President Obama’s ‘Dirty Hands’

Abstract

Targeted killings in the fight against terrorism are controversially discussed from a political and legal angle. In this article we assess the moral dimension of the targeted killing of Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011. An analysis of the case concludes that the episode was based on a Dirty Hands judgement by President Obama. The ‘Problem of Dirty Hands’ entails that, for a political actor, sometimes it is right to do what is wrong. Established by Michael Walzer in 1973, the problem was applied to the policy of the targeted killing of terrorist associates by political philosopher Stephen de Wijze. It is believed to provide a viable agent-centric framework to assess intractable moral conflicts while neither allowing for ruthless amoralism nor ignoring the nature of the political office. The conditions outlined by de Wijze are holistically fulfilled and, thus, it is concluded that, from a Dirty Hands’ perspective, the targeted killing of al-Awlaki was a justified breach of important moral standards.