Terror and cowardice

An expert on courage explains why suicide hijackers are not heroic and why those who try too hard to understand them are craven.

By Laura Miller

Oct. 11, 2001 | Americans have been talking a great deal about cowardice and courage since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. At Salon, we know from our conversation last year with William Ian Miller, author of "The Mystery of Courage," that the topic is far more complex and elusive that it may at first seem. Is it brave -- if also lunatic and inhuman -- to deliberately obliterate your own life in an assault when that assault is on unarmed civilians? Is there courage in shooting guided missiles at targets many miles away? Does it take guts merely to ask such questions, especially on national television? We called up Miller at Harvard University, where he is teaching as a visiting professor from the University of Michigan, to get his opinion.

One of the first things government officials, including the president, had to say about the terrorists who struck the U.S. on Sept. 11 was that they were cowards. That's also one of the first statements to be challenged in the media, by Susan Sontag in the New Yorker, by Timothy Noah on Slate and by Bill Maher on his show, "Politically Incorrect." In turn, those challenges seemed to really touch a nerve, provoking a lot of outrage. That certainly affirms your idea that courage is a virtue that's hard to define, but also a subject that stirs up the most powerful feelings.

Let's look at the question of the cowardice or courage of the hijackers. That's complicated. If in fact it is easy to recruit young Muslim males who are willing to die without any fear, if in fact you're getting high rates of people volunteering for suicide missions, then it might be too easy for them to do it, and you have to ask is this really courage. If in fact they believe, absolutely, with no discount, that they are going to go to heaven instantaneously with no doubts about it, and they're having no trouble recruiting people to do that, then I start to wonder if it's not a virtue anymore. Then we pass into the world of fanaticism.

If in fact it's hard and even these guys have a hard time finding people willing to raise their hand to carry out that kind of mission, then you have to give them credit for being willing to give up their lives for what they believe in. The question is whether it comes easy for them or hard for them and we don't know that. We always think someone is more courageous for overcoming their doubts to do something, rather than for having none. If I have no doubts that I'm going to die a glorious death and go to heaven and thousands of people believe that and are willing to do that, then courage becomes too cheap. Somewhere along the line we make a distinction between what we call courage and what we call insanity.

For courage to be a virtue, it can't be easy, and if it becomes too easy for a culture to deliver people willing to die, then we'll start to think that the culture has things backward. I mean: Death is better than life? No.

Next page: "Coward": The worst thing you can call someone