EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS OUR OWN FAULT

When Frontier Justice Becomes Foreign Policy (THOMAS POWERS, July 13, 2003, NY Times)

American intelligence organizations and military forces, once forbidden from attempts to assassinate foreign leaders by the executive orders of two recent presidents, have now embarked on an open, all-out effort to find and kill Saddam Hussein in a campaign with no precedents in American history. [...]

American officials in the White House and Iraq have argued that Mr. Hussein's survival encourages resistance, and killing him is therefore a legitimate act of war. But the United States has never before openly marked foreign leaders for killing. Treating it as routine could level the moral playing field and invite retaliation in kind, and makes every American official both here and in the Middle East a target of opportunity. [...]

It is impossible to know how, or if, Mr. Hussein's supporters will find a way to retaliate for the American campaign to kill the deposed Iraqi leader, but that effort inevitably reopens a long-simmering American argument over assassination, never embraced openly in so many words but never repudiated once and for all. Despite much tough talk of killing enemies since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration still shrinks from using the word assassination, and much of the public continues to oppose it as both dangerous and wrong--dangerous because it commits the United States to a campaign of murder and countermurder, and wrong because hunting people down, however it plays in the movies, excuses murder by calling it something else.

Mr. Hussein himself doubtless understands the first argument, since the man leading the effort to kill him now--President Bush--is the son of a man Mr. Hussein tried to have murdered a decade ago.

That last bit is a little confusing. We shouldn't try to assassinate people because they may retaliate in kind, but, Saddam already tried assassinating an American president. Is that some kind of pre-retaliation? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 12, 2003 3:57 PM