Can Terrorism Ever Be Justified? If So How? If Not, Why Not?

Martin Allan
IPM0630
Can Terrorism Ever Be Justified? If So How? If Not, Why Not?
Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends. This definition was proposed by terrorist analysists in 1979, but has never been surpassed for clarity and concision. Schmidt and Youngman in their book Political Terrorism for example, cited 109 different definitions of terrorism, which they obtained in a survey of leading academics in the field. Thus, for the purpose of this paper I shall make no attempt at defining this ambiguous…