Terrorism can be justified

Thanks for the debate social.social's argument rests on several argumentative moves: (1) limit the discussion to cases that involve a "just war," (2) blur the JWT's combatant/non-combatant distinction by redefining civilians as combatants, and (3) use (2) to represent all government actions as the unfiltered "will of the people embodied." I will present three challenges to these points: (1) terrorism is not a "just" means to pursue a war, (2) the JWT's combatant/non-combatant distinction strictly distinguishes between the status of civilians and combatants during war, and (3) civilians should not be held accountable for the actions of elected officials.Just War TheoryAs social points out, in Just War Theory there is a distinction between jus ad bellus - whether the war is justified - and jus in bellum - whether the means used to carry it out are justified. Thus, not every means is justified in the pursuit of a just end. I maintain that terrorism is never justified because it is an inherently unjust means, even if it is directed toward a just goal. The reason terrorism cannot be justified is because it intentionally kills non-combatants. For example, it is sometimes permissible to do things in war that kill non-combatants as a side-effect, but it is not permissible to kill non-combatants as the intended effect in and of itself.The reason for this is straight-forward - non-combatants do not pose a threat. The purpose of terrorism is thus to create fear and terror in a nation by intentionally killing people who do not pose a threat. According to Just War Theory (social's chosen framework), this is an impermissible means to carry out a war, even if the war is justified. In effect, terrorism undermines the order necessary for a civil society by creating panic in the lives of non-combatants.There is yet another problem with using terrorism as a means to carry out a war. It rests on a slippery slope that can quickly lead a government to turn on its own citizens. If the intentional targeting of non-combatants can be justified, who is to say a government cannot target its own citizens to achieve some political goal during war? This would be unacceptable, yet the logic that permits terrorism is the same logic that would permit the government to target its own non-threatening citizens.Re: "Contention. Civilians are indirectly responsible for the acts of their country's military."(A) Taxes and financial support.social argues that citizens who pay taxes are "morally responsible" for wars. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the reason combatants lose their right to life in the first place: because they directly threaten the lives of others. The point is, non-combatants are by definition non-threatning, so they retain their right to life. The paying of taxes does not directly pose a threat to anyone, so even if an argument could be made that citizens are morally responsible for wars waged in their name, it still does not justify the killing of people who retain their right to life because they are non-threatning.There is another counter-argument to social's contention. This argument says, because acts of war are not permitted unless they are necessary, the intentional targeting of non-combatants is never permissible because it is never necessary. I highlight the word intentional because it is the key to this entire argument: it may sometimes be necessary to kill non-combatants as a side-effect to another military operation, but intentionally killing non-combatants in and of itself to achieve a goal is never necessary.(B) Democracy and Civic Representationsocial argues that the government is "posited as the will of the people embodied," so therefore, citizenry "cannot be defended as morally innocent" in the matter of going to war. The arguments from above - that non-combatants do not pose a direct threat and that intentionally killing non-combatants is never necessary - both apply here as well. But there is another argument to be made here as well. The government does not always express the will of the people (and in the case of war, it almost never express the will of all people), so civilians should not be held accountable for the actions of elected officials.As social mentioned, we are talking about a liberal (representative) democracy. This means that if someone gets a majority of the vote, even if it is 40% of the vote (less than half the people in the nation), the official gets elected. This suggests that the government does not necessarily represent the will of the people, as it is possible for the government to represent only 40% or 30% of the people because of the system we use to elect officials. This is inevitable in any democratic nation, as a majority of the vote does not guarantee a true majority when it comes to what the people want regarding war. If a government goes to war, but it only represents a minority view, then there is no reason to hold the citizenry as a whole morally responsible. But even if the majority view was that the war was justified, it does not change the fact that there will be people who do not think the war is justified. Those people are a counter-exampe to social's argument.