ADN

If in my absence from the forum I missed out on a discussion on terrorism and bringing it up now is old news, I apologize.

That having been said, I'm in a sociology of violence class and our first main unit (of three, the other two being family violence and gang violence) is terrorism.

Now I've taken this teacher before and we're friends outside of the classroom, mainly because we've like developed a system where he asks a question and I often play devil's advocate just to get discussion going and get the class into it. So we do a good cop bad cop thing so he still gets good reviews...and what do I really care what a few of my classmates think? Not to mention, considering I'm looking towards a legal career, this is some good practice in effective argumentation.

Today the teacher set up a hypothetical situation in which he was a terrorist that hijacked a plane with 100 people on it, and he's asking for like 6 million dollars and a few of his friends to be released from prison (this is based off of a Japanese Red Army situation in which the same exact thing did happen). The main difference is of course that this is supposed to be taking place either in America, or at least with an American airline.

That led to the question of "would you negotiate" ? Knowing that most people would take the "omg do whatever we can to save lives...imagine if that was you on the plane!!!!!!" stance, I decided to go with the hard-line no negotiation whatsoever with terrorists, my main points being that you can't make it a personal matter, the job is to look out for the security of the entire country, not just a single plane of people....and that by giving in, we'd open the door to future attacks just because there is now a potential gain involved aside from the average politically aimed plot.

I often find myself eventually siding with the argument I'm making, just because I'm trying to stay dedicated to the debate....but at the same time I'm thinking that if I were in that situation, I'd probably try to neogiate at least a little to see where they would go.

So anyway, the question is now posed to the board.... Do you negotiate?

(Even though I failed to do so with my Nietzsche thread after having one of my lengthier posts not post correctly...I hope to update this thread with new debate topics and issues surrounding terrorism)

OK, this is what I think...Each terrorist situation would require some sort of assessment...It would be very hard pressed for me to imagine that I would be willing to negotiate the lives of others...I don't think I would be that afraid to die that I would want to live at any cost...I mean, we let his buddies out of prison so that I can live, and he gets out and kills a family member of mine..? NFW...I just don't think that's rational, and that I would be able to sleep at night if I had done that...

No negotiation would be where I started...Now if the situation got more sophisticated, that may change things...A group able to hijack a plane this day and age would have had to carefully plan out everything, examined many angles, and implemented many fail-safe measures...He would know who would be doing the negotiations, have a beat on his family, and someone in place to take extreme action should they try to play hardball...If that were the case, then you have to do what's best for all involved, not just the people on the plane...You would have to be smart, and unfortunately, the world just doesn't have enough of them kinds of people, lol...

Seems like another classic case of Utilitarian ethics vs. Deontological ethics, with Virtue ethics coming into play a little. I just don't know, man. It doesn't matter what I/we write, b/c the truth is, we are not on that plane. Who knows what we would do. Heh.

Since the OP mentioned his penchant for playing devil's advocate, I am going to avoid tackling the question ethically/philosophically and look at it more practically.

Would I negotiate?

That depends on who "I" am.

If I'm a politician, my decision would be greatly shaped by the degree of influence that I hoped to retain with my constituents and my political allies. In that case, I would probably negotiate, with the knowledge that my constituents (as well as my allies' constituents) would decry any failure to save the hostages' lives.

If I'm a military commander, my decision would depend largely upon my rank and upon the resources I had available to counter the terrorists. The higher my rank, the more likely my decision would be shaped by extra-military political influence and by concerns about the remainder of my career.

The way I see it, there's much more to the answering of a question like "would you negotiate with terrorists?" than simply one's feelings about the matter.