The targeted killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who ordered the horrific slaughter of Israelis on October 7, 2023, brought some consolation to Haniyeh's victims who cried out for vengeance and justice. But it was also a necessary preemptive strike on an unrepentant terrorist who threatened even more murder; as such, killing him was an act of self-defense.
Those who blame and berate Israel for the action might reflect instead on Israel's patience--and optimism in the diplomatic process--in not having targeted Haniyeh ten years sooner.
That brings up a very cold-blooded question: Why wasn't Haniyeh killed sooner? Why are obviously cruel people, those who openly incriminate themselves with blatant, lethal threats against others, not put away in some fashion before their threats become fait accompli?
The United States has had to answer that question more than once. In 1943, two years after Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto launched the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, US Army Intelligence tracked Yamamoto on an inspection tour of Japanese bases in the Pacific. The Army Air Force sent eighteen P-38 fighter planes to intercept him and shot his plane out of the sky. They kept the assassination secret and told the press the admiral died in regular combat.
It was generally agreed in the US that Yamamoto did not deserve any other fate, but folks wished he could have died sooner before claiming the lives of so many thousands.
The same regret surrounds the life and death of Osama bin Laden, eventually killed by navy SEALS ten years after his diabolical plans brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center and killed almost 3,000 people. Many wished bin Laden could have been stopped years earlier when he founded al-Qaeda and declared holy war against the US.
Ironically, when former president Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a commander in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, partisan politics in the US played such a role in the public's response to the killing that the president received as much condemnation as the terrorist. Yet, both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama had designated Soleimani a terrorist. They realized he needed to be eliminated in some way; however, fearing repercussions, and in the manner of politicians, they passed the problem on to their successor.
Such reticence by politicians to take decisive action when most needed evidently does not produce world peace. Instead of going from WWII to a world without war, we've gone in a circle and stand at the threshold of WWIII.
One man from Admiral Yamamoto's time, the German justice inspector Friedrich Kellner, knew how to break that circle. As a sergeant in Kaiser Wilhelm's army in WWI, Kellner fought in many battles. As a social democrat after the war, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. During Hitler's rule, Kellner kept a diary (while under Gestapo surveillance) to record Nazi crimes and the missteps that led to the most destructive time of history.
"The Western powers will carry the historical guilt for not promptly providing the most intensive preventive measures against Germany's aggression. Possibilities existed, but no actions were taken," wrote Kellner. "Spineless policies do not change the mind of a tyrant. The sharpest means would still be too mild."
Amazed by the short-sightedness and timidity of British and American leaders, Kellner asked, "When German children were being militarized at the age of ten, and legions of stormtroopers and the SS were being formed, what did your Houses of Commons and Senates undertake against this power?"
"Where were men who could recognize the reality? No fighter is going to be beaten by an opponent who merely glares at him. It requires a good punch!" And he wanted to know, "When will a deserved fate overtake this lunatic?"
Kellner derided Americans who downplayed Hitler's murderous intentions. He included the celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh, an open anti-Semite and apologist for Germany. "Even today there are idiots in America who talk nonsense about some compromise with Germany under Adolf Hitler," Kellner wrote. "If Hitler wins, there will be an enormous slave empire with the name 'Europe'!"
In 1944, Adolf Hitler faced a losing war. His generals were worried about the coming retribution for the part they played in it and tried to kill him. But in this assassination attempt, Friedrich Kellner expressed relief that Hitler survived. With Germany so close to collapse, the militaristic Germans must not be allowed to think they could have been victorious "if only Hitler had not been killed." While Kellner had fervently hoped someone would assassinate Hitler at the beginning of his terror reign, the only way now to clear the minds of Hitler's brainwashed worshipers was for them to witness his utter downfall: for Hitler to be alive when the Allied armies marched into Berlin.
"Hitler must remain until there is no more way out," explained Kellner, "until Providence itself could not help him get out of it."
When Admiral Yamamoto was killed on April 18, 1943, the US government and military did not reveal it had been a premeditated and carefully orchestrated assassination. The New York Times reported it as a combat death. When the secret of his death was made known after Japan's formal surrender in early September 1945, the Times wrote another article about Yamamoto. On September 10, they informed their readers it had actually been a deliberate assassination by the U.S. government and military.
Quite noticeably, the Times did not consider such an action front page news. Rather, they relegated the story to page 6. "Yamamoto Death in Air Ambush Result of Breaking Foe's Code; Japanese Navy Chief's Plane and Escorts Were Met Over Solomons in 1943 in Precise Rendezvous by U.S. Fighters"
People accepted the news without protests; to them, the assassination (or execution, or targeted killing) was but a mere footnote to the long and deadly war Japan had started.
That war took the lives of 400,000 American servicemen, and it is difficult to keep from wondering about all the other tens of millions who might have been spared had Yamamoto and his warmongering colleagues, including the militaristic Japanese emperor, been assassinated before their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, along with their totalitarian friends, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
Of course, such "intensive preventive measures" would likely have brought an angry uproar from the crowd Friedrich Kellner labelled, "idiots in America." But as WWII progressed, and the horrors of totalitarian rule and merciless Total War became evident, even those Americans, including Charles Lindbergh, understood they had wrongly given the benefit of the doubt to the most barbarous of people.
Robert Scott Kellner, a navy veteran, is a retired English professor who taught at the University of Massachusetts and Texas A & M University.
He is the grandson of the German justice inspector and diarist Friedrich Kellner and is the editor and translator of My Opposition: The Diary of Friedrich Kellner--A German against the Third Reich, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom.