The general feeling on assassination as a method of taking out terrorists and especially their leaders seems to be that it is somehow more immoral than more traditional methods, like waging war.
That seems almost silly to me. How can we say that killing one or two men or a handful of men is worse than the wholesale slaughter of thousands?
I think there is another reason for the general agreement between governements to not use assassination as a means of international realpolitick.
In a war, who is at risk of life and limb? Is it the leaders, are they the ones out fighting and shooting and being shot at? No, they aren't. Instead they send thousands or even millions of ordinary folk off to be slaughtered for the policies of the leaders.
Assassination is very different. Assassination is not so much a threat to the ordinary person -- nothing much is gained by the killing of one ordinary person in millions. The targets of assassinations are people in positions of power.
THAT is why the brave leaders of the world have taken such a moral stance against it. They are not willing to take the risk themselves. They don't want to be shot.
What a sad sort of leadership is that. In Olden days, a leader was expected to lead by example. To be the bravest and to put himself most at risk.
Now, our leaders hide behind armies of men, not taking personal risk for the decisions they are making which so profoundly affect the world and put us all in potential jeopardy.
From a purely economical perspective, assassination would seem to me to be one of the best ways to get Ben Laden (assuming the evidence shows he is guilty, etc)-- certainly having the advantage of reducing the risk to innocents to almost nil. Certainly better than a war.
Just some thoughts I wanted to throw into the forum
