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Assasinations

THE REVEREND Pat Robertson — one of the rare churchmen who not only talk about things but actually try to do something, as well — upset many Americans by advocating the assassination of the president of Venezuela. Is it wrong, in itself, to kill a person created in the image of God?

More than half of these United States assert the power to kill individuals, so the answer is not obvious. What does justify killing persons? Obviously, self-defense. And also war, if a ‘just war’ is a defensive war. Similarly, if you enter someone else’s house without knocking or ringing, you know full well that he, or she, may shoot first and ask questions afterwards. In both of these cases, the deceased has acted as if he, or she, did not object to being killed.

Another obvious example: any German Jew would have been in the right if he had killed Hitler, at least after Goebbels’ kristallnacht; he was paying taxes to be defended, not offended. Any Confederate soldier who could have approached within range of President Lincoln would, undeniably, have been justified in shooting at him: can we say that the same act became murder for no other reason than that John Wilkes Booth was a civilian? Parliament chopped off the head of King Charles I — and, of course, those of numerous other persons. All men are equal — but only if they behave as all men are expected to behave.

Does President Chavez meet this criterion of equality? He would, if he did no more than execute the edicts of a legislature representing the taxpayers — and defer to any decisions of an independent judiciary. But he would not, if he is a mere demagog, inciting enmity between one faction and another. In the latter case, any one of his employers would be justified in terminating his employment — with extreme prejudice, if that is the only sanction he does not ignore.

But our reverend was, it seems, advocating that the United States should assassinate a foreign office-holder. It is reported that, in the 1930s, a British diplomat made the suggestion that a rifleman be hidden in their embassy in Berlin in order to shoot Hitler when he made one of his scheduled public appearances — and, in the light of hindsight, quite a few million people would now say that that would have been a Good Thing. However, Hitler’s War could have been prevented without bloodshed if France — supported by Britain — had merely resisted the Germans when they re-occupied the Saar in defiance of the Versailles Treaty: at that stage, the German army was fully able to remove Hitler from power. Doing the right thing would have avoided any necessity for doing a wrong thing.

Certainly, killing a dictator is preferable to killing hundreds or thousands of his unhappy subjects in war — but the assassination would require the same justification as a war, a casus belli, and to be preceded by an ultimatum, giving the other nation an opportunity to remove the offender itself.