NORTH CAROLINA LAW REVIEW Volume 81 | Number 1 Article 3 12-1-2002 Victimhood in our Neighborhood: Terrorist Crime, Taliban Guilt, and the Aysmmetries of the International Legal Order Mark A. Drumbl Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/nclr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Mark A. Drumbl, Victimhood in our Neighborhood: Terrorist Crime, Taliban Guilt, and the Aysmmetries of the International Legal Order, 81 N.C. L. Rev. 1 (2002). Available at: http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/nclr/vol81/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in North Carolina Law Review by an authorized administrator of Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. VICTIMHOOD IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: TERRORIST CRIME, TALIBAN GUILT, AND THE ASYMMETRIES OF THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ORDER MARK A. DRUMBL* This Article posits that the September 11 attacks constitute non- isolated warlike attacks undertaken against a sovereign state by individuals from other states operating through a non-state actor with some command and political structure. This means that the attacks contain elements common to both armed attacks and criminal attacks. The international community largely has characterized the attacks as armed attacks. This characterization evokes a legal basis for the use of force initiated by the United States and United Kingdom against Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. Notwithstanding the successes of the military campaign and the need for containment of terrorist activity, this Article suggests that there are important deontological, communitarian, and consequentialist reasons why the attacks-and terrorism in general-should be constructed as criminal attacks.