I was interested in Mark Griffin’s " Hit Squad " contributions because I thought they had the makings of an interesting moral argument but were not sufficiently well-formulated to present a clear case. I think Mark may have been reading too many spy-thrillers which have persuaded him that it's quite easy for anyone to walk into an enemy country and assassinate its leader, just like that. I would guess that the most successful assassins and terrorists are people of a particular psychological type, fanatics who don't care whether they live or die, who may even welcome death in the service of "the cause"; and who have been carefully chosen and given intensive training for the job. Obviously murder is murder; but the interesting question is how much of the moral responsibility should be attributed to those who chose and trained the murderers. Are they equally as guilty as, or perhaps more guilty than, the murderers themselves?
Mark quotes a Middle East situation, but the same sort of question arises in the case of Japanese kamikaze pilots who had a predilection for self-sacrifice because of the culture in which they grew up. How can we assess responsibility in their case ? What about the men who trained the pilots and gave the orders? It's probably the same with all terrorists: they believe their acts are justified.
I was amused by the idea that plots to assassinate Hitler were not pursued because that sort of thing was "not done". We were at war, total war, and I'm sure that had it been thought possible and expedient it would have been done, without any squeamishness about etiquette. There would have been enough volunteers willing to have a go. I think the reasons such a plan wasn't put into operation were more likely to have been :-
I think such questions of moral responsibility have to be considered alongside Mark's main one of "Under what circumstances is it right for a legitimate, democratic government to cause the leader of another nation to be assassinated?" To that I would be inclined to answer "Under no circumstances" although I realise it is too much to expect politically volatile nations to stop and consider philosophical questions before taking action. Whatever is possible will probably occur sooner or later.
But at least nowadays there is more of a hope that those who gave the orders would be aware that they risked some day being charged with their crimes before a War Crimes Tribunal and asked to justify them to the world.
Sheila Blanchard
Hope the above makes some sense. By the way, thanks for the personal letter that accompanied the article. I hope to have replied to it by the time you read this, but if not ... apologies !Perspicuity : it must have been clear to the guilty party at the time of the offence that the act in question was wrong. While 'ignorance is no defence before the law', I think it is a moral defence. This puts much of the blame for crimes on those who persuaded their perpetrators that the act in question was not wrong. However, the perpetrators are not thereby absolved. A concentration camp guard may have been told that Jews were not people, not persons, and the degree of degradation to which the Jews were subjected in the camps was partly so that this charade could be maintained. It’s easier to treat someone who’s covered in their own excrement as sub-human than it would be someone who looks like a neighbour from down the road. However, when it came down to separating the mothers from their children, their humanity must have been manifest.
Enormity : the scale of the crime - ie. the number of people killed - is clearly important, but guilt accrues in a non-linear manner. Guilt is a very non-consequentialist matter. Some of us hold the view that proximity overrides enormity to a degree. Hence the reluctance ever to release Myra Hindley, whereas the same hatred doesn’t accrue to bombers who might also have killed children.
Proximity : the closer you are to an evil act, the clearer it must be to you that it is wrong. I completely forget the details, but I believe that the hero of the Graham Greene novel assassinates (there we go again !) the eponymous Quiet American not because he is an evil man, but because his South-East Asian policies have evil consequences of which he is unaware, or unwilling to take seriously. Not that those who are willingly ignorant of the cost of their actions are thereby absolved. One of the problems of modern ‘clinical’ warfare is that the aggressor is separated from the consequences of his aggression.
Autonomy : those who command are more responsible than those who obey, and those that invent evils than those who implement them. Again, this is not a total mitigation. In particular, the excuse of having made a ‘vow’ of obedience (you know the context) is particularly feeble. If you did, then you should break it if fulfilling it would necessitate an act more wicked than the breaking of the vow. Expected reprisals, on self or family, are clearly a mitigant, but not an overriding one.
Theo