by Michael Wooldridge

Created on: November 18, 2008

The ban on government-sponsored assassinations should absolutely, positively not be repealed. While there are, perhaps, reasons why removing the band would be militarily expedient and perhaps improve the short-term security of the United States, it is a morally vacant proposal whose execution would rely on far too many assumptions to ever be permissible.

The faulty assumption that government-sponsored assassinations rest upon is that the government is right. It is unfortunate, but we live in a day and age where the government is often wrong, the CIA is often wrong, the FBI is often wrong, and military intelligence is often wrong. Therefore, the government cannot be relied upon to kill the right person, to kill a guilty person, or even a person that poses a threat to the United States. In addition to this, ask yourself, what right do we have?

While it is perhaps immediately expedient to dispatch people we deem enemies, it is problematic in two key ways. One, it is a slippery slope. Once you start to kill people to protect national security, what is to stop you from killing people to protect political interests. How are we guaranteed that there will always be a way to tell the difference? The answer is that we aren't, because even if the government can openly sponsor assassinations, they won't do it in the open because it is wrong, and would create new enemies. So it will always take place in the dark, and therefore cannot be trusted to be in the interests of national security.

Second, there is no reason on earth that we should stoop to the same moral principals as our enemies, or those that threaten our security. Perhaps when faced with a life or death situation, it is necessary and acceptable to use lethal force to defend oneself. But defending a nation against threats you can know very little about is a very different matter. The manslaughter example cannot be extrapolated outward to defend a nation.

There are other reasons not to relax this kind of ban. If the United States is allowed to do it elsewhere, what is to stop other nations from doing it here, ultimately it would not contribute in any way to national security, but rather it would undermine long-term security efforts by setting an example of how low it is acceptable to go. The world is an ugly place, allowing governments to kill people they disagreed with would only make it uglier. Governments should provide structure the structure necessary for citizens to conduct their lives, they should not violate their own laws.

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