Allright, the big problem with assasination as a tool of foreign policy is that assasinations must be secret to be effective. But we live in a democracy, where government actions must be as open as possible, so we can hold officials accountable.
I believe that I have the right to defend myself against violence, and if the only way to do that is to use violence, so be it. If someone tries to kill me for no reason, and I defend myself and they die, then I am perfectly within my rights. I would extend this concept, I have the right to do all kinds of things to people who deserve it. I have the right to beat the crap out of people who put my life in danger, etc. But there is a problem. I am a fallible human, maybe I’ve made a mistake, and the person who I beat the crap out of didn’t deserve it. So we institute procedures to determine what punishments various people deserve, and try to keep things as objective as possible.
There is no way we can do this with assasination. There is no way that a democratic government can carry this out without problems. It is better for us to declare that assasination is barred, and use our power to dissuade authoritarian governments that they will be punished if the try it, than to try to use such a flawed tool.
As far as Saddam goes, we had the right to bomb military targets, and shoot at enemy soldier. Saddam often wears a military uniform, he is equivalent to an enemy general. We can bomb the general’s headquarters or Saddam’s palace, and if he gets caught, well, so what?
The other trouble is that democratic governments are much or vulnerable to assasination. Do you guys realize the precautions that Saddam goes through to avoid being shot? There are literally three or four people in Iraq who know what Saddam’s schedule is, he comes and goes as he pleases, he as dozens, hundreds of safe houses, he has doubles, he has security forces that are not bound by constitutional niceties. It is his policy to order military officers to approach their friends and ask them if they want to join the rebellion. If you don’t turn in your friend, you are shot. And then it is your turn to pretend to be a rebel, and your friends must report you or face execution. It is not easy to assisinate a man who has bent the entire resources of the country of Iraq for his own safety and enrichment.
Whereas in America, a lone nut with a sniper rifle can pretty much do what he likes. Our only protection is that the lone nuts usually aren’t clever enough. Yes, I know in the movies they have homocidal geniuses, but in reality most homocidal people are far from geniuses. The only reason any crimes are ever solved is that most criminals are idiots.
Anyway, it would be moral to assasinate evil foreign leaders, but it would usually be unwise.
Oh, one more thing. I don’t think we can call Saddam a client of ours. Yes, we really have had some horrible people who were our clients…the Shah, Noriega, etc. But Saddam is different. He was really a Soviet client, that’s why most of the tanks we blew up were T-72s. The Baath party is not our creation, we supported the King the Brits installed there the Baath overthrew. The Baath has always been anti-Western, even back when Saddam was merely the puppetmaster minister of defense. It is true that we somewhat backed Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war, but come on, this was just after the hostage thing. Are we gonna back Khomeini? And we didn’t back him very much, mostly we sat out and did nothing. We were trying to cultivate him as a counterweight to Iran, but he was never our client.