Time Essay: The Wars of Assassination

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If such attitudes were perceived in an individual, he would be exported to the lunatic fringe of whatever society he sought to live in. Feverish, volcanic, he would appear to be emotionally out of this world, existing in something very close to a social vacuum, in which his personal or political cause may mature and fester until it is both ripe and rotten for some terrible act. Love and respect are probably beyond his reach; he merely wishes to be noticed. If society should notice him by putting him away, his dreams would be both dead and complete.

When a government proves to function in a social vacuum, the process of putting it away is more of a problem. Short of war there are words of protest, but in the middle distance the assassin has free rein. The rein might be shortened considerably if the words of protest were harsher or more frequent, or, better still, if they were attached to an economic quarantine. To treat killer governments as pariahs would only be fair, after all, and the purpose of a quarantine is to prevent contagion. To date, however, the world seems to be going on the hope that the postman always rings twice, that the assassins of Mr. Tabatabai and others may eventually turn on their masters. So it opens the door and awaits the mail. By Roger Rosenbaltt