The Terror War and the Ethics of Targeted Killing

Monday, September 26, 2011
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(Pacific)
CISAC Conference Room
Speaker: 
  • Stephen L. Carter

RSVP required. Please do not forward event information. Seating is limited.

In response to the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration adopted a policy of targeting the leadership of terror groups believed to be threatening America. The Obama Administration has vastly increased the use of this tactic, described by President Obama as “eliminating our enemies.”  Critics of the practice contend that it violates the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law.  Supporters describe it as a variety of legal preemptive attack.  As a just war theorist, Professor Carter is interested in the morality rather than the legality of targeted killing.

In this seminar, he will discuss the ethical questions raised by attacks on the enemy leadership, whether the enemy is a state or a non-state actor.  He will contend that the word “assassination” is almost always the correct one when such a policy is implemented.  Although his hope is to shed light on the ethics of the Terror War, examples will be drawn mostly from other conflicts in history, including World War II, the Civil War, and others more remote in time.  Carter will argue that the Western tradition of just and unjust war is not entirely adequate for analyzing the morality of assassination, and that a degree of updating is therefore needed.