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When is assassination an acceptable means of political change?

  
  

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We're The Great Old Ones Now
06:07 / 26.10.04
To which my answer would be 'never', but it seems some of you have less dainty notions of the rough and tumble of debate. So let's hear it. How is murder ever a valid tool for the reformer?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:18 / 26.10.04
You've framed this in typically bizarre terms - assassination is clearly not part of "the rough and tumble of debate", and it is unlikely that anyone who chose to engage in it would consider themselves to be a "reformer".

Additionally, your topic abstract limits the discussion to an element which the title covers but to which it is not limited. In the thread in question, it has been (correct me if I'm wrong) universally agreed that assassination is not a useful or effective or generally desirable tool of ending inequality, abuses of power, or other forms of human suffering. Therefore assassination is not supported, in part because people believe it might make a bad situation worse. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, ethics involves considering the likely consequences of actions.

Having established that we are united in not supporting assassination, I find it very odd that some people here are insisting on a further division of principle which is virtually academic. It's not an important division since the end result is basically the same: we don't favour or support or endorse assassination. A much more important division would be, say, the fact that you, Celibate Mink, are on record as opposing the redistribution of wealth - unless you've changed your mind, that makes not only our morality irreconcilable, but it makes the ends to which we will work very different.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
09:45 / 26.10.04
Having established that we are united in not supporting assassination, I find it very odd that some people here are insisting on a further division of principle which is virtually academic.

Hardly. You object to it - sometimes - on the basis that it is not effective. I object to it on the basis that it is wrong. Your construction allows for a possibile situation where it is effective, and therefore acceptable.

A much more important division would be, say, the fact that you, Celibate Mink, are on record as opposing the redistribution of wealth - unless you've changed your mind, that makes not only our morality irreconcilable, but it makes the ends to which we will work very different.

[shrug] I'm opposed to direct redistribution for reasons with which you are familiar: I dislike the consequences - the instant criminalisation of an arbitrary group - and I see it as yet another deployment of force as the defining aspect of society, with broad-base solutions applied without regard for the human-scale consequences.

So, yes, we are indeed working to different ends, because everything I know about your Utopia suggests to me an Orwellian nightmare predicated on violence and rage. Which brings me back to my initial point: you - and several others - appear not to oppose assassination on any grounds other than 'in this context it would never work'. The closest I get to that is 'it will never work, because by its nature it is anti-democratic and vile'.
 
 
Lurid Archive
10:18 / 26.10.04
Having established that we are united in not supporting assassination, I find it very odd that some people here are insisting on a further division of principle which is virtually academic. It's not an important division since the end result is basically the same

I'm not sure that it isn't important, to be honest. For instance, part of what I might regard as a worthy goal is the establishment of an international order which would prohibit, in a variety of ways, the use of violence for political ends except in exceptional circumstances. I may be misreading you, Flyboy, but it seems to me that you are saying that you have no time for that, preferring a more straightforward utilitarian approach.

You see, part of the problem I have with Bush is that tearing up and disregarding treaties and conventions is, in my view, a problem in itself that is independent of the consequences. (Though, obviously, consequences matter a great deal.) You seem to disagree with that, although if I recall your opposition to the war in Iraq is decidedly independent of consequences, which probably means I haven't understood you that well.
 
 
alas
10:56 / 26.10.04
Am I right in detecting that Fly Boy and others, myself included, have a problem with the term "morality," and much prefer "ethics"? Fly Boy is, I think, much more utilitarian than I am, as well, and in some ways my stance is probably closer to Mink's. However, I think that since Nietzsche there are good reasons to question "moral" distinctions as a basis for action, although politically, in the US context, having "moral" objections, rather than simply ethical ones, makes you seem "stronger"---in the "mas macho" sense of the term.

In other words, is part of the communication problem here the difference between the terms "ethical" and "moral"?
 
 
Lurid Archive
14:09 / 26.10.04
Alas, I'd be happy to use the word "ethical" in place of "moral", though largely because I'm not sure that I believe that there is a meaningful distinction to be made between the two terms; a point which in my experience is reinforced by usage. I'm not sure how helpful or relevant that is.
 
 
Sekhmet
19:12 / 26.10.04
I tend to think of "ethical" as a philosophical concept, whereas "morality" is based on a religious belief system.

Webster seems to consider them to be synonomous. (*shrug*)

Can we qualify the term "assassination"? Is it assumed that an act of assassination is performed by an agent of a force external to the country, or by those inside it? Is the killing of a leader as part or as consequence of a popular revolution or a military coup considered assassination, or is the term only applicable to an independent operative outside the context of a national uprising?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:43 / 27.10.04
I suppose my take on this is utilitarian in the sense that, if I were put in a position where I had the opportunity to dissuade someone who was a loved one of one of the thousands of people whose death George Bush has caused, and who was intent on executing Bush in retribution, I would attempt to dissuade them from doing so because the consequences would not be good for either them, or the world. I say "because" here meaning both "this would be my motivation" and "this is argument which I would outline". I would never attempt to dissuade such a person on moral grounds, parly because I don't believe it would ever work (see dizfactor's post here), and partly because I'm not sure I could do so in all honesty and conscience.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
11:43 / 27.10.04
As far as I'm aware, assassination refers to the premeditated (I keep typnig 'premedicated' and having to correct myself. Hmmm...) killing of another for impersonal reasons, usually either political or monetary.

It's fairly basic, in my opinion. Either murder is, in and of itself, morally wrong, or it isn't. I believe it is always morally wrong, hence opposing capital punishment, violent regime change, illegal war, basic street level homicide, etc etc.

Regarding 'morality' vs. 'ethics' - I've always understood that the former relates to a consensus established by a society based on cultural and philosophical concepts inherent to that society, some of which may be historically based in religion, and that the latter refers to the intellectual study of morality and of moral codes within a society or structure on both a broad basis - eg "this is what it is to be moral" - and on narrow terms - eg "I believe this decision to have been a moral one".

However, as a wise man once said, this could very well be a semantic distinction without a real difference, and I really don't think it's relevant.

...assassination is clearly not part of "the rough and tumble of debate"...

Why 'clearly'? It's whimsically phrased, but essentially "the rough and tumble of debate" is a broad enough remit to include assassination - murdering a political leader to remove him from office, for example, is an extreme way of articulating a position within political debate, but shouting usually gets attention.

...and it is unlikely that anyone who chose to engage in it would consider themselves to be a "reformer".


Based on what? I'm sorry, but a great number of assassins, actual or potential, have considered themselves reformers. There are organisations or nations engaged in assassination as a political tool that consider themselves, and are considered, as reformers. While I think that murder is essentially reprehensible, no matter the rationale, there's no barrier preventing reformers assassinating to achieve reform. That's an 'end justifies the means' utilitarian argument, reform being a process (of reform) leading to an end (of reform). Even if the murder of (for example) a hated political figure led to a more moderate or liberal figure taking hir place, I would still consider the original murder to be an immoral and reprehensible act in and of itself.

In the thread in question, it has been (correct me if I'm wrong) universally agreed that assassination is not a useful or effective or generally desirable tool of ending inequality, abuses of power, or other forms of human suffering.

You're wrong. You and others stated that assassination is not useful or effective, yes, but pretty much agreed that in the case of George Bush, it was desirable. If you consider that you and others were misrepresented or have misrepresented yourselves, that's cool, and we can discuss that in more detail - however, if you stand by what was said, then I don't think the language used leaves much to interpretation.
 
 
bjacques
12:06 / 27.10.04
From a purely practical standpoint, you'd need almost godlike powers of knowing you've got the right target and that the consequences, whether of success or failure, won't come back to bite you.

But if you had such insight, you could easily find other ways to neutralize the threat.

E.g., in 1920, give street watercolorist Adolf Hitler a scholarship and high-paying job in commercial art in Chicago.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:11 / 27.10.04
Actually, Hitler was in 1920 propaganda officer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (né German Workers Party, so might have been a little surprised to be offered such a thing.

Am looking for something on the omniscience question - back in a bit.
 
 
Ganesh
13:51 / 27.10.04
'Murder' and 'assassination' are, as far as I can tell, being used interchangeably here - the latter clearly more specific than the former.

I guess I have problems with the 'murder is murder is always wrong, period' line of reasoning, possibly because I've been aware of, and taken part in, medical decisions to avoid resuscitation and/or treatment with antibiotics, or to switch off a ventilator, or to 'make X comfortable' by continuing to prescribe and administer opiates in the knowledge that this will likely hasten death. Some people would consider these actions murder - albeit a passive, diffuse form of murder - but they are, within their particular context, seen as profoundly ethical.

So, are we talking about murder specifically for "political" purposes rather than, say, revenge or perceived 'humanity'? Is motive important here?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:21 / 27.10.04
Either murder is, in and of itself, morally wrong, or it isn't. I believe it is always morally wrong, hence opposing capital punishment, violent regime change, illegal war, basic street level homicide, etc etc.

So where do you stand on abortion? How about the abortion of a foetus in order to save the life of a mother. You're actively killing (murdering) a baby to save a woman's life but if you truly believe that all murder is wrong at the most basic level than you believe that the act of killing intentionally is always wrong and that means that you can't actively save the life of one person above another person. Looking at it from another angle you're killing the mother by refusing to save her by killing the child, that raises questions about intention and how cloaked in action it is. The point I'm making is of course that the argument you're using is philosophically utterly unsound because there is always a situation in which murder is perceived by general society as acceptable and thus the term is not applied despite it being perfectly accurate a description. Murder is not necessarily morally wrong, only some instances of it fit that description.

That same abortion argument could quite happily fit a man like George W. Bush, I can't help but wonder if that's why he's so eager to outlaw abortion because the reasoning explains precisely why he should be assassinated. In order to save a whole host of people from execution and an even greater number of Iraqis Bush should be killed. It could be perceived as murder but it seems to me that we're happy to ignore the correct usage of terms and so I propose that we call it the application of knowledge.

(I am never going to be able to visit America ever again now.)
 
 
Sekhmet
14:31 / 27.10.04
Exactly. If it's known that leaving a leader alive will doom hundreds or thousands of others to death, does that balance out the ethics of committing "murder"?

(I expect that this will be W's fate if he is reelected. There are far too many people in far too many places who are far too ready to have it done.)
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:41 / 27.10.04
As far as I'm aware, assassination refers to the premeditated (I keep typnig 'premedicated' and having to correct myself. Hmmm...) killing of another for impersonal reasons, usually either political or monetary.

It's fairly basic, in my opinion. Either murder is, in and of itself, morally wrong, or it isn't. I believe it is always morally wrong, hence opposing capital punishment, violent regime change, illegal war, basic street level homicide, etc etc.

As mentioned above, we have to keep quite a tight hold on terminology here. Murder is pretty much defined as "an act of killing which is (legally/morally/ethically) wrong" - it's the description of a crime rather than an action. However, there are examples above in which an act of killing is not murder. Abortion, euthanasia - and, perhaps most resonantly, war. If you kill a helpless villager in war, you are a murderer. If you kill a member of an opposing force, you are a killer. This provision is covered by Jack in the idea of "legal war", but I think not covered sufficiently and, as politically-driven violence, war provides some useful points.

Of course, one can then say that somebody who takes up arms in an unjust (which includes but is possibly not limited to illegal) war is in fact a murderer. In which case, how do you define a just war? When does a soldier stop being a murderer and become either just a working stiff or indeed a hero?

Just war theory has a long and spotted history, going back at least to St. Augustine, and has recently been dug up by Elshtain. Where you identify jus in bellum is a matter of some debate, but the Elshtain model - which is interesting and useful in part because it is used to support a war in Iraq in which the Head of State was identified as a valid military targer, posits roughly:

1)A just war is motivated by the desire to protect innocents from harm.
2) A just war is openly declared by a legal authority
3) A just war is begun with the best intentions
4) A just war is a war of last resort, after every other option has been exhausted.

Clearly, one cannot (with much ease) obtain "legal authority" to assassinate, depending on how one defines "legal authority" - the UN would be unlikely to authorise the assassination of Fidel Castro, whereas the CIA did; see also Saddam Hussein. So, leave that aside. Can one apply the other criteria to a standard of "just assassination"? The assassination is motivated by the desire to protect innocents from harm, it is done with the best intentions, it is done as a last resort. Now, intentionality seems to me to be a bit bollocks here - if you are doing it to protect innocents, it is clear that your intentions are good, if you are not then no matter how good your intentions, you are not performing a "just assassination". However, we can now bring in two elements of previous just war theories. which I think are germaine:

1) A just war is one in which noncombatant immunity is sacrosanct.
2) A just war is one which is entered into with at least a reasonable chance of success, that is of achieving its aims.

These are about conduct as much as concept, but there are important, especially (2). Whatever you may think of the incumbent, his death, natural or otherwise, would actually not achieve the aims of stopping or reversing his policies. I would also say that all other options of expelling a leader elected by democracy (at least titular democracy) from power have not been exhausted - most obviously, there are the upcoming elections, but also impeachment (to provide one example). Arguably, a democratically-elected leader can never be assassinated justly by this model, because there is always another option - wait for the next set of elections. Arguably, one could then extend the model to all leaders, to say that there is always the option of waiting for natural causes to finish them off.

However. Let's take the theoretical(but not massively so) example of a dictator who plans to launch a campaign of extermination against a significant portion of his country's population, who are already subject to violent opporession. The generals of this country know that if he is not stopped, this campaign will begin in a month's time. During that month, they conclude that, due to the existence of a large and loyal secret police, it is not going to be possible to remove the dictator by peaceful means. They work out a means of killing the dictator that involves no other casualties. They then reach out to the leaders of the world and deliver assurances that they will stop the cruelties of this dictator, construct the apparatus of a democratic state, normalise relations with the rest of the world, and so on. The leaders of the world in turn give their undertaking that they will, once the deed is done, lend such support that the generals can be confident that their coup will not be overturned - that is, that the assassination will have a lasting effect and will protect the innocent of the nation.

Is that still utterly unacceptable at any time? That is, is it better to uphold the dictum against assassination, either on the grounds that it is better that the people rise up after a large enough number have been killed (that is, that killing is always morally wrong, and it is better that somebody else takes that "moral hit" many times than you do once), or that it there could not be enough certainty of improvement to justify the risk of unrest (a more pragmatic response). Mink's statement: it will never work, because by its nature it is anti-democratic and vile suggests a primarily moral objection (vile) but seems to limit speculation to cases where democratic actions are what is required, however one defines a democratic action. Assassination is not, clearly, the same as open elections...

(Incidentally, what I hope will be a final word on the "rough and tumble of debate". It's rhetoric, designed to imply that anyone disagreeing with the idea that assassination is never acceptable is doing so frivolously, seeing murder - Mink's term, not mine - as an extension of political discussion. One of the characterising elements of assassination, I would suggest, is that done well it precludes a right to reply. However, if we start complaining about Mink and Flyboy trying to knock lumps out of each other to the exclusion of all surrounding witnesses - Flyboy's sudden hurling into view of the redistribution of wealth immediately following being another example - we'll be here all year.)
 
 
Ganesh
16:06 / 27.10.04
Of course, one can then say that somebody who takes up arms in an unjust (which includes but is possibly not limited to illegal) war is in fact a murderer. In which case, how do you define a just war? When does a soldier stop being a murderer and become either just a working stiff or indeed a hero?

Also, in these days of 'asymmetrical' conflict, where does the concept of 'collateral damage' fit? One doesn't necessarily set out to murder specific individuals, but one decides to Shock & Awe a population centre knowing a number of civilians (which one has little interest in counting) will die as a result. Is it the diffuse facelessness of the victims or the fact that one takes this decision ostensibly with regret discount one's action from being murder? Or is the 'murderer' label confined specifically to the guy who physically releases the bombs from the aircraft?

If one targets buildings rather than individuals, is one still a murderer?
 
 
w1rebaby
22:11 / 27.10.04
Unless one is a total pacifist I fail to see how it could be said that any killing of an individual with a political motive has to be a bad thing, unless one also abandons any utilitarian concepts and responsibility for the results of not killing someone.

I think it's very rarely a good idea due to the nature of political structure, but I certainly wouldn't condemn, for example, the efforts of various high-ranking Nazis to have Hitler killed in the latter stages of the war.

It is possible I suppose that assassination could be considered a bad thing but allowing someone to live could be worse, but that brings up the question: can one be faulted for taking the least worse choice?
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
11:56 / 29.10.04
Definitions are important. Murder is "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought", to quote merriam-webster.com, which strikes me as a good working definition. I can see no justification for anyone to say that "medical decisions to avoid resuscitation and/or treatment with antibiotics, or to switch off a ventilator, or to 'make X comfortable' by continuing to prescribe and administer opiates in the knowledge that this will likely hasten death", which are both lawful and (on consensus) considered ethical, are murder. Similarly actions taken to abort a foetus to save the life of a mother - but the abortion issue is a whole can of worms <>completely unrelated to this one. We can all agree that (for example) George W. Bush is both alive and sentient (I just know that someone's got a oneliner for this). The issue in medical ethics of whether euthanasia/abortion etc constitute murder or even, in some cases, whether you're actualy taking a life are still being debated. So let's leave the non-assassination issues for another, broader thread.

Assassination = killing, this much we're all clear on. The question, then, is whether assassination is murder - whether it crosses that legal/moral/ethical line. I don't believe there's any circumstance under which assassination isn't murder. Some of you are saying that killing a murderous dictator falls under the definition of justifiable killing, manslaughter, whatever you want to call it.

So is this what Bush's concept of pre-emptive action against Saddam is referring to, the concept of regime change? Forget about the actual circumstances of the Iraq war, the lies, mistakes, etc, for a second - the concept of regime change to kill Saddam Hussain, his sons and their aides, assistants and generals, close the torture chambers and rape rooms, 'liberate' the people of Iraq from fear - is this idea/ideal an exemplar of the idea of justifiable killing as assassination?
 
 
Ganesh
12:20 / 29.10.04
I can see no justification for anyone to say that "medical decisions to avoid resuscitation and/or treatment with antibiotics, or to switch off a ventilator, or to 'make X comfortable' by continuing to prescribe and administer opiates in the knowledge that this will likely hasten death", which are both lawful and (on consensus) considered ethical, are murder.

Well, you may see no justification to call this murder, but it's incredibly murky, legally, out-and-out euthanasia being illegal in the UK. The 'lawfulness' or otherwise of continuing to increase morphine dosage, in particular, while considered ethically sound among the majority of doctors, is a particular grey area in terms of the law. The fact that the whole 'making them comfortable' thing generally goes unchallenged does not necessarily mean it's 'lawful' - particularly in the wake of Shipman...

So the 'lawfulness' of certain medical situations is rather more up-for-grabs than you suggest.

Malice? Well, no, but then I can think of several examples of people killing other people with clear planning but without hatred or spite. The Yorkshire Ripper believed he was carrying out the Creator's will, as did the 9/11 hijackers. By Merriam-Webster's definition, does lack of a malicious motivation (however one goes about establishing that) preclude them from having murdered?
 
 
Ganesh
12:23 / 29.10.04
I don't believe there's any circumstance under which assassination isn't murder.

Going by the definition you provided yourself, when it isn't malicious. Was 'regime change' malicious? Not the way Georgie and Tony presented it...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:23 / 29.10.04
Well, Peter Sutcliffe would be covered by "unlawful", at least - the question being again what exactly is meant by "unlawful" - see my noodlings on the just war/just assassination theory above. The US, IIRC, declared Saddam a "valid target" - that is, his neutralisation was an acceptable *strategic*, rather than merely political, goal, and thus would be military action rather than assassination per se - something more like sniping than killing. So, his death would have been notionally lawful and non-malicious. In that case I would not think that that was an ethically just action, because I didn't believe the military action that created that situation was ethical to start with.

If, on the other hand, the option was to remove, say, Pol Pot, and in so doing prevent mass murder, I'm not sure that the case against assassination would be so strong... or more precisely, perhaps, that even though it was morally wrong to kill, it was also morally wrong to allow a state of affairs to continue in which hundreds of thousands of others would be killed.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
22:26 / 29.10.04
Well, you may see no justification to call this murder, but it's incredibly murky, legally, out-and-out euthanasia being illegal in the UK.

Yes, that's why I used the personal pronoun - stating a personal opinion. I'd also point out that the Merriam-Webster definition says especially with malice, not only with malice. Certainly there are different referents in law - killing that isn't legally considered to be murder, manslaughter being the usual.

I believe that assassination is unlawful, in the sense that it is not according to or authorized by law or not sanctioned by official rules. Let's be clear - we're not talking about the moral quagmire of euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion, etc, where the question of the quality of the life being taken (or even whether the 'life' actually qualifies as 'life') is one of the key aspects of the various ongoing debates. We're talking about killing another human being because we believe it would make the world a better place.

Arguments aside for a moment, here's my basic two cents on the subject : history is full of examples of people who carried out such actions believing themselves to be in the right. These decisions operate by positing morality on the sliding scale of rationalisation, whereby the immorality of the deed is subsumed beneath the acceptability of the outcome, and the deed made moral because the cause was just. I don't believe in such a position. To my mind, the cause may be just, and the outcome may be a better world (although, again, history doesn't bear this out, and those who can rationalise one immoral act tend to rationalise others, and so the scale slides still further) - but the original act is still an immoral one. To put it bluntly : even if, in some hypothetical/mythical world, killing Bush saved America, brought about a new age of international relations, paved the way for peace in the Middle East, righted the wrongs of Iraq, and saved the whales, the ozone layer and the day, I believe it would still be wrong to kill him.

I cannot agree with anyone who says that the act of killing would be justified by what it brought about. Unless we accept that the act is immoral, we're saying that it's okay to kill provided we think we're right to kill. Again, history is full of atrocities brought about by people who decided right and wrong was a matter of expedience. When is assassination an acceptable means of political change? It's sometimes understandable. It's never acceptable, and we should never accept it.

The above sounds better if read in the pompous, self-righteous squeak of Lisa Simpson, I think...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:33 / 30.10.04

Arguments aside for a moment, here's my basic two cents on the subject : history is full of examples of people who carried out such actions believing themselves to be in the right. These decisions operate by positing morality on the sliding scale of rationalisation, whereby the immorality of the deed is subsumed beneath the acceptability of the outcome, and the deed made moral because the cause was just. I don't believe in such a position. To my mind, the cause may be just, and the outcome may be a better world (although, again, history doesn't bear this out, and those who can rationalise one immoral act tend to rationalise others, and so the scale slides still further) - but the original act is still an immoral one. To put it bluntly : even if, in some hypothetical/mythical world, killing Bush saved America, brought about a new age of international relations, paved the way for peace in the Middle East, righted the wrongs of Iraq, and saved the whales, the ozone layer and the day, I believe it would still be wrong to kill him.

What you are describing there is Kant's categorical imperative - in essence that if an action is immoral, it is always immoral, and therefore the response should always be the same - the immoral action should be shunned.

So, if a man came to my door and asked if my friend was in the house, I would be morally obliged to tell the truth. If the guy is a hired assassin come to kill my friend, I am still morally obliged to tell the truth, because answering questions truthfully is the right thing to do.

The problem with this is, as Kant to his credit points out, that while two people acting immorally do not cancel each other out, facilitating a further act of immorality (the killing of your friend) is not ideal either.

Sooo.... as I mentioned above, is it not possible to accept that killing of another person, while wrong, is not so great a wrong as failing to kill another person, when the result of that killing would be the saving of many other lives. So, your posit:

These decisions operate by positing morality on the sliding scale of rationalisation, whereby the immorality of the deed is subsumed beneath the acceptability of the outcome, and the deed made moral because the cause was just.

Is not necessarily accurate. One can happily say "I do not believe that killing another human being, for any reason, is moral, and I believe that therefore that the killing of so many people by the Allied forces in World War 2 was not moral, despite the justice of the cause. *However*, given both the aims and the outcome of those acts of killing, they can be seen as horrible acts required to avert consequences of greater moral moral horror." The act is not made moral, but the strength of the argument is recognised as overriding individual moral compunction.

I suggested a model for this above:

However. Let's take the theoretical(but not massively so) example of a dictator who plans to launch a campaign of extermination against a significant portion of his country's population, who are already subject to violent opporession. The generals of this country know that if he is not stopped, this campaign will begin in a month's time. During that month, they conclude that, due to the existence of a large and loyal secret police, it is not going to be possible to remove the dictator by peaceful means. They work out a means of killing the dictator that involves no other casualties. They then reach out to the leaders of the world and deliver assurances that they will stop the cruelties of this dictator, construct the apparatus of a democratic state, normalise relations with the rest of the world, and so on. The leaders of the world in turn give their undertaking that they will, once the deed is done, lend such support that the generals can be confident that their coup will not be overturned - that is, that the assassination will have a lasting effect and will protect the innocent of the nation.


As part of a lenghty discussion of the morally complex idea of the just war. Later, I added:

The US, IIRC, declared Saddam a "valid target" - that is, his neutralisation was an acceptable *strategic*, rather than merely political, goal, and thus would be military action rather than assassination per se - something more like sniping than killing. So, his death would have been notionally lawful and non-malicious. In that case I would not think that that was an ethically just action, because I didn't believe the military action that created that situation was ethical to start with.

If, on the other hand, the option was to remove, say, Pol Pot, and in so doing prevent mass murder, I'm not sure that the case against assassination would be so strong... or more precisely, perhaps, that even though it was morally wrong to kill, it was also morally wrong to allow a state of affairs to continue in which hundreds of thousands of others would be killed.

Any takers?
 
 
Bomb The Past
14:14 / 31.10.04
What you are describing there is Kant's categorical imperative - in essence that if an action is immoral, it is always immoral, and therefore the response should always be the same - the immoral action should be shunned.

The position does not have to be pushed as far as Kant does though. In the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant is grappling with what the force of moral judgements are, and why, as rational beings, we should be committed to morality. The structure of his argument for the categorical imperative necessitates that there is no qualitative distinction to be drawn between the types of act committed since the force of moral judgements is derived from the fact that a universalisation of the underlying maxim will lead to contradiction. This (allegedly) will happen in all cases of supposed immoral actions, whether that be lying, stealing, killing or trolling.

Of course, we don't have to be constrained by the technical strictures of Kant's argument. Jack may disagree and see the logical conclusion of means-ends reasoning as tending towards justifying the unjustifiable, but it does seem possible to draw a line before we reach that point and say flat out: justifying murder is always wrong (that is, murder as premeditated killing). This is much closer to Camus' argument in The Rebel rather than Kant. He thinks there are some things you just have to take an intransigent stand against, and the justification of murder—e.g. 'for the greater good', notably in totalitarian societies—is just one of those things. But, of course, we have to reconfront the sticky issue of what counts as murder, but I think assassination would fall under this heading quite easily.
 
 
Linus Dunce
20:55 / 31.10.04
In that case I would not think that that was an ethically just action, because I didn't believe the military action that created that situation was ethical to start with.

What is meant by "that situation"? The rise of Saddam to power?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:36 / 31.10.04
No - the invasion of Iraq by the US. Since that was unlawful, the decision to declare Saddam a viable military target was also unlawful. However, that brings us to:

But, of course, we have to reconfront the sticky issue of what counts as murder, but I think assassination would fall under this heading quite easily.

If we can assume that murder is a) always morally wrong (not a bad surmise, as the idea of moral wrongness is pretty much hardwired into the term) and b) must therefore never be performed as a matter of moral compulsion, then well and good. However, unless we further add that nobody can morally ever kill another human being (which is a possible), we accept that there is a species of killing which is not murder (manslaughter, euthanasia, act of war, say). If war is declared on a state, does the leader of that state become a valid military target? That is, does premeditated killing of the leader of the state, or for that matter a general, or a captain, or anyone else singled out for their strategic importance to the enemy's capacity to wage war, count as murder or, as suggested above, as a kind of sniping?
 
 
Linus Dunce
21:51 / 01.11.04
No - the invasion of Iraq by the US. Since that was unlawful, the decision to declare Saddam a viable military target was also unlawful. However, that brings us to:

I don't know that I have been brought anywhere yet. Weren't we talking about "ethically just" rather than lawful/unlawful? And is it possible that Saddam's status as a military target could be independent of whatever military action may or may not have occurred in Iraq? He could have been a target without an invasion. Assassination. Where is the causality that cascades, so to speak, the "unlawfulness" of the invasion onto the discrete and so far hypothetical action of killing Saddam?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
01:39 / 02.11.04
Weren't we talking about "ethically just" rather than lawful/unlawful?

For more on the use of "lawful/unlawful" and its impact on ethics and morality see the discussion of murder/killing above, starting with JtB and going through Ganesh and others.

If Saddam had been a target of another government without a state of war, it would have been a different situation, and one I think discussed upthread as well - because I suspect you can't have a military target without a war, and so the killing would clearly not be comparable to "sniping", but rather to political violence - in the same way that the assassination of Allende, say, was not designed to reduce the capacity of a nation with which a state of war existed to pursue that war.

So, I think one point you might be snagging on is that, whereas the death of Saddam is hypothetical and at this point unlikely, the decision that he was a valid target was not.

The other point, I now realise, is that you seem to be reading the precepts awry. The decision to declare Saddam a military target did not cascade unlawfulness onto the action. The action was unlawful because unratified by the United Nations, and as such the decision to declare Saddam a military target is further complicated (see the role of law in distinguishing murder from killing above). The broader question is, if in a war (legal, just, for discussion of which terms see above) it is acceptable to target a fuel dump, or somebody directing fire against your troops, then (the days of Napoleon or even Sextus Pompeius being gone) how far up can you go before it becomes political rather than military violence?
 
 
Ganesh
20:09 / 03.11.04
Now. Right now.

(Apologies. Inappropriately venting.)
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
22:42 / 03.11.04
(apologies. came here to make same inappropriate vent comment. )
 
 
LykeX
16:02 / 04.11.04
Let's have a show of hands. How many other people came here to post a similar comment?

*raises hand*
 
 
Chiropteran
16:58 / 04.11.04
I didn't plan to comment, but I came here specifically to see how many others did...

~L
 
 
unheimlich manoeuvre
01:48 / 05.11.04
*cough*
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
05:32 / 05.11.04
Essentially, this:

One can happily say "I do not believe that killing another human being, for any reason, is moral, and I believe that therefore that the killing of so many people by the Allied forces in World War 2 was not moral, despite the justice of the cause. *However*, given both the aims and the outcome of those acts of killing, they can be seen as horrible acts required to avert consequences of greater moral moral horror." The act is not made moral, but the strength of the argument is recognised as overriding individual moral compunction.

...boils down to "does the end justify the means?" It's a very old argument, and nothing you've said in this post really adds anything to that. Agreed, the hypothetical example of the generals killing their tyrant to prevent slaughter and bring about a peaceful age is a potentially (I say potentially because the morality of the act is what we're discussing) morally dubious act to achieve a noble aim.

This is an issue of right and wrong. Either the taking of another human life is wrong, pure and simple, or it isn't. The justification of the act because the motives/cause is just is a sliding scale of moral rationalisation - making the means good because the end is such. Now, were someone to assassinate the hypothetical tyrant and bring about that golden age, and were they to acknowledge that an immoral act had been committed and agree to accept whatever consequences were deemed appropriate, I'd consider their position ethical - the hypothetical assassin judges hir own position morally untenable, despite the positive outcome, and offers hirself for the possible censure of society. The more usual position is that the wrongdoer decides, arbitrarily and usually unilaterally, that hir immoral action is made moral by the cause, and that as a consequence ze has not committed an immoral act. Ze then sees nothing to apologise for and no reason why ze should accept the consequence of having carried out the action. In many historical cases the above is true despite the fact that the action itself actually failed in leading to the positive outcome. In the example, the generals kill their leader to save their country and many lives, but the new leader is equally tyrannical, and six months later the pogroms proceed as planned by Tyrant A; the generals protest to the outside world that the killing of Tyrant A was still morally justified because the cause was just, despite the end not having been achieved.
 
 
Linus Dunce
21:55 / 05.11.04
Sorry Haus, not with you. You still seem -- to me -- to have used "ethically just" and "unlawful" interchangeably.

The decision to declare Saddam a military target did not cascade unlawfulness onto the action

No, that is likely correct, but that is not what I meant. I was following on from our earlier dialogue:

LD: What is meant by "that situation"? The rise of Saddam to power?

TS-S: No - the invasion of Iraq by the US. Since that was unlawful, the decision to declare Saddam a viable military target was also unlawful.

So, given the context, I had in mind the lawfulness of the invasion cascading onto to the lawfulness of targeting Saddam. (Or, rather, the ethical justice.) Not the decision to declare Saddam a military target.

But that is a minor point I think. What I'd most like to talk about is the difference between "lawful" and "ethically just" and how it relates to the difference between killing and murder. I think that, in short, one can use concepts of ethical justice to distinguish between killing and murder. But the law is merely a simulacrum of ethical justice; an inherently clumsy attempt to create a finite set of imperatives out of an infinite set of possibilities. So the law will always be a very suspect benchmark. Capital punishment, for example, is lawful in many places, but is it ethically just?

Also, I would disagree that a context of declared war is necessary for a target to be military. US personnel shooting at Japanese planes over Pearl Harbour were not engaged in political killings.

Skipping over this to what you describe as the broader question, I'm not sure how far up one can go before a killing is political. I suspect that here too it would be dificult to create an imperative. The head of state of the US is commander-in-chief of the armed forces and therefore, I should think, a valid military target. In other countries, the two positions are quite separate ...
 
  

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