Political Assassination - Essay Example

Client Political Assassination Political assassination is about power. When one personhas it, another takes extreme and permanent measures to take it away. There is evidence of this kind of action as far back as there is archeological evidence to be found. Stories from ancient Egypt and Rome are riddled with the tales of the deaths of the powerful. As well, recent history shows evidence of the same kind of overt act toward change. In an examination of the concept of political assassination, one can find a variety of reasons for these actions that are more specific to the circumstance. However, power is always the main reason for this act of taking a life. In a world where power is the point, political assassination is a timeless method of arresting control away from a central figure. The taking of life is considered by most people to be a serious thing to consider. When the life of a person who has assumed the role of a powerful figure within a society has become forfeit by a group, the action becomes an act of war. Whether the action ends a war, begins a war, or is the whole of a war, the action changes the nature of the current positions of power. According to Littell and Little , the nature of political assassination is defined by two strains of human thought. The first is that there is a divine nature to the order of the world and that “might is right.” In other words, the one who is the strongest has been ordained by a divine right to take power. The second concept is that there are times in history when expediency is the driving force (646). With these two concepts within the frame of human thought, the act of taking a life to Client Last Name 2 change the political landscape can seem justified. The basic drives to assassinations are also based on two human needs. The first is greed, where one person has control of something that another wants. The other is survival, in that one person poses a threat to others. Both concepts have held equal power over the history of assassinations. As well, both concepts can be supported by basic Darwinian Social Theory. This theory is best summarized by “survival of the fittest”, a concept that has come to encompass the whole of Darwin’s theories as they apply to both nature and to man (Boyer et al 424). As a person or group sees that another stands in the way of a more desirable set of circumstances, the survival of that individual becomes less desirable and may set the stage for an assassination attempt. One of the oldest stories of political assassination comes from two text sources left from the annals of ancient Egypt that describe the death of Amenemhat I, the founder of the 12th dynasty of Egyptian rule. The two texts, The Instructions of Amenemhat and The Story of Sinuhe, suggest that Amenemhat I was killed by his own guards, thus handing leadership over to his son, Senusret I. In The Instruction of Amenemhat, the son recounts a story of how his father came to him in a dream and gave him instructions upon which to set his rule of the land. During the account he describes his assassination to his son (Simpson & Ritner 166). Whether the king was assassinated or not is not proven, but the evidence of the written accounts, although in story form, suggest that this form of change has a long history. Other theories on some of the deaths of the ancients have both been historically documented or suspected. King Tutankhamen is thought to have perhaps been assassinated. There is documentation on the death of Julius Caesar in Rome. Of course, political assassination Client Last Name 3 is not only a consequence within ancient civilizations. There were attempts made on Adolf Hitler as he ruled over Germany, although those attempts were unsuccessful. If one were to imagine the difference in the world had those attempts be successful, the ramifications would be staggering. The surface changes would be obvious. The Jewish holocaust could have been avoided, the subjugation of the involved countries around Europe might have never happened, and it is possible that even the cold war between the United States would have never occurred. On the other hand, a great number of innovations in scientific study would have never advanced so quickly and the technological world might be very different. Obviously, that sacrifice would be worth the saving of all the lives that were lost, but the point remains that many changes that are not part of the obvious cascade from the success or failure of an assassination. More recently, political assassination has been the theories behind actual assassinations and attempts within the United States. The assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy are a common topic of conspiracy theorists. While both assassinations appear to be the work of a single person, some of the information suggests that it was actually a conclusion to a conspiracy. According to Edward Steers, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was proclaimed to be an act of God by some. The Galveston Daily News reported that “God almighty ordered this event or it could never have taken place. (16)” This would suggest that some saw this act as fulfilling the divine aspect of political assassination. Since the President Lincoln was the target of numerous death threats, the idea that he was the victim of a conspiracy has plagued historians for decades. The conspiracy theories about the death of President Kennedy are even more in abundance. Movies have been made that explain the connectivity of all the evidence that is available to suggest that his assassination was indeed a coup to take over the office of President Client Last Name 4 of the United States by his successor, Lyndon Johnson. President Johnson’s participation is sometimes affirmed, and sometimes considered outside of his knowledge. There are ties made to organized crime, to Fidel Castro from Cuba, and even connections to the subsequent assassinations of his brother Robert Kennedy and to Martin Luther King (Kaiser 388). One of the dire consequences to his assassination is quite possibly the entry of the United States into Vietnam. Kennedy had decided against sending troops into Vietnam shortly before his death, but Lyndon Johnson had a differing thought to how to approach that conflict. Had Kennedy lived, the difference in history could be staggering (Prouty 246). Political assassination as a tool for power can be found in very recent history as well. Recently, Hamas leader Mahmoud al Mabhouh was assassinated in a hotel in Dubai which eventually lead to speculation that the act was carried out by the Israeli Mossad (Macgregor-Wood). This brings up one of the more interesting aspects of the use of political assassination as a tool. Many such acts keep the conspirators and their motivations private. One swift action ends the life of a leader or key player which can alter the course of history. How an individual’s influence is manipulated becomes the subject of secrecy, thus allowing an agenda to be promoted without public interference or the declaration of war among or between peoples. However, some facts almost always surface. As an example, the Mossad has been accused of using foreign passports in order to carry out some of its political assassinations. This suggests to the world that there is a collaboration between the Israeli Mossad action and the nation from whom the passports were obtained. That country must then disavow any knowledge of the actions that were taken. The killing in Dubai is suspected to have been done under the use of British passports obtained by the Mossad, while another assassination attempt by the same Client Last Name 5 organization was made in Jordan in 1997, Canadian passports were used (Macgregor-Wood). Simon Macgregor-Wood reported for ABC News that several years ago Mossad agents were caught trying to obtain the identities of New Zealand residents for unknown reasons. Assassination can also create larger outcomes than are intended. As an example, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand is often considered the catalyst to World War I. The Archduke and his wife, Sophie, were in Serbia visiting as a representative when an assassination was carried out under the orders of an organization called the Black Hand (Craig 25). This organization opposed the Austrian government and used this action as a clear statement to that fact. Political assassination was not unfamiliar to this region of the world and according to Craig, the act was not even reported by world wide news with any real surprise or urgency. However, the action was the final catalyst to a war that had been teetering on the brink of breaking out. While the eventuality of war had already been established by the time of the assassination, the event is often considered the turning point event. If the deaths of the Archduke and his wife had never occurred, history might have still been the same. However, it also may have been dramatically changed. Assassination for political means might be considered a selfish action. When a person of interest is killed for the intent of changing the course of a nation or group, usually it is one organization that has decided to represent themselves in that act as righteous. In taking on this action, the group has become judge, jury, and executioner against the popular interest. In other words, the person who is killed has been denied any due process, so the rights of all people must be considered in peril. As in the act of the Black Hand, they assassinated a man who was actually considered fair in his attitudes toward their agenda. Duke Ferdinand was for the autonomy of the Client Last Name 6 Serbian people, but he was still targeted and his life spent to support that cause without his point of view being relevant (Craig 27). The current state of the world allows for a great deal of concern for this action. Terrorism is based on the ideals of one group supporting violent actions in order to make a political statement. Political assassination is one form of terrorism. Just as the Black Hand chose to put to death a man without any form of judicial and public process, so does terrorism by groups occur outside of the needs of the many in support of the needs of a single entity. Meagle argues that political assassination is never a moral act because the life of the individual has been forfeited without due process (177). He makes a point of including this act in an argument that is in disfavor of torture as a method of information gathering techniques. Supporting the acts of a single entity in deciding the fate of an individual is tantamount to supporting terrorists and their actions, no matter who is the target of the assassination. This is why the foreign governments whose citizens identities have been used by Mossad in activities of political assassination publicly denounce the acts. As one looks at the history of political assassinations, the two aspects of divine right and expediency measure strongly within the phenomenon. An individual or group decides that a person goes against the interests that are relevant to that group or individual, who then acts to change the course or nature of societal policy. Some acts have remained shrouded in mystery, while others were publicly accredited to the group responsible. While the circumstances are always different and the needs vary greatly, the need to arrest power and take it from an individual is the center of such actions. Taking the life of a political person of interest is the center of the act of political assassination, but the result is a shift in power. Client Last Name 7 Works Cited Boyer, Paul S. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2010. Craig, John S. Peculiar Liaisons: In War, Espionage, and Terrorism in the Twentieth Century. New York: Algora Publ, 2005. . Kaiser, David E. The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Littell, E., & Littell, R. S. Living Age. Boston: Littell, Son and Co. [etc.], 1844. London, Jack, and Robert L. Fish. The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. Penguin twentieth-century classics. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Macgregor-Wood, Simon. Israelis Debate Fallout from Hit Squad Killing of Hamas Leader. 17 February 2010. ABC News: The blotter from Brian Ross. 27 February 2010 from http://abcnews.go.com/B lotter/mahmoud-al-mabhouh-israelis-debate-fallout-hit- squad/story?id=9860153 Meggle, Georg. Ethics of Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism. Frankfurt [i.e.] Heusenstamm nr. Frankfurt ; Paris ; Ebikon ; Lancaster ; New Brunswick: Ontos-Verl, 2005. Prouty, L. F. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publ, 1996. Simpson, William Kelly, and Robert K. Ritner. The literature of ancient Egypt: an anthology of stories, instructions, stelae, autobiographies, and poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Steers, Edward. Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. Read More