re: #240 Obdicut

Have you read the Culture novels by Ian M. Banks? He’s a sci-fi writer, but the subjects he engages with I think would be very dear to you.

I can’t object to anything you’ve said, but I think a culture of assassination is a very dangerous one. I don’t know whether letting evil men live is more dangerous.

I have read the culture novels. Player of Games is my favorite.

But that said, I think we should change the language we are using. You don’t assassinate a mass murderer - you execute him. Execution is a lawful and justified killing by the state. I will hold very strongly that the kind of guy who films himself decapitating a hostage (and will do so again if he is able to) has it coming by any reasonable legal standard.

We did not assassinate Timothy McVeigh. We executed him. He was a terrorist. In a perfect world, we could give all terrorists a trial like McVeigh’s. In that world no police or military lives would be at risk in capturing the criminal either.

Assassination is by definition, a form of murder that is not justified and pointed at a legitimate head of state or major political figure. The terrorists are not legitimate heads of state and they are not innocent men. They are criminals. If more lives are saved by killing them outright, then they should be killed.

On the flip side though, we need to be able to trust that such calls only get made in the cases where it is clearly justified.