Time Essay: The Wars of Assassination

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The leaders of those states might argue that assassination is booming because it is in fact better than bona fide warfare, better for everybody for being relatively neat (a black van, a bloody lawn) and involving fewer losses. That is the practical argument, and on the surface it holds. The moral argument is much harder to make because the justifications will vary with particular situations. Yet tyrannicide has had strong moral defenders throughout history. In the years following the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, in which 20,000 French Huguenots were slaughtered on the hysterical command of Charles IX, a famous treatise called Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos was drawn up by a group of French political theorists known as the Monarchomachi (bearers of the sword against monarchs) that specifically outlined the circumstances for doing in a tyrant. Assassins have even been rewarded. Ching Ko, who made a stab at ending the hegemonic ambitions of Emperor Ch'in Shih Huang-ti (259-210 B.C.), was elevated to Chinese folklore. Those who killed Trujillo in 1961 have long been honored by the Dominican Republic.

In fact, America is one of the few places that has taken a consistently dim view of assassinations, perhaps because the country came to life without a reign of terror, perhaps too because those who have yelled or thought "Sic semper tyrannis!" in America have murdered some of the country's best-loved leaders. Hardly an American can hear the word assassination without silently mourning the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. When the American public learned of the CIA's brainstorm to poison Castro's cigars, the laughter covered the shame. Still, there are plenty of Americans among others who, looking backward, would gladly have seen Hitler and Stalin knocked off in their prime, and then fretted about the moral issue later. The trouble is that tyrannicide can be habit-forming. A member of the Argentine federal police recently told TIME's George Russell: "If the U.S. had not been blind, how much it could have saved by killing Khomeini in France. All that was needed was $2,500 for the contract and a good meal. But they did not have the necessary vision."

The main flaw in the tyrannicide argument these days, of course, is that the current brand of murder-by-government has nothing to do with tyrannicide. Khomeini may claim that the execution of those who served the Shah is killing a tyrant by proxy, but, as is the case with so many claims from the frenzied quarters, that is deadly nonsense. The purpose of such murders, which is one of the two principal purposes of modern assassinations, is revenge—revenge affixed to an insurance policy against past enemies having a future. When Stalin engaged a fellow to place an ice ax in Trotsky's head, he was making a similar point.