ABSTRACT
In war, terrorism is a way of avoiding engagement with the enemy army. It represents an extreme form of the strategy of the “indirect approach.”1 It is so indirect that many soldiers have refused to call it war at all. This is a matter as much of professional pride as of moral judgment. Consider the Statement of a British admiral in World War II, protesting the terror bombing of German cities: “We are a hopelessly unmilitary nation to imagine that we [can] win the war by bombing German women and children instead of defeating their army and navy.”2 The key word here is unmilitary. The admiral rightly sees terrorism as a civilian strategy. One might say that it represents the continuation of war by political means. Terrorizing ordinary men and women is first of all the work of domestic tyranny, as Aristotle wrote: “The first aim and end [of tyrants] is to break the spirit of their subjects.”3 The British described the “aim and end” of terror bombing in the same way: what they sought was the destruction of civilian morale.
