What does it say about a country when it uses assassination as a major tool in foreign policy and defense? Is this a classic case of ‘the ends justify the means’, or a slippery slope to a dystopian future?
Israel has long utilized individual or multi-person assassinations as a means to exact revenge, create fear, decapitate organizations or impede certain activities that they feel are future dangers for Israel. The USA has also employed assassination as a tool to respond to hostile actions (for example, the targeted killing of an Iranian general in 2020 after an Iranian attack on a US air base) and it used the CIA for assassinations for several decades during the cold war.
More recently, the USA has targeted boats in the Caribbean it suspects of transporting drugs and has destroyed them and killed all persons aboard. It is reportedly giving the CIA free reign to plan and implement the assassination of the President of Venezuela. War has not been declared and these actions seem clearly to be extra-judicial and in violation of international law.
The post October 7th Israeli actions included numerous assassinations in addition to its almost total destruction of Gaza and killing of over 70 thousand Gazans. The indiscriminate murder and maiming of Lebanese who happened to have pagers that Israel had refitted with explosive charges stretched any possible justification of legitimacy, as did the murder of scientists who were working on nuclear programs that may or may not have been directly related to weapons development.
Both Israel and the current USA administration scoff at international objections to any actions they deem to be in their best interest. Israel justifies its existence on a UN resolution in 1948, but paradoxically has ignored the UN and all other international bodies ever since in its occupation of Palestinian territory and oppressive apartheid rule over the inhabitants. The USA has initiated military action whenever it sees fit without any appeal to the international community.
A nation is not an individual. It is a political entity tasked with serving the best interests of its citizens. However, the moral code that a nation claims, and the actions that either support or violate that moral code are not without consequence. The USA has long portrayed itself as a virtuous land with high moral principles and as a force for good in the world. Assassinations, extra-judicial killings, torture, economic blackmail and other cynical acts of so-called self-interest may have the desired effect in the short term, but they are an abomination. They lead the world toward a dark future and they are a shameful commentary on our own moral failures.
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