Assassination

Assassination is an ambiguous concept when used to describe events or when it is employed in general analyses. Assassination is selective killing; it also refers to the intentional killing of a public figure. These two views of assassination share the element of killing and are similar to the extent that the expressions “a leader” and “a public figure” refer to similar types of people. But they are also different from each other. Notice that according to the second definition, but not the first, assassination is a killing accomplished treacherously; this introduces into the second definition a dimension that is not present in the first one, namely the evaluative dimension. Unlike murdering, the notion of killing is purely descriptive. An act of killing can be evaluated as a morally or legally permissible or even an obligatory act, under certain circumstances of self-defense and necessity, but can also be evaluated as a morally impermissible or even abhorrent act, under circumstances of wicked aggression. The adverb treacherously is on a par with murdering rather than killing. To act treacherously is to act in a wrongful way. It is never justifiable. Recall Dante's attitude toward treachery in the Inferno part of hisDivine Comedy. The circle of treachery is the ninth and final circle of hell. In its innermost zone and within Lucifer's mouths were Brutus and Cassius, eternally suffering for their assassination of Julius Caesar.

Consequently, a deep distinction emerges between a definition of assassination as a selective killing of a leader and a definition of it in terms of what is accomplished treacherously. Whereas the former definition leaves open questions of the justifiability of acts described as assassination, the latter definition leaves no room for any question of justifiability, since an act described as assassination involves treachery, which is always wrong. When the former definition is used, moral issues can and often should be considered. When the latter definition is used, it is pointless to raise such issues. A moral consideration has already been made and a negative evaluation reached. As a result of that deep difference between various definitions of assassination, we have an induced difference between discussions that employ, whether explicitly or between the lines, different definitions of the term.

The important distinction between descriptive and evaluative definitions of assassination is often blurred, when evaluative terms appear in seemingly simple conjunction with descriptive ones. For example, assassination is to destroy unexpectedly and treacherously a specific human target. A depiction of an act as performed unexpectedly is purely descriptive, even though it involves expectations, which are possibly subjective. However, a depiction of an act as performed treacherously involves both a description and an evaluation. Similarly, assassination represents a deliberate action that involves extralegal killing that is based on political ideologies. Assuming that an act can be extralegal and morally justified, the question is left open whether a certain act of assassination was morally justified or not, but the normative question of its legal nature has been closed by definition.

Given such a variety of definitions of the notion of assassination, preference must be given to one definition, or one family of similar definitions, in order to discuss assassination by giving examples of such acts, searching their meanings, and evaluating their justification. It has been demonstrated that there is a reason to prefer usage of terms that enables us to draw a distinction between a description of an act, activity, or event and its evaluation from a certain normative point of view, thus making the nature of the evaluation transparent. When descriptive terms are used, the mode of evaluation has to be introduced in a way that enables seeing the grounds of it. If evaluative terms such as treacherously are used, the grounds for portraying a certain act or policy as wrong are left unstated and remain unclear. Hence, in the sequel, assassination is going to be understood in a broad sense that leaves open for further discussion issues of moral, ethical, religious, or legal justification.

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