Re: Anti-Militarism Posters?
Kevin Dempsey Peterson (peterson@ocf.Berkeley.EDU)
Mon, 16 Feb 1998 20:51:16 -0800
On 16 Feb 1998, Daniel C. Burton wrote:
>Of course, killing Saddam Hussein is not necessarily superior to sitting
>back and minding our own business. During the Persian Gulf War, we openly
>tried to kill Saddam Hussein many times, but it was natural then because we
>were at war. If we're not at war, it's more likely to be viewed as an act
>of terrorism, and it would be even more likley to result in acts of
But if the politicians actually had the goal of getting Saddam out of
power, and the options were, conquer the country, and set up our own
government, or just assasinate him, the second is far superior.
But, when someone conquers a country, they usually just kill a lot of
soldiers, and the leaders run off to somewhere else (and Saddam would
have a lot of countries to flee to). So this solution is more palatible
to the leaders of this country, because they don't like the idea of
leaders dying, especially not leaders dying for being bad leaders.
>I don't really like Harry Browne's campaign piece about putting a bounty on
>Saddam Hussein's head anymore. As you might be able to tell, I've been
>influenced a lot by reading anti-war sites lately....
I got the idea from David(?) Bell's "Assasination Politics". I believe
his reasoning is correct, but it relies on anonymous payoffs. If no one
knows who had him killed (the CIA? Mossad? Polynesisean Fishermen and
the Vatican each putting up half the money?), then no one knows who to
terrorize. And, of course, since the terrorists bother a lot of people,
lots of people would put up a little money to have them killed.
It's a nice, clean way to remove the assholes from positions of power
without killing those who haven't got anything to do with the policies
that are giving you problems. While war is a big, centralized (and
therefor inefficient) way of getting rid of leaders you don't like,
assasination, with anonymous payoffs, is a decentralized, efficient
method.
If you don't like killing people as a way of enacting policies, at least
it kills less people. If you do like killing people, it saves you
money.
--Kevin