Assassination backlash

[The Northerner]

There is no denying that 2011 has been a banner year for taxpayer-funded assassinations -- Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, five senior Pakistani Taliban commanders in October and many more. Given the crucial U.S. backup role in Libya, and the ringing exhortation for the Libyan leader's death issued by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton just before the event itself, we can probably take a lot of credit for Moammar Gadhafi's messy end too.

Once upon a time, U.S. officials used to claim that we were merely targeting "command and control centers," rather than specific individuals, as in the hunt for Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Persian Gulf War or the raid on Gadhafi in 1986. Nowadays no one bothers to pretend. Successful assassination missions, whether by elite special forces or remote-controlled drones, are openly celebrated.

Clearly, the sentiment prevalent among our leaders is that eliminating particular enemy leaders is bound to have a beneficial effect. Thus in our recent wars, the United States has made the pursuit of "high-value targets," the principal objective of so-called human network attacks, a priority. "The platoon's mission is to kill or capture HVTs," recalled Matt Cook, a sergeant in the 101st Airborne based in northern Iraq in 2005. "That is all we do."

By 2008, according to a U.S. Strategic Command study, our military was simultaneously engaged in no fewer than 285 human network attack programs.

Read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/11/assassination_backlash.html

[villager]

1. Well, the program certainly yielded results for the MIC when used domestically in the 60's...

n/t

[leveymg]

2. If you look at history, assassination was a normal part of warfare until the early 19th Century.

The only reason they stopped was that all the princes of Europe would have knocked each other off during the incessant warfare of the era. It was a Metternichean class-solidarity thing for them - let the peasants kill each other, instead.

We've just reverted to a pre-modern way of doing things.

[xchrom]

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