I’d support an assassination of Saddam, and even his “upper echelon” of advisors (including his son) over a full-blown war, yes.
Accomplishing essentially the same goal while risking far fewer lives? Sounds good to me.
“…You guys are so cynical. The point is to kill enough enemies to stop the violence.”
That quote may not be so ironic to some people. That is the actual point of war.
No it isn’t.
The point of war is to claim or defend territory or political power/autonomy.
<stepping gingerly into the water>
I would accept Sadaam’s assassination if he were to somehow just
:disappear:
The problem is that assassination is a game anyone can play. Take the upcoming war, f’rinstace. Barring Left-Behind-esque divine intervention, there is no way that Iraq can stand up to the U.S. military, provided we can get into position, etc. But any schmoe can buy a rifle and a sleeping bag and wait in a high place until someone important gives a speech. We in the U.S. are secure against standard war, but terrorism and assassination can still hurt us. So, I’m guessing that there will be no U.S. push for allocating a piece of the military budget to the Mafia.
[cynicism]
Besides, can you picture any leader saying that the death of leaders over the death of us untermenchen is preferable? That the U.S. government would rather go for assassination politics and risk themselves than use the war machine and get soldiers/civilians killed?
[/cynicism]
[optimism]
OTOH, I would imagine that “shape up or we invade and blow things up” means less to someone ruling from a hidden armored bunker than “shape up or the next time your personal faces shows itself, we blow it off”. I imagine that that would get more compliance then the threat of random property damage.
[/optimism]
That was the point of war, a goal which I believe is now due for some substantial revision.
Well, even as an avowed pacifist, I wouldn’t be at all sorry if Saddam Hussein ceased to exist. I’d hate for it to look like the U.S. were responsible for it in any way, though, at least directly.
So if any one were to take the matter into his/her own hands, given my druthers, I’d hope a) it were an Iraqi, preferably one without previously known ties to any anti-establishment groups (the U.S., Israel, or any ethnic minorities or remaining shreds of political dissent), and b) ideally, it should not look like an assassination at all. (Just a thought: does he have any known medical conditions?)
If you like conspiracy theories, well, Stalin’s fatal stroke was awfully convenient, timing-wise, although there probably wouldn’t have been such a thing as a bad time for him to die. Any way to accomplish something analogous, yet untraceable given modern medical science?
Not that I’m suggesting GWB order such a thing, you understand…
And by the way, the point of assassination, as any mob strategist could tell you, is limited to one of the following goals:[ul][]Remove an impediment to a negotiated settlement (not effective regarding Iraq, unless you also take out the junior despots-in-waiting, plus assorted willing replacements)— this presupposes confidence in the surety of ascension or chain of command[]Gain a temporary advantage in an ongoing conflict by throwing the enemy’s leadership structure into disarray— this doesn’t require as much confidence in expected outcome, but it does require a plan which allows the advantage to be pressed effectively, and can be somewhat negated by a cellular type of command structure[]Propogate terror and confusion among enemy ranks[]Perpetuate oppression[/ul]The tactic of assassination is part of the rulebook for loosely confederated criminal organizations, but not one that is frequently used, due to its general negative effect on business, and because of the propensity for destabilizing wars to ensue due to those silly individuals who forget it’s “just business”. Still sound like a viable and enlightened foreign policy?
That’s the point. Killing people is the method.
BTW, I forgot - am I being ironic, or are you? It’s hard to keep track.
I prefer sarcasm. It’s not nearly the intellectual achievement that irony is, but it’s much more expiditious in any argument.
The thing is, assasination - the type of assasination we’re discussing - is not a political act; nor is it, God forbid, a legal act. It’s an act of war, and should be treated as such. It’s a very serious act, which should only be carried out after careful consideration, but it’s neither more nor less “wrong” than any other act of war - in fact, on a moral level, I’d consider it far better than acts that risk civilian lives.
That’s where Latro’s train of logic is flawed. True, political assasinations are dangerous to democracy. But military assainations? The U.S. military has for instance, has carpet bombed many foreign cities; can we infer from that that it will do the same to American cities as well?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with assasination. However, that doen’t always make it the wise thing to do.
I’ve got to respond to this:
Remember that “killing people” is only one of the preferred methods for waging war. Destruction of assets is also a form of war. Sanctions are a form of war. Wooing away allies is a form of war. There’s lots of ways to wage war.
But let’s look at “killing people” as a method (as opposed to a consequence, I suppose) of waging war. Sounds pretty simple; one group tries to kill as many of the other group as possible until the war’s won. But it gets more complicated.
First, international standards attempt to define groups of war participants more specifically than “members of countries a, b, c and…” We talk about “combatants” and “noncombatants”. We define “legitimate military targets”. We develop expectations for acceptable levels of “collateral damage” and invent procedures for investigating “war crimes”.
We’ve also tried within the past hundred years to prohibit certain specific tools used to pursue the “killing people” method. We prohibit poison gas, decrying it as inhumane (although most countries still develop and stock it). We consider biological weapons against populations to be monstrous (although these, too are openly developed). And the international community, such as it exists, is almost united in opposition to deliberate targetting of civilians by either large national armies or disaffected political units.
“Killing people is the method” is a snappy retort. “Killing people” outside of rhetoric is, as always, not as ethically tidy as the witty comeback would have it seem.
Citing assassination as just one of the many ways the “killing people” method is manifested in war also neglects both the extra-judicial and extra-military aspects of the tactic.
Assassinations are not sanctioned through process of law (as Alessan has pointed out), and as such are ordered by arbitrary decree, which is antithetical to democratic government (as pointed out by Latros). In addition, the intended goal of an assassination is the removal of an individual from a position of influence or opposition; this is a political goal, rather than a military one, and by all normal standards should be attained through political means.
So consideration of the ethics of assassination as a political policy must include more than consideration of the ethics of war; we must also match the policy to international standards and to our own system of governmental accountability.
IMO, the clear result of that consideration must be a rejection of the tactic.
Errm, Alessan, could you please explain.
What would be a military assassination of Saddam and how would it differ from a political assassination of Saddam???
Why do people think it’s so bad to kill a military leader, yet are happy to see swathes of civilians and conscripts murdered?
That’s a strange sense of morality indeed.
Xenophon -
Huh? And what do you think the USA and UK are going to do when they roll their vast military machine into Iraq? Demand that Saddam hold fresh elections? The removal of Saddam Hussein is a military goal. A moral argument cannot be made against assassination and yet for war. It is quite illogical.
No, the use of military means is just that; the means to reach a political objective. The removal of Saddam is a political goal, achieved by military means.
In that military action the objective is to capture Iraq and/or Saddam. In order that he be removed from power. Just as assissanation (hate having to type this bloody word over and over, is there no decent abbrev.?) is a means to reach that goal.
Or the sanctions were intended as a means to reach that goal.
Assassination isn’t a policy that would work very well for a democratic country. You can’t have a debate and a vote about the assassination, you have to do it with a certain level of secrecy. And authorizing some government agency to assassinate various people secretly seems to me to be a recipe for disaster. Saddam Hussein may be an obvious candidate, but wouldn’t it have been much better to take him out earlier? Assassinate the bad guys BEFORE they take power? You see where this goes. A government agency empowered to kill people without due process of law is an inherently dangerous, undemocratic, and uncontrollable body.
Thanks, Latro, for responding so well to I, Brian; now I can just “me too”.
(By the way, does “assissanation” have anything to do with St. Francis of Assissi?)
And was he really just a sissy…?
Latro -
In recently declassified documents from British Intelligence, a plot to assassinate Hitler did actually become a serious consideration. But the idea was rejected for not being “gentlemanly” (that’s a quote).
So instead the RAF blanket-bombed Dresden, killing 80,000 civilians.
To refuse assassination on the grounds of not being “gentlemanly” is a class based issue. This is where the “higher classes” of society consider it to be a far better proposal to annihilate serfs, peasants, and lower classes - rather than others of the “higher classes” (this goes back to at least feudal Western Europe, especially with regards to the nobility generally being related to some significant degree).
The other “moral” objection to assassination is simply that we are more likely to know the face and therefore something of the identity of the person to be killed. It brings us closer to the act. The civilians killed in a war are faceless, without identity, and have the honourable title of being mere “collateral damage”.
Actually, thinking about it, Stalin made a great comment very applicable here: “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are simply a statistic.”
But if the ultimate military objective is to depose Saddam Hussein? But I guess it’s a minor technical point. And, yes, the sanctions were supposed to help create enough strife in Iraq that some group of other would rise up and do the dirty with blood on their own hands. Why do you think the no-fly zones are there? To help the Kurds and Marsh Arabs built up their own (limited) military capabilities - perhaps enough to force a regime change.