Question?
Terrorists are often called "cowardly," most notably by George W Bush on September 11, 2001. I'll just go ahead and use the 9/11 attacks as my example to consider what Plato's dialogue might have to say about whether that claim is correct. It would seem that the terrorists were courageous by Laches definition of courage. They knew they were going to die. Yet they endured in their task of flying the plane into the trade towers. Laches might say: "We can - and should - condemn their actions as being unjust, murderous, motivated by evil. But we cannot say that they were unwilling to endure the task that they had taken up."
My answer:-
The average knowledgeable person in politics would engage in a minimum 3 hours
discussion/argument to cover partially the circumstances that are related to the above mentioned incident. I myself, as well as professional politicians spend years discussing, discovering and analyzing causes, motivations and consequences of this topic and yet 12 years later a lot of professional political analyzers cannot come to a unified conclusion of which or who to be blamed over this incident (was the attack a retaliation fo ran attack - the egg and chicken thing) As you mentioned to every story is two sides. And to use the virtue of Socrates (as we experienced so far), we have to look form a neutral point of view and put aside emotions and feelings, political and ideological agendas and point of views to be able to find the truth.
In science, in order to come to a correct results, when we chose our samples, we have to select unbiased and representative of the entire population. For example, in statistics the sample has to include everybody in order to bring a result that reflects reality - people have to be selected carefully to avoid having a panel that does not represent the entire population. This incident has a lot of circumstances, despite the fact that it is right or wrong. We have question if this was an isolated incident or part of a bigger ongoing injustice. While as you mention above, the attackers of 9/11 were misled by indoctrination, military everywhere today in the world undergoes a phase of indoctrination during their training using the same methods before sending the soldiers to the battle, as everyone who has been to the military can attest of.
While Islam forbids any kind of attack on civilians, fields, trees, animals, buildings that are not in military use,...but yet those attackers were driven by a different doctrine masked as a religious faith. As i mentioned this would be a long discussion to lay open other factors that might have played into this, in order to justify the actions, finding a doctrine, and expecting or purposely provocing the outcomes of the actions.
In conclusion, it can be said that both sides in this conflict were motivated by a narrow mindset and by their own desires and wishes. Therefore the attack as well as the counter attack was not a courageous act - it was not motivated by wisdom or justice, since hundreds of thousands of civilians lost their lives.
I believe that Socrates in such a case would have told us to go out and question the circumstances of this incident, refusing to consider it through the close mindedness of our own point of view and clouded by our own suffering.
The end of the Laches conversations made the most sense to me. Even though Sokrates seems to rebuke Nicias for his views, he makes a point that is really important. Courage is part of the virtues and cannot stand alone, or it will be foolishness. Courage that disregards justice, fairness, temperance and other values is not true courage. The courageous one cannot be the one who is ignorant of a danger, because he does not need courage to overcome his fear, but the one, who is able through the knowledge and refinement of virtues to understand as much as humanly possible of the situation, and in spite of being aware of the dangers, does what needs to be done. If courage increases in a person, all the other virtues should increase in the same balanced way to create a complete and wholesome personality.
Courage detached from other virtues is often the characteristic of the soldier, who is in a position to receive orders, and who is motivated by his superior reminding him of the things at stake, if he forgets. In a defense war this is different, as every soldier is aware what he is fighting for: to preserve his land and home. However, in an aggressive war, the considerations of the ones in power ordering for this war are more likely to take over the form of commands, where the soldier has to be encouraged and promised incentives to show the neccessary courage in the action on the battlefield. It becomes clear in this example, that the soldier is not acting out of just motives, but his courage is the courage of the one, who is ordered to follow commands. He is missing the big picture and understanding of the situation. However, there are moments, when he can still show courage out of virtue, for example when he saves one of his fellow soldiers by risking his own life. In this case, he is knowledgeable of the situation and the implications for him, but still decides to rescue the other - he is courageous because he understands the potential danger he is in. However, generally, the more knowledge one possesses regarding a situation, the more courageous they are.
As for the question concerning terrorism, i have to ask, what is the definition here. 'Terrorist' is not a clearly defined term, even the UN does not have a definition for it. It is generally used to describe acts, not people, only our media and politicians proceeded to label people by this name. The Irish fighting their independence war have been labelled 'terrorists' by their occupiers, while they and their people themselves had to endure state terrorism for which the British government has to apologize until today. It is the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" here. There are always two sides to a story. However, injust acts should never be considered courageous. In Islam it is forbidden to touch on civilians' lives and livelihood (fields, orchards, livestock...) during a war. So if someone commits these kinds of acts, he is clearly acting with injustice and without constraint, and is object to punishment. As for the Irish, what is counted today, and where the law is trying to bring justice, are the numbers of civilians killed by both sides during the conflict. While fighting men were often occupiers, some locals took up arms openly to defend their country, the first ones listened to the promises of their superiors and thereby took part in an injustice, while the latter ones -more courageous, because their land and livelihood was at play as well as their lives- understood the implications and the bigger context as much as they felt the fear and hope resulting from this knowledge. Civilians, however, should have been off limits, but were not as it was part of the strategy to terrify the population into submittance. It is this injustice that is counted today and that serves as a proof for the cowardness of the measures that were taken at the time.
