Risky Business

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror,
sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.
--Adolph Hitler

An ideal form of government is democracy
tempered by assassination
--Voltaire

Beneath this mask there is more than flesh.
Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy,
and ideas are bulletproof
--V for Vendetta (2005)
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When is it right to use violence against a government? When can an individual or a group decide to kill a head of state and be morally justified?

The U.S. was conceived and born in a violent rebellion. Some argue the American Revolution evolved through the spectrum of conflict, ultimately ending in a conventional war decided by the force of arms. But it began as criminal activity against the Crown which developed into full-blown insurgency versus the legitimate authority of Great Britain.

The 20 Jul 44 plot to assassinate Hitler by a group of disaffected Germans depicted in the current film Valkyrie brings the topic to mind. In our own history, a U.S president sponsored a plan to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro, as well as authorizing a U.S. Embassy to support a coup in a foreign friendly government that ended in the assassination of President Diem of the Republic of Vietnam.

The Central Intelligence Agency has also sponsored and executed political assassinations in the past. Being a friendly head of state can be risky business.

We in the West have a Just War theory with implications extending to individual political murders. But whose yardstick for the execution applies? Do we use ones such as Cheney, Yoo, Addington, George Bush, Libby, Liddy, and North as our compass, or do historical prohibitions apply?

Post 9-11, the U.S. has openly employed violence in a reactive and knee-jerk manner. Could this approach ever apply to a justifiable political assassination? What are just causes to assassinate? Is it morally acceptable to terminate a national leader who has:

• Run the national economy into the ground?
• Aggressively invaded foreign regimes?
• Established secret prisons?
• Sanctioned torture in home country facilities?
• Delivered prisoners to be tortured abroad?
• Denied civil rights to citizens?
• Unconstitutionally spied on his citizens?
• Denied court access to prisoners?
• Abrogated applicable treaties and conventions?
• Transferred large sums from the treasury to private contractors?

When can there be said to be a preponderance of justification for such a radical action? Are there some few things that would absolutely break a Kantian contract with the governed? Or is assassination never a justifiable act?

Ranger does not espouse violence, but the question is a valid one.