January 29, 2001

1:12 PM

GOP measureto allow for our govt to assassinate those deemed worthy of it. introduced by Bob Barr in Senate today. I assume they mean non-Americans?
posted by Postroad (19 comments total)

Here's a link to the bill on Thomas.
posted by rcade at 1:19 PM on January 29, 2001

The non-assassination rule always seemed weird to me. They can bomb a country, but not actually try to kill the leader?
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:22 PM on January 29, 2001

I'm not a big fan of this. However, I think it would be better if we took out Saddam instead of using sanctions that kill thousands of children. We probably shouldn't do either, but I don't have a better solution to offer.
posted by quirked at 1:24 PM on January 29, 2001

This is scary. There is nothing in that bill that states who the US gov't can and can't assassinate.
posted by Neb at 1:27 PM on January 29, 2001

No, but then there never was.

It's ok; it concerns the military, who cannot operate within our national borders without violating Posse Comitatus.

Violating PC tends to get Colonels and Generals court martialed; they're *very* serious about that.
posted by baylink at 1:36 PM on January 29, 2001

I'm not a big fan of this or Bob Barr either. He's the one that was calling for impeachment back in '93 if I recall correctly.
posted by trox at 1:38 PM on January 29, 2001

The non-assassination rule makes a certain amount of sense if you think about it.

I mean, why should we get outraged when they assassinate our leaders if we have no problem assassinating theirs?

It's somewhat funny that Bush is pushing for a moral-based leadership when he's seems to be quite blatantly flouting the entire 'do unto others...' tenet with the introduction of this bill.

It's not like we couldn't have pulled off any assassinations before - but this just publicly announces the fact that we approve of such practices and that we find them to be perfectly acceptable.
posted by dgallo at 1:46 PM on January 29, 2001

I'm sorry, I seem to be missing something. The article clearly blames this on GWB, but it fails to link him in any way to the bill.

And the entire article is so biased that it's almost hard to read. If this is the best we can do to cast stones at Dubya then why bother?
posted by y6y6y6 at 1:51 PM on January 29, 2001

The US effectively abandoned a meaningful Posse Comitatus act when we sent the military into the War on Drugs. So yeah, I can see them doing Israeli style military assassinations on private citizens.
posted by norm at 1:52 PM on January 29, 2001

Neb, you're borrowing trouble. If a murder is committed in the US, then the state law on murder would apply. The federal government doesn't have jurisdiction. All states have laws against murder.

I'm pretty sure that the law forbidding assassination is fairly recent. IIRC it was passed in the 1960's as a response to a couple of failed attempts against Castro.

I know of one case where a major foreign leader was deliberately killed by Americans.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 1:58 PM on January 29, 2001

"If a murder is committed in the US, then the state law on murder would apply. The federal government doesn't have jurisdiction. All states have laws against murder."

Remind me, how much time did the National Guardsmen that killed those students at Kent State serve.

Oh, no time at all?

Hmmm.
posted by Outlawyr at 2:20 PM on January 29, 2001

Actually, there are federal murder cases. For instance, if you kill a postal worker. But I think that the broad language of the bill (it doesn't actually say "assasinate") is indicative of the fact that a number of things can be done to bring about the removal, as it were, of a foreign leader. Whether or not the U.S. "assasinated" South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, the government had a role in his overthrow and death.
posted by thescoop at 2:22 PM on January 29, 2001

Whoo Hoo! My site's been MeFi'ed! Well, kinda. I started work at THOMAS a week ago.
posted by MrMoonPie at 2:27 PM on January 29, 2001

If you're really interested in the Kent State episode rather than just in rhetoric, read this. As with so many other things, reality was more complex than a slogan.

There was a grand jury investigation. It appears it was flawed, but our constitution doesn't really permit anything else. The Constitution requires approval from a grand jury for any indictment on a major criminal offense.

The grand jury did not bring in indictments on any of the Guards. It found that there was plausible reason to believe that the Guards were in fear for their lives.

The American criminal justice system is not perfect. Sometimes criminals go free and sometimes innocent people are convicted. But Kent State is not an example of government employees being permitted to kill civilians because they were federal employees. It's simply a case where the grand jury wasn't impartial. That happens. It's unfortunate, but there's really no other answer which is better.

posted by Steven Den Beste at 3:39 PM on January 29, 2001

The idea behind the no-assassination rule, as far as I can tell, comes from philosophical ideas about the nature of war. I think it was Hobbes (or, um, maybe Rousseau? It's been a while.) who said that a nation as a political entity cannot be at war with a person, only with another nation, so any direct assassination of an individual who is not a citizen nation X by nation X is murder. It's the same sort of idea that protects prisoners of war as I understand it: once a person surrenders, that person is no longer dealt with as part of the enemy war-effort, and so must be afforded the same basic human rights as the rest of us. Similarly, an individual person, whoever that person is, has human rights so long as we are dealing with the person, not a unit of an army or some such.

I'm think, though, that if the person is actively carrying out attacks on a nation, regardless of whether or not he is part of an army, that constitutes him/her as a threat to national security and so justifies the killing of that person to the extent that it can be justified.
posted by krakedhalo at 3:40 PM on January 29, 2001

This is the only reasonable thing I've ever heard Bob Barr take credit for. In a day and age when even a handful of dead American soldiers can stop a war from occuring, dictators know that it is easy to take on the US. You just threaten and posture and then kill a few Americans and there: you've beaten the world's last superpower. Heck, the Somalis did it (basically) and the Chinese know that we'd never risk a single soldier to protect Taiwan or the Phillipines. If there was some risk to the dictators personally, maybe they'd think twice about attempting to pick fights with us. Heck, it's much more reasonable than sanctions- instead of killing hundreds of thousands of innocents and not accomplishing anything, assasination would kill only a handful and (possibly) even achieve limited political goals.
posted by louie at 4:10 PM on January 29, 2001

I'm think, though, that if the person is actively carrying out attacks on a nation, regardless of whether or not he is part of an army, that constitutes him/her as a threat to national security and so justifies the killing of that person to the extent that it can be justified.

I have no idea what this justifies stuff means. Very vague.

So what's to stop some Ollie North type from interpreting this to mean its ok to assassinate Castro? another Allende? some peasant community leader who is trying to stop fumigation of his people's crops in Colombia, etc? or for that matter, anybody!

Once you open the door...

Is this better than sanctions? I don't know. Both ideas suck. But why would you think that either one will solve the problem?

In both cases, violence is being used as a solution, which as we sould have learned by now, only makes things worse.

posted by locombia at 8:19 PM on January 29, 2001

It's always reassuring to know that I could be a potential target of state-sponsored terrorism.
posted by lagado at 9:44 PM on January 29, 2001

Personally, I think Bob Barr has the right idea -- as long as he's willing to
go all the way.
posted by Dirjy at 9:48 PM on January 29, 2001