Moral, Legal, Political, and Practical

Moral, Legal, Political, And Practical Dimensions of Assassination

Political assassination is a very old and hard to tackle problem, which caused innumerable victims throughout history. Due to the many forms of political violence and murder which exist, it is very hard to define and to categorize as an act. The variety of motives and causes of political assassinations also make classification difficult. It is generally supposed that the most common motive is the struggle for political power between different opponents. In this case, the target of the assassination is usually a very powerful or influential individual, who hold a very important political position: a king in the older times or a president in the more recent periods. However, political assassinations happen for many other reasons as well, and sometimes target persons who may be influential from an ideological point-of-view, although they lack political power. The assassination for power reasons usually aims at eliminating the direct political opponents in order to ascend to power, or the indirect, ideological opponents- a thing that usually happens during undemocratic regimes, such as totalitarianism and communism. Assassinations for power reasons are more likely to happen in countries which are politically unstable and in which democracy is not fully developed.

However, political assassinations happen for reasons different from ascension to power as well. Some of these other reasons are exemplified by famous cases of murder, such as that of president Abraham Lincoln who was killed in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth. Although the theories related to Lincoln's murder vary considerably with respect to the motive of the crime and the number of individuals involved in it, it is generally held as a fact that the murder of the president was a conspiracy initiated either by Booth alone, or by him and other Southern opponents who strongly disagreed with Lincoln' policy which advocated equal rights for both white and black people. In this case therefore, the assassination took place for political reasons, but these were obviously doubled by a racism, and not necessarily by power related reasons.

Terrorism is another case of political violence, but which is generally aimed at an entire system or government, and which usually targets civilians.

Thus, overall, for the reasons mentioned above, and for many others as well the history of political assassination goes back a long way and it is quite overwhelming in its number of incidences.

As Feliks Gross documents, the number of assassination and assassination attempts in the entire history of the United States is impressive:

According to the research prepared for the Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence by Professor Rita James Simon, since 1789, the entire history of the United States records eighty-one assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, all against officeholders. Nine of these, of which five were successful, were directed against presidents or candidates (high-level assassinations).We learn also from the Commission's Task Force I report that the higher the office the higher the probability of an attempt of assassination. However, of the approximately 1,100 men elected to the United States Senate in its entire history, two were assassinated; of the 8,350 congressmen, three were assassinated, and there were seven unsuccessful attempts, five, however, in one single attempt in 1954."

Harlow also identifies the origin of the term "assassination" as coming from an Ismaili sect, which was renown for the violence with which it killed their adversaries:

The term itself, 'assassination,' is generally traced to an Ismaili Shi'ite sect that operated in Syria and Iran in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Known as the hashishiyun (whence the designation "assassins"), the members of this group were reputed to slay their opponents with a bravado that was popularly attributed to their use of drugs. More recently, however, the legal and political definitions of assassination have been debated and refined in order to accommodate both the pressures of contemporary circumstances and, just as significantly, the demands of the system that seeks to contain the challenges to its authority within its legal and political jurisdiction."

Thus, political assassination seems to have an entire tradition throughout history. Consequently, many historians and political scientists were concerned with defining and conceptualizing assassination, both for theoretical purposes and so as to be able to place it from a legal point-of-view.

For instance, assassination was briefly defined as "the deliberate, extralegal killing of an individual for political purposes" by Havens, Leiden and Schmitt in the Politics of Assassination. However, a complete definition of assassination would be much more complicated, since, as it was already noticed, its forms and motives vary widely.

Feliks Gross attempted a classification of the main types of political assassination, according to its mobiles, in his book entitled the Revolutionary Party: Essays in Sociology and Politics. According to Gross, political assassinations can be said to fall roughly into three major categories: assassination attempted or committed by a deranged, mentally ill person, sultanism or assassination of a direct opponent to power and finally individual terror which aims at weakening an entire system or government:

1. Political assassination as an isolated act, frequently carried out by a deranged person. The assassins of American presidents, perhaps with the exception of the Puerto Rican nationalists who attacked President Truman, "evidenced serious mental illness," according to a careful study of the Task Force of the National Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence.

2. Sultanism, assassination of competitors to power. Related to the latter are assassinations in order to secure power for a new elite, to remove the one who controls political power.

3. Individual terror, systematic and tactical assassination directed against the representatives of the ruling groups or government with an objective to weaken the government, the political system, destroy the existing legitimacy, affect ideological, political, and social change. Individual terror is generally a tactic for achieving power; mass terror has been applied in the past and present to consolidate and maintain power."

Thus, this classification is to be taken as the basis for analyzing any act of political assassination. Also, as Gross observes, any political murder has three variables, which are related to the specific context and to the specific actors which take part in the assassination:

Three variables have to be considered in an act of tactical political assassination: 1) the group or political party, which supports the actor; 2) the personality of the actor; 3) the social-political situation to which the party and the actor respond. All three variables are closely interrelated and not isolated factors. Therefore, the act should also be analyzed within a triple context of these variables."

The definition and the characteristics of political murders as they were summarized above are only the facts that can be noticed after a surface analysis of the phenomenon. An in-depth analysis however, presupposes an inquiry into the different dimensions of assassination: moral, political, legal and practical.

First of all, assassination as a form of killing is a morally unjustifiable act. The basis of all national and international laws were laid according the moral laws as established by theology or by different ideologies. Thus, the primary discontent with assassination is that any act of violence against another human being is seen as immoral.

If we look at political assassinations in the light of their moral and social dimensions, we notice that assassinations are present as acts of political violence even in the remotest historical epochs and that, at that time, this type of political behavior was tolerated and even accepted as natural. With time, due to humanization and due to the progress of Western civilization, political assassinations were no longer seen as legitimate or justifiable acts, because of the ethical norms brought by many religions and because of the enforcement of new laws regarding acceptable political behavior and admissible policies. Nevertheless, it is plainly remarkable that in spite of the progress of civilization and in spite of the democratic forms of government that were established in most of the countries, assassinations are still a major social and political problem all over the world. Also, the acts of terrorism seem to have intensified considerably over time, and have generated further political conflicts and violence.

This seemingly unexplainable fact can be elucidated when analyzing the evolution of morality and its main principles and tenants in the course of time; although the main religions established a high morality during the former ages, modernism and postmodernism determined the instability of moral values and a lack of confidence in ethics.

Oleg Zinam comments in his article entitled Terrorism and Violence in the Light of a Theory of Discontent and Frustration, on the two extreme social stances with regard to morality and ideals: the absolute pragmatism, according to which any means are justifiable while pursuing some definite purpose, and the infinite morality which considers that unmoral means are not excusable, no matter the end:

on the level of volition, people face a dichotomy between absolute pragmatism and infinite morality. The former position sees all means justifiable by a lofty end, whereas the latter contends that no wrong means can ever be justified by an end, no matter how desirable. The line of legitimacy, separating socially approvable use of force from violence, cannot be effectively drawn without an agreement on what constitutes the optimum amount of force necessary to maintain social order and to protect human rights against encroachment. A society subscribing to infinite morality which condemns all use of force as immoral is doomed no less than a society accepting the absolute pragmatism of tyrants. "

As Oleg Zinam proposes, these two extreme social attitudes to morality are equally unprofitable to the societies that adopt them. The attitude of absolute pragmatism can easily lead to the acceptance of political assassinations, as long as such acts may help the final political purpose. An example of absolute pragmatism can be the regime initiated by Hitler, who ordered the extermination of all Jews in an attempt to "purify" the human race by excluding anyone who did not fill in the Arian ideal. The same thing happened with other executions throughout the ages, like the witch hunt for example, when the witches were seen as a threat to society and the authors of dreadful crimes. The opposite social attitude would be that of the infinite morality, which can not find a political assassination to be justifiable by any end. Again this attitude is not tenable because of the impossibility to completely abolish political conflict from society, and because of the need for determent of some policies and political organizations.

Zinam also contends that the present postmodernist era of civilization is socially characterized by anomie, or the lack of guiding moral standard or values. This causes instability and lack of social order and results in dangerous acts of political violence such as individual assassinations or organized murders like terrorism.

According to him, the present times are inclined towards "dispassionate rationality," that is, towards a loss of idealist principles. In these conditions, social order is threatened because it is no longer founded on a common set pf norms:

The present tendency is toward 'irrational passion for dispassionate rationality.' Deliberate avoidance of values has greatly contributed to anomie, the 'twilight of authority,' indifference, boredom, and alienation. And yet, without understanding and deep feelings for values, which must be internalized to make society viable, no social order can persist. Social cohesion depends on adherence to a common normative system, 'it does not come about automatically and cannot be taken for granted: it requires continuous attention and concern.' 'This society has a shortage of things to believe in, 'and "new society wide ideals must be forged. People do not conduct themselves ethically unless they believe ethical conduct has some merit[...]"

Thus, in the contemporary context assassination is still possible because of the loosening of the moral principles that could normally forestall it. It is obvious that political murder is immoral when it is regarded as the deliberate attack on another human being. However, many of the political scientists have proposed that it may be justifiable as long as it serves an imperative and important purpose, related to political or social safety. In this perspective, some of the deliberate assassinations or attempts at assassination against political leaders who are considered dangerous to either the national or international political context, such as Saddam Hussein for example, are accepted as long as they do not impinge on the established laws.

However, allowing exceptions to the general moral rule that considers that assassinations are not admissible would be to actually admit that murder as such is justifiable. As Robert Friedlander notices in his article Terrorism and Political Violence: Do the Ends Justify the Means?, terrorism and assassinations are either moral for everyone, or moral for no one:

No cause,' argues French author Albert Camus, 'justifies the death of the innocent,' and terrorism is the slaughter of the innocent. No matter how we want to look at it, terrorism is a moral problem in addition to being a criminal act. As newspaper columnist, Father Andrew Greely has written: 'Either terror is moral for everyone or it is moral for no one.' To save oneself by killing another is destructive not only of law and legal systems but of civilized society itself. Our Anglo-American common law system is based upon the worth, the sanctity of one human life, and this conforms to the basic human rights principles which have come to be accepted in public international law since the end of World War II. The admonition of legal philosopher Edmund Cahn still rings true: 'Whoever kills one kills mankind'"

While analyzing the program which was meant to lead to the assassination of Fidel Castro from an ethical point-of-view, John Orman proposed that the morality of an assassination act can be measured on a scale which ranges from just slightly immoral to absolutely immoral:

By most religious standards, including the Judeo-Christian ethic, it is immoral to murder another human being. When one head of state plots the death of another, the character of the act remains essentially immoral. However, there are degrees of complicity about this basically immoral act, and there are extenuating circumstances that make some offenses less immoral than others. The rightness or wrongness of a political assassination attempt can be thought of as existing on a continuum ranging from slightly immoral to absolutely immoral. The following discussion will consider some of the extenuating circumstances."

This view however does not correspond in any way to the Christian view according to which, there are no degrees of morality or immorality, but only definite notions. The supposed involvement of president Kennedy in the plot against Castro complicates the matter, since, as Orman also suggests, there is no explicit law that the president may not engage in or dispose the death of some political adversary.

However, there are different stances with regard to the legitimacy of political assassinations. According to Ben-Yehuda for example, the moral precept of the Bible that prohibits murder of another human being is not necessarily applicable universally. In his view, assassinations can actually be interpreted sometimes as "positive deviances," which are justified socially as a form of alternative justice:

The biblical injunction 'Thou Shall Not Murder' could be interpreted to mean that taking another human being's life is a universal crime. It is not. Such an act is defined differentially in different times and/or cultures (Nettler, 1982; Lester, 1986). Killing other people is not always interpreted as a negative and stigmatized act that is criminalized - it can certainly be interpreted as positive deviance."

In the light of Ben-Yehuda's interpretation, it can be said that, although assassinations are almost invariably considered as unlawful from a strictly moral point-of-view, they can be seen as justifiable from the social perspective, as patterns of behavior identifiable throughout the ages. Thus, according to Yehuda, although ideally assassinations should not exist, they are nevertheless a common form of behavior. The same applies to the motivations usually used by the assassins to justify their murders or murderous plans: vengeance, treason and so on. The example chosen by Yehuda in his study are revelatory: he comments on the assassinations committed by the underground Jewish groups during the first decades of the twentieth century, who claimed that they used intentional murders as a tactic that would help the British to occupy Palestine. Their tactic however, included, under different pretexts, the murder of Jewish "traitors," of British allies as well as Palestinians. In this case it is plain to notice that the claims used were not entirely true, and that political assassinations usually make more victims that it were necessary, if it can be said that any of them were either a political or a social requisite.

While it is plain to see that assassinations can indeed be interpreted in this way from a social point-of-view, and that they may be seen as a common form of behavior, it is hard to agree that they should be considered also as normal phenomena in the world of men. As Yehuda goes to demonstrate further, the so-called reasons for assassination used by the Jewish groups in the particular case mentioned are many times non-existent, and therefore the acts of violence are purely a means of manifesting discontent and frustration:

The claims made by the assassins [...]ranged from specific and detailed accusations to instances where no specific charges were made, and the 'reasons' given were phrased in very broad terms. I tried to divide the "reasons" by the order of frequency in which they were presented. The category 'traitor/squealer' was used most frequently (91.2%) in association with Jewish targets. The category 'revenge' was used most frequently (63.2%) in association with British targets and 20.4% of the time in association with Arab targets. Thus, the structure and content of the claims made by the groups that were involved in assassinations, implies that these groups justified their assassinations on the ground that they were involved in a struggle for national independence. That struggle necessitated the use of various forms of killings, of non-Jews (as 'enemies') and of Jews, too, in an attempt to purify the inner group and redefine its moral boundaries."

From the various points-of-view that were presented with regard to the moral dimensions of assassination, a few conclusions can be drawn. First of all, there is no unitary interpretation of political murders from an ethical point-of-view: some of the political scientists find no justification for assassinations while other allow for exceptions from this rule, or even consider them as positive in certain contexts. However, it can be said that there is no justification as such for political assassinations: both in older and in modern times this act preserves its significance as an immoral and unbalancing social act, which, most of the times, causes the death of too many people, and sometimes of completely innocent people. These violent acts, in spite of their claims, are not necessary as such, and allowing them to occur would be to agree to murder from a moral point-of-view. On the other hand, assassinations are explainable from a psychological or a sociological point-of-view, as integral parts of man's political behavior of all times. As long as politics and government are based on certain ideologies and laws on principles of morality, there will always be dissidents, either individuals or groups that disagree and feel the need to impose their own ideas on society. Political assassinations are thus very hard to stop, since, even though so many moral objections can be brought against them, there are always individuals who believe that the real moral and social evil would be to continue in a certain state and with a certain form of government. Thus, from a moral point-of-view, the analysis of political assassination seems to revolve in a circle: although it is plain that we, as human always condemn murder as such, according to some, political assassination is a different type of murder, which is justifiable and even imperative in some cases. The arguments that favor assassination are however very weak. Politics can be said to be a game, and almost always a game for power which sometimes changes its own rules so as to achieve more power. If the political assassinations are to be considered as a feature of human behavior, then it is plain that in all cases some kind of power related design is envisaged, if we consider that the first forms of political violence acknowledged historically were all motivated by a certain instinct for mastery or power.

The moral perspective on political murder is intrinsically related to its political dimension. As assassination contravenes to the moral principles and ideals as set by religion, it also contravenes to the principles of democracy, which, as form of government, seems the closest to the religious moral order. Democracy is at present the universally accepted type of rule, although it still has many variants according to the country or region where it develops. It can be said that the beginnings of American democracy were the first steps towards the establishment of the Western civilization. Its major principles are well-known: equality between people, respect for human rights, equal rights to vote between individuals, general and individual independence while maintaining an equilibrium of forces and adhering to common principles. As compared to the tyrannical or monarchical political regimes of the past, democracy is a sure advancement towards civilization. Also, it seems obvious that political assassinations were much more frequent during the totalitarian regimes, where there were great discrepancies between the power and the rights of two individuals. The king for example, was recognized as a supreme ruler who had absolute power over his people, and naturally, in a game of power, absolute rights of government were very desirable.

Nonetheless, although the shift to democracy was an almost overwhelming change, the political killings did not stop. Besides the acts of terrorism which seem to be increasing in the contemporary world, democracy itself or the policy that is meant to popularize and spread it, have made their own victims. The question whether the end justifies the means, or whether the search for universal democracy and non-violence justifies the assertion of democracy through force and violence, reappears. In fact, the struggle between democracy and other regimes is significant for the context of the political assassination. As a matter of fact, political assassinations are among the acts that most contribute to the erosion of the democratic principles, since they infringe upon the basic human rights of freedom and independence.

Roland Stromberg quotes Bernot Marrat (1942) on the subject of democracy, who observes that democracy is most often undermined by separatism and the groups that choose to destroy the homogeneity of nations. In a narrower context, it can be argued that the acts of political violence are also attempts at destroying homogeneity and democracy:

The enemies of democracy in the modern world are primarily the forces that tend to destroy the homogeneity of nations, and introduce principles of division which go beyond differences of opinion, and rend the society asunder by conflicts of doctrine, or of real or alleged interest, in which there is no common ground to form the starting-point, and the finishing point, of argument."

Although this view of democracy is very pertinent, Stromberg notes that there have been opinions which held that actually the wrong thing would be to attempt to impart or impose democracy to other civilizations, which are rather based on diversity and plurality and are not formed after the homogenous model of the Western world. Such an attempt would be unsuccessful and at the same time an undemocratic method. It may be that the case of political assassinations is very similar to this, in the sense that they are attempts at disrupting the homogeneity of society at a certain given time, because homogeneity seems harmful for some reason or other.

Stromberg also he quotes Bertrand Russell and his pertinent observation that democracy is based on two antagonistic principles, which may be the cause of its own failure as a political form of government. Thus, on the one hand, democracy advocates individual independence and self-reliance, but at the same time it advocates the individual judgment must concord with the decision of the majority:

Democracy, if it is to succeed, needs a wide diffusion of two qualities which seem, at first sight, to tend in opposite directions. On the one hand, men must have a certain degree of self-reliance [...] but on the other hand men must be willing to submit to the decision of the majority when it goes against them. Either of these conditions may fail. "

In this context, political assassinations and all the attempts at intervening and troubling the homogeneity of opinion appear as political acts against democracy. At the same time, it is obvious that the democratic regimes sometimes go against their own principles, as it is for example the case with all governance and political dominance of a single party in a certain country, for a large period of time. Stromberg exemplifies this situation with the almost totalitarian rule of the Mexican Revolutionary Party, which strove to maintain power through almost every kind of illegal political act, from fraudulent vote counting to attempts at influencing the media, and culminating to an actual assassination of one of the candidates of the opposition:

When international public opinion forced free elections, and it began to seem that the PRI might actually lose or prove embarrassingly short of a huge majority, the party resorted to tactics reminiscent of earlier North American city "bosses": intimidation of voters, disqualification of opposition voters, fraudulent counting of votes, ballot-box stuffing. The government used its powers to deny opposition groups access to news media. In 1994 the assassination of a presidential candidate evidently grew out of this attempt of the old guard to hang on to power at any cost."

The example cited above is very important in the attempt to construe the notion of political assassination in a democratic context: although the principles of democracy are equally idealistic to those of Christian morality for example, the incessant struggles for power lead to the same type of fraudulent situations and unjust methods as those that were used during the totalitarian regimes. Also, there are other very significant targets of the political assassination which seem even more serious than the cases in which a direct opponent to power or an important political actor is murdered. The situations in which writers were assassinated are very important for the case which has just been signaled. The freedom of opinion and the liberty of speech are essential to a fully democratic regime, but these have been often violated by the murders of authors who have attempted ideological resistance to certain systems and governments. As Barbara Harlow notes, it should be remembered that such murders have not only a great civilian significance, but also a very important political one:

The much-heralded 'death of the author,' then, the assassination of writers and authors, cannot always be reduced or for that matter sublimated to a metaphorical or even literary phenomenon. Rather, the assassination of the writer is a historical and political event with very tangible cultural, critical and material consequences for theorizing the subsequent participation in and reclamation of the work of intellectual figures who have been instrumental in organizing resistance to systems and discourses of domination, and whose life work had been committed to redefining the very 'politics of shed blood.'

Harlow details her commentary with the example of the assassination of Eduardo Mondlane who had overtly engaged in political writing and in the attempt to encourage the African people to fight for their freedom and to believe in their national and traditional values. This type of political killing is especially savage since the victim is not directly involved or connected to the political game. Also, in these cases democracy is seriously violated since the assassination of public personalities such as writers or intellectuals is usually directly ordered by the rightful government or even by the president himself, therefore the argument that the murder is done by the dissenters no longer exists.

John Orman wrote a specific study on the subject of presidential involvement in assassination plots, and gave a lot of attention to the murder of Fidel Castro by the CIA, and to the hypothesis that president John Kennedy was involved in any way in the assassination. The number of methods attempted by the assassins and the number of conspiracies against Castro is very significant:

According to the Church Report there were eight CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro between August 1960 and November 1963. The plots called for poison pens, a contaminated diving suit with disease-bearing fungus, exploding exotic seashells, poison pills, thallium salts to depilate Castro's beard, and Mafia hit men. The plots raise serious questions about the CIA's effectiveness and ability to initiate and carry out a program of action once adopted. More important, the plots raise crucial questions about the accountability of presidents and control of the CIA."

Whether or not Kennedy had anything to do with this assassination plot cannot be easily elucidated. However, the important thing is that a legal, state organization engaged in completely undemocratic action through various means. The number and inventiveness of the methods intended for killing Castro, sheds light on the almost paranoid dimension of political assassination. The political leader who is pursued becomes a mere target to attack, and loses his qualities as an individual. Thus, politically speaking, assassination is an act of violence directed towards adversaries of any type, either direct political candidates, or ideological opponents with public influence, such as writers. It is very important that such attacks can come from dissidents or separatists who oppose the present system of government, or from the rightful governmental power to the opponents inside the system.

Both motives for violence are certainly inadmissible and likely to generate more conflict.

Jerry Fresia comments on the dramatic events that took place during the program of political assassinations initiated by the United States in Laos, where over a hundred thousand were killed under mere suspicion of communism:

Thomas Clines, were then transferred to Laos where Shackley was made Deputy Chief of Station for the CIA in Laos. While in Laos, Shackley and Clines arranged air support for one Vang Pao in a three-sided war in which Vang Pao was fighting to gain control of the Laotian opium trade. Vang Pao, in turn, helped Shackley and Clines, by financing the training of indigenous Hmong tribesmen in guerrilla war tactics for use in "unconventional warfare" activities which included the art of political assassination. A Special Operations Group, supervised by Shackley and Clines, was created which was a multi-service or Joint Task Force for unconventional warfare. General John K. Singlaub supervised the political assassination program in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. One of his deputies was Oliver North, a major in the Marines at the time. The Deputy Air Wing commander for the Special Operations Group was Air Force General Richard Secord. Between 1966 and 1971, this operation, using the secret Hmong tribesmen unit funded by Vang Pao's opium trade, assassinated over 100,000 suspected communists ("non-combatant village mayors, book-keepers, clerks and other civilian bureaucrats") in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. In 1969, Vang Pao's opium trade increased substantially as did the money flowing from it to the Special Operations Group as Santo Trafficante, from the initial Operation 40 team, worked with Vang Pao to become the number one importer and distributor of China White heroin in the United States. "

In cases such as the one explained by Fresia above, it becomes clear that the political assassinations which presuppose the killing of a specific group of individuals who adhere to a targeted belief (in this case Communism), are among the most tragic, since they made a very great number of victims. This kind of political behavior, apart from being violent is highly intolerant, and this is probably one of the worst parts of the matter.

Many or most of the political killings and acts of violence were committed because of intolerance of opinion or doctrine. In modern times, with the development of an international policy, these practices have become rather common and usually involve one country with its governmental system against another country,

At the political level, assassination and conflicts are almost always caused by divergences of opinion and of political practice among different people. The lack of tolerance and the need for power are the main drives of all forms of political violence. However, it is quite difficult to suggest an arrangement that would satisfy all the nations, in keeping with the principles of democracy.

As John Orman observes, political assassinations can be construed as acceptable from an ethical and political point-of-view only when they target specific tyrannicides, of one people against its dictator, as it is the case of Hitler and Trujillo:

Some would suggest that the resolution of the moral problem depends upon who is being assassinated and who is doing the assassinating. Rositzke argues that the plotting of Hitler's murder by German Jews or German generals, and the assassination of the Dominican dictator Trujillo are 'at least open moral questions even by professed American standards of morality.' Although Germans were obviously not the only people to suffer under Hitler, for Rositzke, the defense of "tyrannicide" only approaches possible morality when it involves "the murder of a dictator by his own people. 'Thus assassination plots against foreign leaders cannot be absolved by the 'tyrannicide' arguments."

As Kristen Eichensehr also notices, assassination should be in any case, avoided or replaced by trial or arrests, but if these means are not available in a given context, one may resort to assassination after carefully analyzing the benefits and disadvantages of such an action:

Publicized U.S. employment of targeted killings in the war on terror made a return to the previous era of credible moral superiority in rhetoric impossible. The preferable alternative to targeted killing of enemies should always be arrest and trial, but in cases where those alternative measures are not available, targeted killing may be the next best alternative. However, careful calculation of the risks and benefits of employing the policy must be weighed before it is implemented. The threat of reciprocity and repercussions for society are serious considerations that are often not given enough weight, and the policy should be re-examined continually to evaluate its effectiveness in decreasing the threat to the employing state's citizens. In some instances, targeted killings are both legal and effective, but for societies founded on principles of human rights, they should never be the first choice. "

It is true that from a strictly political point-of-view, some of the targeted killings may be somewhat justifiable, as in the case of dictators such as Hitler, or in the case of important terrorists. No human society should have assassination among its lawful acts, no matter the situation. Although, as a rule, the majority of assassinations claim to have certain definite and imperative political purposes, a brief analysis of some of the best known political murders will reveal the fact that assassinations do not usually work as a means to ward off or destroy certain regimes, and many times have other than political purposes.

Therefore, from a political point-of-view assassination of the political opponents is a serious departure from the democratic system. Besides the assassinations that take place in a national context, there are also those which are considered to be international conflicts. Such an example would be the assassination plots that the United States attempted against Saddam Hussein or Osama-bin-Laden, two of the most important contemporary terrorists. The foreign policy of the United States aims at expanding democracy and mending major conflicts like those that are presently going on in Iraq. So as to achieve this, the most important leaders of the terrorist movements must be captured in order to weaken and demoralize their followers. Murder, be it during war time or during periods of peace seems to be an almost indispensable political tool. The major motives for assassination from a political point-of-view are related to power relations and to the attempt at introducing new doctrines and possibly new forms of government. At an international level, political assassination has also taken the terrible and more menacing form of terrorism, which makes an overwhelming number of victims. In both the national and international relations the Intelligence services play a very important part, as they serve as a means of information against the opponents.

If assassination was found as morally unjustifiable, it is not justifiable from a political point-of-view either, since it infringes the most important tenants of democracy and permanently threatens the state of affairs or the status quo, at both the national and international levels.

In this context, John Orman's observations regarding assassinations are enlightening. He quotes Ford who in his turn, contends that the history of political murders has gone from tyrannicide to terrorism, and that at present, there seem to be no evident purposes behind assassinations and terrorist acts. If even political purpose is eliminated, Ford comments, all that actually remains is murderous behavior, and he rhetorically asks what will become of political life in this criminal context:

Ford defines assassination as the 'intentional killing of a specified victim or group of victims, perpetrated for reasons related to his (her, their) public prominence and undertaken with a political purpose in view' (p.2). In his adjudication of contemporary assassinations, however, Ford marks a shift, the move "from tyrannicide to terrorism,' in what he has delineated in the history of assassination as 'political purpose' and concludes that 'what remains [today] is behavior, stripped of political trappings. And of behavior that is murderous, whatever its partisan claims, one must ask: What about political life?' (p. 240)"

As life or the right to live, regarded from a moral point-of-view, do not seem to be among the concerns of the political assassins, in the same way political life is no longer in the their close-up either, that is, political behavior has become violent and devoid of any actual purpose. The establishment of a peaceful political life does not seem to be among the aims of the present day politicians and statesmen.

In its legal dimension political assassination again proves to be a complicated construct. First of all, its status and legality are somewhat debated. The law prohibits all forms of deliberate assassination as such, but the problem with political murder is that it is not clearly defined, so that in many cases its legitimacy is still under question.

Thus, Stephen Hosmer gives an account of the legal problems related to the status of political assassinations in his book about Operations Against Enemy Leaders. As Hosmer indicates, the policy of the United States contains a specific executive order, number 12333, which prohibits the involvement of the government in any direct or indirect act of assassination against enemy leaders:

Executive Order 12333, which pertains to U.S. intelligence activities, contains provisions that limit the U.S. government's freedom of action to directly or indirectly promote attacks on enemy leaders or support their overthrow. Following congressional hearings about U.S. involvement in assassination plots against officials in the Congo, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic in the 1960s and in Chile in the early 1970s, President Ford -- "possibly to preempt legislation on the subject -- "issued Executive Order 11905 in 1976, which contained provisions designed to assure Congress and the U.S. public that such practices would not be repeated."

The order that prohibits assassination has been given, as Hosmer informs us, by president Ford as an attempt to forestall assassination events like those which took place in Cuba or Congo, for example. The prohibition regards both direct and indirect participation in assassination events by the United States Government or by its Intelligence Services:

2.11 Prohibition on Assassination. No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.

2.12 Indirect Participation. No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this order."

Although the order seems to be legally explicit with regard to the prohibition on political assassinations, difficulties arise, as Hosmer suggests, when trying to define and pinpoint what is meant by assassination in the order quoted above. Opinion on the subject varies with regard to scope of the prohibition, whether the prohibition is total, independent of such variables as the context or situation, or whether it refers only to times of peace:

Over the years, commentators have disagreed about the scope of the executive order's prohibition. These arguments have risen in the main because the executive order provides no elucidation on what constitutes an assassination. Some believe that the order should be interpreted broadly as preventing the U.S. government 'from directing, facilitating, encouraging, or even incidentally causing the killing of any specified individual, whatever the circumstances.' Other commentators view the prohibition more narrowly and see a distinction between operations in peacetime and operations in times of conflict, as well as between operations conducted covertly by intelligence personnel and operations conducted by U.S. military personnel. They see the executive order as barring only activities similar to the U.S. assassination attempts that gave rise to its issuance: peacetime efforts by U.S. intelligence officials to cause the death of targeted foreign persons, whose political activities are judged to be detrimental to U.S. security and foreign policy objectives."

However, despite the order, the assassination of targeted and notorious terrorist for example, is not considered as illegal:

except in the case of a notorious terrorist, such as Osama bin Laden, decision makers will generally be loath to concede that specific enemy leaders are the targets of U.S. attack. They will be particularly reluctant to authorize attacks that might be perceived as clear-cut assassination attempts, such as the employment of ruses to lure foreign leaders to sites where they will be vulnerable to attack."

Thus, from a legal point-of-view assassination is not very clearly defined, especially in such cases as counterterrorism and international justice. Assassination outside the scope of counterterrorism is, though, definitely illegal. Also, while the order seems to refer specifically to covert actions, the overt military enterprises are allowed according to the United States legislation.

However, as Howard Wachtel points out, assassination is most of the times considered illegal when it is seen as an act per se, but it is allowed during peacetime as well, provided that there is a viable political motive:

Major Harder explains that peacetime assassination includes three elements: "(1) a murder, (2) of a specifically targeted figure, (3) for a political purpose." (22) According to this line of reasoning, the victim need not be a political leader or public official. As long as there is a political motive, an assassination can be committed against a private person. (23) in some instances, it is easier to recognize assassination if it is conducted via covert means. (24) Especially when an individual is not a public figure, a murder often must involve a covert activity or surprise attack for it to be considered an assassination. (25) the presence of covert activity, although not a requirement, provides evidence that an individual has been specifically targeted. Clearly, there is confusion with respect to the length of time necessary to satisfy the "targeting" requirement, which is why Professor Hays Parks indicates that the presence of covert activity may be necessary to substantiate any finding of assassination. (26)"

Thus, legally speaking, assassination although illegal as an act in itself, is allowed in specific political contexts and situations.

With respect to the practical dimension of assassination, it has been noted by some of the political scientists that assassinations have proven to be useless in the course of time, in their great majority. The purposes or the alleged political designs have almost never been accomplished by means of political violence. In the older times, when a political act of murder was usually confined to the purpose of eliminating the political adversaries, assassination attained its goals easier. However, with the advent of modernity, it becomes noticeable that assassination almost never reaches its goals, such as the elimination or the weakening of a certain system of power.

Franklin L. Ford remarks that almost all the assassinations or political plots have been failures from a practical point-of-view:

The history of countless assassinations, examined with an eye to comparing apparent motives with actual outcomes, contains almost none that produced results consonant with the aims of the doer, assuming those aims to have extended at all beyond the miserable taking of a life."

In this way, it can be argued that assassinations are not only immoral and illegal acts, they also generally prove useless, as the change expected is either totally absent or, otherwise incomplete. Therefore, the political aims are not attained through murder, as Heavens, Leiden and Schmitt indicate in their Politics of Assassination:

the impact of an assassination on the political system tends to be low.... In most cases... success (from the point-of-view of the assassin) is at best incomplete. Either no change takes place at all or the changes that do occur are incongruent with those desired by the assassin. Indeed one can say more than this: on most occasions, assassinations result in utter failure as far as the political aims of the conspirators are concerned, especially if these conspirators expect to profit politically from the deed."

Hosmer in his Operations Against Enemy Leaders advocates that neither direct assassination of political leaders nor countermeasures or counterterrorism of the type practiced by Israeli prove effective in their attempt at deterring terrorism and other forms of political violence.

A except for Mr. [Ariel] Sharon and Prime Minister Netanyahu himself, most Cabinet ministers and many senior Mossad officials publicly and privately acknowledge the ineffectiveness of assassination as a weapon in the war against terrorism."

Sometimes the assassinations not only fail to attain their professed purpose, but also have negative repercussions and are able to generate further armed conflict or further terrorism:

In the view of at least some "wise and experienced Israeli intelligence officials," the 1996 "successful" assassination of a Palestinian terrorist leader in Gaza led directly to a series of retaliatory suicide bombings that cost a number of Israeli lives."