Bury Me Broken

Listening to MSNBC Coast to Coast this morning, I was frustrated (which has become normal) by the historically ignorant, morally void and dangerous offerings of both guest and pundit concerning assassinations. It was proffered that although an executive order prohibits assassination, with the new `war on terror' we may need to reconsider.

John Fund of the WSJ even said that if we had it to do all over again, would we not have assassinated Adolf Hitler?

I flipped between cable stations waiting on someone to offer a legitimate, bevy of reasons why assassination should not be a part of American strategy and how we arrived at this conclusion to no avail.

Professor Michael Scharf from the University of Case Western School of Law gives four reasons why assassination as foreign policy tool is bad.

First, even when the intelligence is perfect and the target is, in fact, guilty of terrorism, acts of assassination often result in the morally troubling slaughter of innocent family members or bystanders.

Second, there is no way to undo a mistake -- and mistakes are surprisingly common.

Scharf cites numerous examples of mistakes made in recent history:

Israel, for example, has apologized in the past for assassinating people who
turned out to be victims of mistaken identity, such as five Palestinian policemen killed in 2001. The faulty nature of intelligence in other areas does not inspire the sort of confidence one should have before pulling a trigger. Despite the initial Bush administration assertion that Guantanamo Bay detainees were all members of al Qaeda, dozens were released when the administration determined that it had been mistaken. And let us not forget that the administration's certainty that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the 2003 invasion. Or the Clinton administration's misplaced confidence in 1998 that a Sudanese plant it destroyed with cruise missiles was producing chemical weapons and was owned by bin Laden. Neither was true. The first Bush administration initially believed the Iranian government was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103, though Libya was the real culprit.

The other two reasons against assassination as foreign policy:

Third, the more frequent use of assassination may present cascading threats to world order. For example, in response to the assassination of Yassin and the Bush administration's refusal to rebuke Israel for it, Hamas declared open season on America.

Finally, targeting specific individuals may elevate them to martyrdom, strengthening enemy morale and resolve. Rather than dealing a mortal blow to the terrorist organization, it is more likely that the targeted individuals will be replaced by others.

Opposing Viewpoint

Rich Lowry at the National Review argued in a March 2002 article to "take the shot" at Saddam Hussein. He found that the 1975 Church commission conclusions on assassinations "simplistic" and that "there is a right under international law to target an enemy's command and control during wartime, including anyone in the chain of command right up to the head of state." He continues that our problem with killing specific individuals is the remnants of polite 18th-19th century rules of warfare which changed "with the advent of total war, and of leaders, such as Hitler..."

Today, he further argues, a misunderstanding of international law is the culprit; the Hague Convention forbids treacherous killing or wounding of individuals of a hostile nation and that it is not treacherous to bomb, missile strike or sniper attack an enemy army and thus not an individual. He finally argues, convincing enough for me, that target killing Saddam would have been morally superior to all out war against enemy soldiers "who may want nothing more fervently than to surrender to the nearest American."

What he failed to see then and many Iraq war supporters fail to see now is that war with Saddam Hussein was not necessary and thus I wouldn't have to debate the superiority of killing him versus killing many enemy soldiers or innocent civilians if they would concede the facts that the rationale for war continually shifted, was based on information we knew at the time to be suspect, etc. (we've heard it all before).

Lowry, and others arguing for the revocation of Executive Order 12333 section 2.11, the prohibition of assassination, that it doesn't apply in wartime and is not a violation of international law or arguing the ambiguity of conflicting international law fail to take into account The Law of Land Warfare (1956):

U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, THE LAW OF LAND WARFARE (1956), which has incorporated this prohibition, authoritatively links Hague Article 23(b) to assassination at Paragraph 31: "This article is construed as prohibiting assassination, proscription or outlawry of an enemy, or putting a price upon an enemy's head, as well as offering a reward for an enemy `dead or alive.'"

That being said, my opposition to the assassination of heads of state is pretty simple:

• Assassinating the head of state will undoubtedly cause turmoil within the country. Yes, war causes turmoil as well but the actions that lead to war inform a country as to where they are headed whereas an assassination means immediate disarray. Lawlessness, price gouging, loss of essential services, breakdown in government and administration, power struggle and policelessness resulting in lack of needed protection especially those in ethnically divided nations.
• Assassinating the head of state is unacceptable in the world community and thus will cause more international strife. Our diplomacy the world over is at an all-time low. Bolton was recessed into the U.N. and U.N. members are being `diplomatic' about this detractor of the U.N. as a body. We are absent from international treaties, assemblies and other activities in which the rest of the industrialized world is on board.
• To reiterate Professor Scharf, faulty intelligence discovered after you've killed a head of state cannot be remedied. The Bush administration claimed that traces of bomb-grade uranium found in Iran two years ago was proof of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Today in the Washington Post:

Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.

"The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions," said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.

All of this discussion stemmed from statements by Pat Robertson calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez whom he says is a "terrific danger" and needs to be stopped before his country becomes "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism." And he bases this on what? Of course, we would never accuse him of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, emboldening those that would do us harm.

posted by niteskolar @ 7:36 PM