Term Paper on "Moral Legal Political and Practical Dimensions of Assassination"

Term Paper 22 pages (9721 words) Sources: 5 Style: Turabian

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Moral, Legal, Political, And Practical Dimensions of Assassination

Political assassination is a very old and hard to tackle problem, which caused innumerable victims throughout history. Due to the many forms of political violence and murder which exist, it is very hard to define and to categorize as an act. The variety of motives and causes of political assassinations also make classification difficult. It is generally supposed that the most common motive is the struggle for political power between different opponents. In this case, the target of the assassination is usually a very powerful or influential individual, who hold a very important political position: a king in the older times or a president in the more recent periods. However, political assassinations happen for many other reasons as well, and sometimes target persons who may be influential from an ideological point-of-view, although they lack political power. The assassination for power reasons usually aims at eliminating the direct political opponents in order to ascend to power, or the indirect, ideological opponents- a thing that usually happens during undemocratic regimes, such as totalitarianism and communism. Assassinations for power reasons are more likely to happen in countries which are politically unstable and in which democracy is not fully developed.

However, political assassinations happen for reasons different from ascension to power as well. Some of these other reasons are exemplified by famous cases of murder, such as that of president Abraham Lincoln who was killed in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth. Although the theories related to Lincoln's murder vary considerably with respect to the motive of the crime and the number of individuals involved in it, it is generally held as a fact that the murder of the president was a conspiracy initiated either by Booth alone, or by him and other Southern opponents who strongly disagreed with Lincoln' policy which advocated equal rights for both white and black people. In this case therefore, the assassination took place for political reasons, but these were obviously doubled by a racism, and not necessarily by power related reasons.

Terrorism is another case of political violence, but which is generally aimed at an entire system or government, and which usually targets civilians.

Thus, overall, for the reasons mentioned above, and for many others as well the history of political assassination goes back a long way and it is quite overwhelming in its number of incidences.

As Feliks Gross documents, the number of assassination and assassination attempts in the entire history of the United States is impressive:

According to the research prepared for the Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence by Professor Rita James Simon, since 1789, the entire history of the United States records eighty-one assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, all against officeholders. Nine of these, of which five were successful, were directed against presidents or candidates (high-level assassinations).We learn also from the Commission's Task Force I report that the higher the office the higher the probability of an attempt of assassination. However, of the approximately 1,100 men elected to the United States Senate in its entire history, two were assassinated; of the 8,350 congressmen, three were assassinated, and there were seven unsuccessful attempts, five, however, in one single attempt in 1954."

Harlow also identifies the origin of the term "assassination" as coming from an Ismaili sect, which was renown for the violence with which it killed their adversaries:

The term itself, 'assassination,' is generally traced to an Ismaili Shi'ite sect that operated in Syria and Iran in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Known as the hashishiyun (whence the designation "assassins"), the members of this group were reputed to slay their opponents with a bravado that was popularly attributed to their use of drugs. More recently, however, the legal and political definitions of assassination have been debated and refined in order to accommodate both the pressures of contemporary circumstances and, just as significantly, the demands of the system that seeks to contain the challenges to its authority within its legal and political jurisdiction."

Thus, political assassination seems to have an entire tradition throughout history. Consequently, many historians and political scientists were concerned with defining and conceptualizing assassination, both for theoretical purposes and so as to be able to place it from a legal point-of-view.

For instance, assassination was briefly defined as "the deliberate, extralegal killing of an individual for political purposes" by Havens, Leiden and Schmitt in the Politics of Assassination. However, a complete definition of assassination would be much more complicated, since, as it was already noticed, its forms and motives vary widely.

Feliks Gross attempted a classification of the main types of political assassination, according to its mobiles, in his book entitled the Revolutionary Party: Essays in Sociology and Politics. According to Gross, political assassinations can be said to fall roughly into three major categories: assassination attempted or committed by a deranged, mentally ill person, sultanism or assassination of a direct opponent to power and finally individual terror which aims at weakening an entire system or government:

1. Political assassination as an isolated act, frequently carried out by a deranged person. The assassins of American presidents, perhaps with the exception of the Puerto Rican nationalists who attacked President Truman, "evidenced serious mental illness," according to a careful study of the Task Force of the National Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence.

2. Sultanism, assassination of competitors to power. Related to the latter are assassinations in order to secure power for a new elite, to remove the one who controls political power.

3. Individual terror, systematic and tactical assassination directed against the representatives of the ruling groups or government with an objective to weaken the government, the political system, destroy the existing legitimacy, affect ideological, political, and social change. Individual terror is generally a tactic for achieving power; mass terror has been applied in the past and present to consolidate and maintain power."

Thus, this classification is to be taken as the basis for analyzing any act of political assassination. Also, as Gross observes, any political murder has three variables, which are related to the specific context and to the specific actors which take part in the assassination:

Three variables have to be considered in an act of tactical political assassination: 1) the group or political party, which supports the actor; 2) the personality of the actor; 3) the social-political situation to which the party and the actor respond. All three variables are closely interrelated and not isolated factors. Therefore, the act should also be analyzed within a triple context of these variables."

The definition and the characteristics of political murders as they were summarized above are only the facts that can be noticed after a surface analysis of the phenomenon. An in-depth analysis however, presupposes an inquiry into the different dimensions of assassination: moral, political, legal and practical.

First of all, assassination as a form of killing is a morally unjustifiable act. The basis of all national and international laws were laid according the moral laws as established by theology or by different ideologies. Thus, the primary discontent with assassination is that any act of violence against another human being is seen as immoral.

If we look at political assassinations in the light of their moral and social dimensions, we notice that assassinations are present as acts of political violence even in the remotest historical epochs and that, at that time, this type of political behavior was tolerated and even accepted as natural. With time, due to humanization and due to the progress of Western civilization, political assassinations were no longer seen as legitimate or justifiable acts, because of the ethical norms brought by many religions and because of the enforcement of new laws regarding acceptable political behavior and admissible policies. Nevertheless, it is plainly remarkable that in spite of the progress of civilization and in spite of the democratic forms of government that were established in most of the countries, assassinations are still a major social and political problem all over the world. Also, the acts of terrorism seem to have intensified considerably over time, and have generated further political conflicts and violence.

This seemingly unexplainable fact can be elucidated when analyzing the evolution of morality and its main principles and tenants in the course of time; although the main religions established a high morality during the former ages, modernism and postmodernism determined the instability of moral values and a lack of confidence in ethics.

Oleg Zinam comments in his article entitled Terrorism and Violence in the Light of a Theory of Discontent and Frustration, on the two extreme social stances with regard to morality and ideals: the absolute pragmatism, according to which any means are justifiable while pursuing some definite purpose, and the infinite morality which considers that unmoral means are not excusable, no matter the end:

on the level of volition, people face a dichotomy between absolute pragmatism and infinite morality. The former position sees all means justifiable by a lofty end, whereas the latter contends that no wrong means can… READ MORE

How to Reference "Moral Legal Political and Practical Dimensions of Assassination" Term Paper in a Bibliography

Related Term Papers:

Phoenix Program Term Paper

Phoenix Program Lessons to Iraq

Scope and Significance

Summation

The Phoenix Program in Vietnam

Lessons Learned from Phoenix

Applications for Iraq

Selected Bibliography

APPLICATION of PHOENIX PROGRAM LESSONS to IRAQ… read more

Term Paper 75 pages (19225 words) Sources: 50 Topic: Military / Army / Navy / Marines

---

Inter-Parliamentary Union and Its Role in Enhancing International Law Term Paper

Inter-Parliamentary Union and Its Role in Enhancing International Law

Legal Status of the Inter-Parliamentary Union

The Development of the International Institutions

The Public International Unions

The Private International Unions

Historical… read more

Term Paper 59 pages (16130 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: Government / Politics

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>