Ogged writes:
Kucinich was on Bill Maher's show. The first, inescapable impression is that Bill Maher is stupid. But Maher asked Kucinich, in the context of using force, whether he'd give the order to kill Bin Laden. Kucinich hesitated and Maher said, funnily, "come on, get to 10% in the polls." But Kucinich said no, he didn't approve of assassination as a policy. Major points to the guy. That's another of those totally sensible but unsayable things in America.
First, I'd rank Maher as the most politically sophisticated of the hosts, and that includes Colbert and Stewart, so no love for Ogged on that one. But I'm interested in this assassination question. I have the feeling that Ogged's position is something that I'm supposed to agree with, but basically don't. I'm all for an official policy against assassination, but given some odd hypothetical in which we've got one ace special forces guy hiding in some shrubbery with a slingshot and bin Laden ambles on by and there's no way to get a team out to capture him before he disappears back into the mountains, well, I hope our guy's aim is steady and true.
Now, this isn't the sort of argument that should guide policy towards assassinations in general, just as the nuke in the middle of New York City is really neither here nor there for torturing random Iraqis. But even so, the moral difference between taking bin Laden out in a firefight and taking him out with a sniper, assuming that capture is an impossibility, doesn't strike me as terribly large.
Lastly, does this really count as an assassination? We're engaged in a fairly public conflict against al Qaeda, in which it's stated and demonstrated government policy to kill their members. In this context, is taking bin Laden out an assassination, at least in the way we commonly think of it? After all, we're trying to kill or capture him already...
