Collective Punishment, Individual Rights and Terrorism

[From article]
Modern terrorism is in many ways just a revival of customary tribal retaliation or the application of ‘guilt by association’. The September 11 hijackers had no particular beef with the individuals in the World Trade Center. They were out to slaughter anyone in New York. None of the people in New York had to be individually guilty of anything. They were simply the most handy targets available to expiate the collective Western guilt for its real or imagined offenses against Islam.
The participants of the Jihad see it as a matter of “them” against “us”. Even though Western politicians are at pains to deny there is any “them”, “they” know who “they” are, despite the fact that “we” do not acknowledge who “we” are. ’Us’ versus ‘them’ pervades everything. When the Taliban could not strike at the Pakistan military directly it struck at the Pakistani Army Public School in Peshawar. The hand-wringing articles asking why innocent children were attacked miss the point completely. To the Taliban there are no “innocent children”. In a world of collective guilt there is naturally only collective punishment.
[. . .]
But the prohibition does not run the other way. There is no strong taboo among ISIS or al-Qaeda, for example, against punishing individual Jews for the collective guilt of Israeli existence. It is enough to kill a Jew, any Jew. It doesn’t matter who. Their model of punishment doesn’t require detailed information.
[. . .]
When hackers bring down companies or terrorists commit outrages and then obfuscate their identity, the Western moral code goes “tilt” because it cannot resolve the contradiction between having to punish somebody and not knowing the name of that someone to punish. Although we might guess the identities of the guilty parties — more or less — that’s not good enough to mete out only individual punishment. Without the names of individuals to punish the whole Western defense and legal mechanism grinds to a halt. Without information and the ability to punish individuals lawfare is nothing but a pitiful, helpless giant.
Terrorism uses obfuscation to defuse lawfare knowing that the West will not turn to the alternative form of warfare.
The danger of course is that a “pitiful, helpless giant” sooner or later loses the the legitimacy to govern. A sufficiently enraged public will demand something more than impotence. Collective punishment is what happens when individual justice is seen to fail.
[. . .]
In order to avoid the horrors of war The King’s Justice cannot afford to be seen as totally impotent. The best way to forestall private revenge is for the King to act against those who would disturb his realm, if not strictly according to the law then at least in the spirit of justice.
[. . .]
That is human nature. Every king worth his throne must defend his subjects or they will defend themselves.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2015/01/02/the-future-of-collective-punishment/

The Future of Collective Punishment
January 2nd, 2015 - 2:03 am
by Richard Fernandez