ABSTRACT
Terrorism has a long history–possibly as long as the history of political violence more generally. In the last decades of the twentieth century, terrorism was becoming ever more international; by the early twenty-first century, it had become truly global. Terrorism and the "war" against it are among the central and most pressing issues of public concern worldwide. Even if the innocence of the direct victims of terrorism is not enough to give short shrift to any attempt at its moral justification, it certainly presents a major obstacle to any such attempt. Whatever else it does, the experience of a terrorist act or campaign, and even a report on it, leaves the vast majority of people with a sense of moral atrocity. The special evil of terrorism cannot be identified as, or reduced to, the fact that it kills or maims innocent people.
