In another thread someone quote a line from a John Malcovich movie where he says, “To kill the President is easy, you just have to want to die to do it.” Or something similar. In other words, you can do it, but you’ll pay with your life in the effort to pull it off. This got me to thinking, since Bin Laden’s group has proven that its members are more than willing to die to achieve their goals, there certainly could be members with the assignment to kill Bush. If that’s the case, and assuming they either managed to assassinate Bush or gravely injure him, what would be the appropriate response (militarily speaking) for the US to take? I mean, we’re already at war with the Taliban, so its not like we can declare it again. The most immediate reaction I can see from the American public is that “we” (meaning the vast majority) start demanding that the government drop a nuke on the place. Would world opinion back us on this matter? If it does, should we? Does this mean that we place a significantly higher value on the lives of our elected officials than we do on those of the general public?
I can’t see the US taking any other stance than to say, “You’ve got 24 hours to turn Bin Laden and the others over to us or we drop the bomb.”
Actually, I don’t really think we’d do anything beyond what we’re doing (and planning to do) already. As you say, we’ve already “declared war” on them. Barring something like a nuclear weapon in a major city or a true “Andromeda strain” biological warfare attack, our reasons for not “nuking” anybody would be just as valid after another attack–a Presidential assassination or whatever it might be–as before. We would still need to build coalitions where necessary. We would still need to act rationally and with calculation. I have to say, George W. Bush has done a very good job so far. If he were to become a casualty in this war, the best memorial we could give him would be to carry on and prosecute the war we’re in with determination, coolly, thoroughly, and with the tools of military force and covert action and diplomacy and law enforcement, until we achieve victory.
No, not the bomb. What would that accomplish? What it would do or any similar event would be to make us more determined and to have the rest of the world more supportive of our actions.
kniz, I’m not disagreeing with you, but my gut (which is often wrong), tells me that were such a thing to happen, the streets would be immediately filled with angry (and possibly violent) Americans demanding that the government nuke Afghanistan. I can also imagine a disgruntled American then trying to kill the newly sworn-in President Cheney. It would take a great orator, it seems to me, to be able to convince the American public that a nuclear response to such an effort wouldn’t be appropriate. I don’t know if Cheney could be that person or not.