America is at war with terrorism and war requires certain forms of killing. Ironically, while virtually all societies and civilizations accept the permissibility of war with vast armies and large weapons, most also deny the legality and decency of assassination, even as self-defense. Yet, used very selectively and appropriately, assassination of terrorist leaders could save countless American lives. There is no reason to believe that the blood of a small number of terrorists is any redder than that of millions of our fellow citizens.
For many years I have argued for the limited legality and reasonableness of assassination as counter-terrorism. The heart of my argument has always been that the targeted killing of terrorists who plan large-scale or even mass-destruction attacks could save the lives of intended victims. In this connection, it is altogether likely that such preemptive killing of those terrorist leaders responsible for the World Trade Center and Pentagon abominations would have prevented these latest expressions of Arab/Islamic barbarism.
Let the President of the United States take immediate notice. There are certain instances where assassination can be authentic law enforcement. Among our most sacred American legal principles is the rule of "No Crime Without A Punishment." Where perpetrators of egregious crimes like the huge terrorist attack on America cannot be punished by normal judicial remedy, the choice will be to leave these murderers unpunished or to punish them extra-judicially. Moreover, where terrorist crimes are still ongoing or can reasonably be expected, the permissibility of assassination is self-evidently greater.
However, we are, here, less concerned with punishment of terrorist crimes than we are with prevention of future terrorist attacks. The imperative to seek such prevention is all the more considerable when such attacks are apt to employ weapons of mass destruction. According to settled international law, the United States has the obligation, and authority, to prevent future attacks, under the customary right of anticipatory self-defense and the codified right of self-defense following an armed attack.
Normally, assassination is a crime under international law. Yet, in our decentralized system of world law, self-help by individual states is often necessary. In the absence of a policy of targeted assassinations, terrorists ? like those Arab/Islamic elements who wreaked havoc against defenseless civilians in New York, Washington and four separate airplanes ? would remain free to undertake future excursions into mass murder. For now, our world legal order still lacks an international criminal court with jurisdiction over individuals. Only the courts of individual countries can provide the judicial context for trials of terrorists. Where states or aspiring states harbor such criminals and refuse to honor extradition requests (e.g., the Arab/Islamic states and the Palestinian Authority), the only decent remedies available to victim societies lie in unilateral enforcement action. International law is not a suicide pact. Every state has the right and the obligation to protect its citizens. In certain circumstances, this right and obligation extend even to the assassination of wrongdoers. This point is already well understood in Washington, where every President in recent memory has given nodding approval to relevant killing operations. When, in the future, American presidents resort to assassination of terrorists, they will be acting to defend the survival of millions of United States citizens.
By the standards of contemporary international law, terrorists are known as "common enemies of humankind." In the fashion of pirates, who were to be hanged by the first persons into whose hands they fell, terrorists are international outlaws who fall within the scope of "universal jurisdiction." That the recent Arab/Islamic terrorist crimes were directed specifically at the United States surely removes any doubts about the reasonableness of America's particular jurisdiction.
Intellectual support for a limited right of assassination can be found in the classical writings of Aristotle, Plutarch, Cicero and even in Jewish history - ranging from the Sicarii (who flourished at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple) to Lehi (who fought the British mandatory authority). Should the civilized community of nations ever reject this right altogether, it will have to recognize that it would, in certain instances, be at the expense of justice and safety.
Assassination, even of a terrorist, will almost always elicit indignation. After all, living, as we do, in the "modern" age of civilization and culture, how else should decent people react to the idea of killing as remediation? Yet, as we have just witnessed, the civilizational promise of modernity is far from realized. The United States must now confront choices between employing assassination as counter-terrorism or renouncing such employment at the expense of justice and safety. In facing such choices, we Americans will discover that all viable alternatives to the assassination option also include violence and that these alternatives may often exact a much larger toll in human life and suffering.
In the best of all possible worlds, assassination would have no defensible place in counter-terrorism strategies. However, as we do not yet live in the best of all possible worlds, the negative aspects of assassination should not be evaluated in isolation from all alternative options. If the expected political, material and human costs of assassination appear lower than the costs of alternative counter-terrorist strategies, then assassination could emerge as the rational choice. However odious it might appear in isolation, assassination, in such circumstances, could represent the least injurious path to improved security from terrorism.
International law is not a suicide pact. Every state has the right and the obligation to protect its citizens. In certain circumstances, this right and obligation extend even to the assassination of wrongdoers. This point is already well understood in Washington, where every President in recent memory has given nodding approval to relevant killing operations. When, in the future, US Presidents resort to the assassination of terrorists, they will be acting to defend the survival of millions of American citizens.
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Louis Rene Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and academic articles dealing with international law and terrorism.
For many years I have argued for the limited legality and reasonableness of assassination as counter-terrorism. The heart of my argument has always been that the targeted killing of terrorists who plan large-scale or even mass-destruction attacks could save the lives of intended victims. In this connection, it is altogether likely that such preemptive killing of those terrorist leaders responsible for the World Trade Center and Pentagon abominations would have prevented these latest expressions of Arab/Islamic barbarism.
Let the President of the United States take immediate notice. There are certain instances where assassination can be authentic law enforcement. Among our most sacred American legal principles is the rule of "No Crime Without A Punishment." Where perpetrators of egregious crimes like the huge terrorist attack on America cannot be punished by normal judicial remedy, the choice will be to leave these murderers unpunished or to punish them extra-judicially. Moreover, where terrorist crimes are still ongoing or can reasonably be expected, the permissibility of assassination is self-evidently greater.
However, we are, here, less concerned with punishment of terrorist crimes than we are with prevention of future terrorist attacks. The imperative to seek such prevention is all the more considerable when such attacks are apt to employ weapons of mass destruction. According to settled international law, the United States has the obligation, and authority, to prevent future attacks, under the customary right of anticipatory self-defense and the codified right of self-defense following an armed attack.
Normally, assassination is a crime under international law. Yet, in our decentralized system of world law, self-help by individual states is often necessary. In the absence of a policy of targeted assassinations, terrorists ? like those Arab/Islamic elements who wreaked havoc against defenseless civilians in New York, Washington and four separate airplanes ? would remain free to undertake future excursions into mass murder. For now, our world legal order still lacks an international criminal court with jurisdiction over individuals. Only the courts of individual countries can provide the judicial context for trials of terrorists. Where states or aspiring states harbor such criminals and refuse to honor extradition requests (e.g., the Arab/Islamic states and the Palestinian Authority), the only decent remedies available to victim societies lie in unilateral enforcement action. International law is not a suicide pact. Every state has the right and the obligation to protect its citizens. In certain circumstances, this right and obligation extend even to the assassination of wrongdoers. This point is already well understood in Washington, where every President in recent memory has given nodding approval to relevant killing operations. When, in the future, American presidents resort to assassination of terrorists, they will be acting to defend the survival of millions of United States citizens.
By the standards of contemporary international law, terrorists are known as "common enemies of humankind." In the fashion of pirates, who were to be hanged by the first persons into whose hands they fell, terrorists are international outlaws who fall within the scope of "universal jurisdiction." That the recent Arab/Islamic terrorist crimes were directed specifically at the United States surely removes any doubts about the reasonableness of America's particular jurisdiction.
Intellectual support for a limited right of assassination can be found in the classical writings of Aristotle, Plutarch, Cicero and even in Jewish history - ranging from the Sicarii (who flourished at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple) to Lehi (who fought the British mandatory authority). Should the civilized community of nations ever reject this right altogether, it will have to recognize that it would, in certain instances, be at the expense of justice and safety.
Assassination, even of a terrorist, will almost always elicit indignation. After all, living, as we do, in the "modern" age of civilization and culture, how else should decent people react to the idea of killing as remediation? Yet, as we have just witnessed, the civilizational promise of modernity is far from realized. The United States must now confront choices between employing assassination as counter-terrorism or renouncing such employment at the expense of justice and safety. In facing such choices, we Americans will discover that all viable alternatives to the assassination option also include violence and that these alternatives may often exact a much larger toll in human life and suffering.
In the best of all possible worlds, assassination would have no defensible place in counter-terrorism strategies. However, as we do not yet live in the best of all possible worlds, the negative aspects of assassination should not be evaluated in isolation from all alternative options. If the expected political, material and human costs of assassination appear lower than the costs of alternative counter-terrorist strategies, then assassination could emerge as the rational choice. However odious it might appear in isolation, assassination, in such circumstances, could represent the least injurious path to improved security from terrorism.
International law is not a suicide pact. Every state has the right and the obligation to protect its citizens. In certain circumstances, this right and obligation extend even to the assassination of wrongdoers. This point is already well understood in Washington, where every President in recent memory has given nodding approval to relevant killing operations. When, in the future, US Presidents resort to the assassination of terrorists, they will be acting to defend the survival of millions of American citizens.
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Louis Rene Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and academic articles dealing with international law and terrorism.