better off since we said only States could even have the option to act in this way.
# posted by  Blimpish @ 19:34

 

Fair point, Blimpish, although I was referring to double standards regarding where responsibility lies for certain actions, rather than the different rights afforded individuals and states.
# posted by  Quinn @ 21:00

 

I take your point, but I think the rights are prior - if individuals have no right to act in this way, justifications are of no importance.

More broadly though, Governments these days just haven't got the balls to admit to their own policy aims. Pathetic really.
# posted by  Blimpish @ 00:08

 

Andrew: Thanks for that. I have to say that I tend towards that point of view myself although I still have a lot of reading to do. I have been disconcerted at my inability to come to a quick and workable conclusion on this. A minor sorrow right now, I'll concede.
# posted by  Justin @ 09:36

 

I would like to say that the argument that somewhere these Muslim boys/men had any justification for their actions is just daft. Contingent arguments that try to give mitigation to personal actions are all around us and they are worth considering but a the end of the day these guys went out to kill people; they didn't have to they could have joined a political party, marched, lobbied etc but they chose instead to beatify their ego's and die for their dogma causing injury to hundreds and the death of over 50 people. They could have NOT done this. The responsibity lies with them and them alone.

We must all try to keep a sense of perspective here; it's too easy to join that curious co-dependent mindset that wants to 'blame/justify' everything onto someone else.
# posted by  Jamie Taylor - Soho, London @ 12:42

 

Top post. I agree that the bombers are absolutely responsible for their own actions. I condemn them in the strongest possible terms.

To my mind, the issue of whether Blair and Bush bear any responsibility is a seperate matter though. To stretch the analogy a little further than might be sensible, the Cambodian moped doesn't address the issue of whether visiting Cambodia is itself morally dubious. If going to Cambodia is morally questionable, if you are warned that by going to Cambodia many lives might be endangered, if this risk turns out to be greater than the positive benefits of a visit, and you still go, do you then bear any responsibility if these fears come to fruition?

I don't know if Iraq was on the minds of the bombers, and I doubt we'll ever know for sure. What they did was abhorent, whatever their motives. This doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a link between Iraq and the bombing though.
This might be a bit muddled but I hope my point comes across. I'm writing a post which will hopefully express this more clearly.
# posted by  CuriousHamster @ 17:24

 

Hang on, no, this is wrong. To say that the government bears responsiblity for the bombings by virtue of a causal path from their political actions to the bombings is does not detract from the moral responsibility of the bombers themselves.

Firstly, and most generally, we live in a causal universe, and this causal universe includes the causation of human actions. If it does not, then human actions are themselves supernatural, and are not even theoretically amenable to understanding. This being the case, it is difficult to assign moral responsibility to the bombers, and impossible to assign moral responsibility to the planners of the bombings. They simply could not be part of the causal pathway (or dialogic) that resulted in the bombings - which are reduced to the describable but incomprehensible behaviour of the bombers alone.

Secondly, and more specifically, we accept that government action and policy can play a role in determining crime rates, or the level of education in a nation, or the rate of heart disease. When we accept this, we do not hold the government responsible for the individual crime, or the fact that Billy failed his GCSEs, or the Mr Smith died of a heart attack at 37. But the government does bear some responsibility for the overall level of crime (else neither social programmes nor law and order legislation can effect the crime rate). The government does bear some responsibility for the level of educational acheivement. Billy might have been lazy, but why, in this existing education system, are there so many lazy Billys? And Mr Smith's diet may be largely responsible for his heart attack, but why does the population in Mr Smith's hypothetical country eat so much fatty food, and are government policies (whether on food standards legislation, taxation, working environments, etc.) implicated in this causal web.

Any government that claims to be fighting a war on terror implicitly accepts that its policies can play a role in determining the level of terrorism. Thus, their policies can raise the level of terrorism. And this is the simple argument that holds the government responsible for the London bombings. It does not detract from the immediate cause - the bombers themselves - nor does it necessarily place moral responsibility in the hands of the government.
# posted by  Andrew Bartlett @ 16:50

 

And, furthermore, we must not confuse cause, as in the producer of an effect, with cause, as in a goal towards which progress is strived for.

I might, say, work for the cause of poverty relief. But the cause of my zeal may not be limited to my observations of poverty. The causes will, necessarily, include psychological factors, cultural factors, sociological factors, and so on.

Many of the brandings of the 'causalists' as 'terrorist appeasers' and what not are based on a confusion, or elision, of these two meanings of 'cause'.
# posted by  Andrew Bartlett @ 16:55

 

Andrew: your logic's a bit awry there, or rather it's bang on but shoots your own argument down. First you say, in an analogy with "terrorism policy", we accept that government action and policy can play a role in determining crime rates... we do not hold the government responsible for the individual crime. Then you do exactly that with regard to the London bombings. Yes, government can play a role in affecting the environmental propensity to terrorism. But it's nonsense to assign Blair responsibility for the London bombings, for the reasons you've just outlined. The most we can say is that government policy is an environmental factor - by your argument Bambery (Galloway, too) were wrong. I agree.

Iraq probably does play a role in recruitment, but the ideology of Islamic-based terrorism has nothing at all to do with the specifics, and predates it anyway by a number of years.
# posted by  Jarndyce @ 08:52

 

This momentousdecree wow gold came as a great beacon gold in wow light of hope buy wow gold to millions of negroslaves wow gold kaufen who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.maplestory mesos it came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night ofcaptivity.but one hundred years later,maplestory money we must face the tragic fact thatthe negro is still not free.maple money one hundred years later,sell wow gold the lifeof the negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles ofsegregation and the chains of discrimination. one hundred yearslater,maple story money the negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in themidst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.wow powerleveling one hundred yearslater,maple story power leveling the negro is still languishing in the corners of americansociety and finds himself an exile in his own land. so we havecome here today to dramatize wow powerleveln an appalling condition.in a ms mesos sense we have come to our nation''s capital to cash a check.when the architects of our republic wow powerleveln wrote the magnificent wordsof the constitution and the declaration of independence, theywere signing a promissory note maplestory power leveling to which every american was tofall heir.
# posted by  dhd @ 01:21