Issue date: 2/13/10 Section: News and Opinion

It is time for the United States government to unbind its hand and repeal the Assassination Ban first enacted by President Ford. It is understandable as to why he felt it necessary to implement Executive Order 11905. However, as a world super power we are held to a higher standard than most other countries and thus we must maintain our position as ethical leaders. The problem with this is that we cannot properly protect the American people, which is our number one priority as the government, from outside threats. The American public at the time of President Ford's administration was not in favor of assassinations and still may not be today, but the simple fact is regular Joe six-pack is not qualified to run the government, let alone protect three hundred million other people. The assassination privilege gives us the ability to destroy transnational threats across the globe that essentially threatens our way of life. The best argument we can give the people is the amount of lives this process would save if we were to send a very small, highly trained unit to eliminate a terrorist or crazy-state leader. Our main focus right now should be setting the terms and limits for the sanctioning and execution of an assassination order.

Assassinating a terrorist leader or leaders should be our primary case for gaining their confidence in our ability to respect the power of assassination. The main reason for eliminating a terrorist leader would be in response to an attack on American soil. In other words, self-defense, which includes American military bases and business entities across the globe. Assassination should not be used for preemptive strikes where the decision is based around speculation and possible evidence. A violent and fatal attack on American soil constitutes an act of war which would, in effect, negate the attackers' right to a trial and we would be morally inclined to search them out and eliminate the enemy so they have no chance of attacking America again.

Terrorists are non-state actors, whether they are state-sponsored or not. The American government does not have the resources to simply chase a small group of terrorists across the globe with an entire army. Several factors get in the way of this type of strike which can cause a great deal of bloodshed and further complicate our moral standing. This is a waste of the public's money, time, and possibly lives. The amount of all three of these factors that would be saved is very positive for the image of America. A small strategic strike reduces and even eliminates the potentiality of collateral damage, which would be beneficial to the image of the United States internationally.

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