Assassinations, moral calculus, and “feelings”
Over at the League, Scott H. Payne published an email conversation between he and Mike at The Big Stick over the targeted assassination of a Hamas leader by (probably) the Mossad. The most telling comment from Scott is this one, I think:
That being said, choosing to assassinate someone as opposed to engaging in conventional warfare with a group someones doesn’t leave me with nothing in the pit of my stomach, just a different something and, in many regards, of equal weight. But let’s not walk around acting as if there is nothing in the pits of our stomachs because, this time, we chose to assassinate someone.
It is still a decision that we should be torn up about …
Emphasis (and double emphasis) mine. That “should” there is the kicker. Why should we be torn up about a terrorist who is responsible for the deaths of numerous civilians — indeed, who presently acts as a conduit for a terrorist organization to procure weapons that will kill still more numerous civilians — being killed in a surgical operation that inflicts absolutely no collateral damage open other innocent civilians? He was a bad man who deserved to die. In fact, he deserved to die far more than your average soldier on the battlefield who is simply waging an honorable but bloody campaign because politics by other means have failed.
Scott, and others like him who waffle about the righteousness of this attack, simply can’t understand it when someone doesn’t feel a moral twinge when a bad guy gets killed because hey, he’s a person too and we should feel bad when all people are killed.* I’m sorry, but I can’t understand why I should feel guilty about a mass-murdering terrorist meeting a swift and brutal (but not nearly as brutal as he deserved) fate. Not only am I glad he’s dead, but I celebrate his death and wish all such men could be eliminated in the same way: quickly and efficiently with no risk to innocent civilians. The world would be a far better place with them gone. There is nothing immoral about killing an evil man. Indeed, I would argue that it’s immoral to allow him to live and kill future innocent civilians if you are presented with the opportunity to take him out in a way that endangers no one and fail to do so.
*At least, I think that’s what Scott’s getting at. He’s free to correct me if I’m wrong.
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4 Comments - add your own
Scott H. Payne — March 11, 2010 at 10:43 am
This, I think, would the follow up comment of mine that speaks to your analysis, Sonny:
I’m not suggesting you need to feel bad for the Hamas official who was assassinated as a person. I don’t have all of the information on him, but odds are he was a deplorable human being. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t recognize that the decision to assassinate someone ought to cause fairly serious consternation as a matter of principle. The practicalities of the situation are going to win out for most folks (less collateral, bad man), but the principles of the situation (enabling a powerful entity like the state free reign on killing human beings without the check of public due process), I think, ought to at least weight heavily on us as well.
My concern has less to do with the person as a person and more to do with the moral gravity of using something like the state as exterminator. Now, given your above comments, I get that that argument isn’t going to sway you much either. But that is at least a clarification of my thoughts on the issue.
Sonny Bunch — March 11, 2010 at 10:57 am
Fair enough. I still think you’re seriously underselling just how many steps governments go through when they make these decisions, as well as the difference between the state executing someone they’re at war with and just killing people willy-nilly.
Will — March 11, 2010 at 1:14 pm
I really don’t understand why this particular incident provoked such an uproar at the League. From predator strikes to detainee interrogations, there are plenty of counter-terrorism techniques that are genuinely controversial. This is not one of them.
Victor Morton — March 11, 2010 at 2:24 pm
enabling a powerful entity like the state free rein on killing human beings without the check of public due process
In other words … war.
If this genuinely bothers you in principle, you should come out of the closet and acknowledge you’re a pacifist.
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