Actually, the word “assassin” comes from a group of Hashemites - a Shi’a group of Fatamids - the word becoming corrupted into “assassin” by the Crusaders of the 12th century.
Initiation into the group allegedly involved killing a selected person unawares with a knife. The Assassins gained a powerful reputation by claiming a couple of high-profile targets, but were pretty much dispersed and disbanded by the 1300’s - the other lasting legacy of the name remaining in the title “The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan”.
Brian, my objection to assassination isn’t just that it’s plain murder and illegal. It is what world it would lead to when it became accepted practice. Yes, you are right to a degree, it is a super-imposed taboo. So is taking prisoners of war, sparing civilians and trying not to destroy that beautiful monastary.
Civilisation is just a thin veneer but we are much better off with that layer in place. Or would you really like wars to be like they were in feudal times?
As an aside, in feudal times the nobility was quite happy to fight.
Hell, that was what they were for in the first place. Why they were nobilty. They were the warrior caste, the knight.
They would race the 'rabble" to the killing field. They rather had those commeners weren’t there at all.
Damn the man that invented the crossbow! Now every Tom, Dick and Harry can take on a knight. It must be outlawed, what a terrible weapon. What is war coming to…
Technically, I’m a pro-war person, but I’ll add my 2 cents, anyway. So sue me.
I have no moral qualms with assassination. Unlike Latro, I see no evidence of a slippery slope that will lead to presidential candidates gunning each other down in the streets. (And honestly, if Iraq or N Korea thought they could assassinate our leaders and have it do any good, do you honestly think they wouldn’t?) But I just don’t see assassinations, generally speaking, as doing much good.
Using Iraq as an example, simply removing Saddam would be pointless. His son would just step up, and now we have Son of Saddam developing WMDs and enacting hostile acts on neighboring states and butchering his people. Whoopty-freakin’-doo. We don’t just need to remove the man, we need to remove the whole regime. We need to take out Saddam, all potential successors, and the entire Republican Guard, before a new and non-dangerous government could be formed. You wanna try to do that via assassins? It would take a gymnasium full of magic wonder ninjas to pull that off. Anyway, even if we theoretically could assassinate the whole bloody lot of them, we now have a big, gaping power vacuum. So lovely, we now have several years of civil war, after which somebody potentially just as nasty as Saddam takes charge.
In order to effect regime change in Iraq, we need to remove the entire government, and oversee the insertion of one that actually functions in a non-dictatorial fashion. Assassinations won’t do that. Invasion, though, has the potential to do it quite nicely.
Jeff
If it’s any consolation I’m just trying to make a debate point.
As for the crossbow - yeah, and those English longbow: 7,000 of them plodding dysentry ridden through Brittany under Henry V, when 30,000 French knights corner them against a river at a place near Agincourt…
The 10,000 knights who survived never dared enter the field after witnessing the first two waves of attack being mercilessly shot down.
The French have been burning our sheep ever since, as a mark of protest.
Actually, back to the issue:
I’m not so sure it is. But I do appreciate that if over-used it only offers instability. But perhaps there is a case to be argued in extreme cases. When he was Prime Minister, Edward Heath mooted the idea to MI5 of having Pol Pot assassination. MI5 refused, saying iot wasn’t the done thing. So we had the killing fields.
For some reason, a vague memory is creeping in from the recesses of my brain. Weren’t some “Bunker Buster” bombs used at the tail end of Gulf War I, in attempt to kill said despot? And, reaching further into the murkey recess of my cerebral cortex, weren’t 3 bunker busters made, but only 2 used? Slipping further still, didn’t the whole war thang end before they had a chance to use #3 on their intended target? I thought one of the major Gripes on Herby W., was that he didn’t allow those few hours to complete the mission.
Please, somebody confirm this for me.
So, in short, it wouldn’t be the first time the US has tried to rub out Saddam. If my noggin organ can be believed.
I believe it. And I remember, also, when Reagan tried to remove Khaddafi by making his palace into a hole in the sand via cruise missile. (Missed the Colonel, got his young daughter instead. Just business; nothing personal.)
Dammit, yes!!
This has been gnawing in my head ever since I first saw this argument , of a Bush assissination plot by the Iraqis, used by the pro-war people. I faintly remembered it being called something like the ‘Saddam Bomb’.
I even googled for it but you can imagine the results for Saddam+bomb. I gave up on it.
