more so in retaliation to terrorism, a brazen and defiant act. There is much focus on the natural brakes on democratic war-making, but these may be accelerators in counterterrorism.22 Third, obliterating the perpetrators can be seen as appropriate “justice,” especially when attacks originate from outside a state’s territory (as is increasingly likely to be the case). With no reliable international enforcement of laws or norms, states must use their own military power to punish those who harm their citizens, or so the logic goes. Military force extracts Old Testament justice.
