{"id":2603,"date":"2004-09-26T22:49:09","date_gmt":"2004-09-27T02:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2004\/09\/26\/bring-back-the-assassins\/"},"modified":"2004-09-26T22:49:09","modified_gmt":"2004-09-27T02:49:09","slug":"bring-back-the-assassins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/09\/26\/bring-back-the-assassins\/","title":{"rendered":"Bring Back the Assassins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a3891'><\/a><\/p>\n<table width=\"537\" border=\"0\">\n<tr>\n<td width=\"537\">\n<p align=\"left\">From tomorrow&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/09\/26\/international\/middleeast\/26CND-SYRIA.html?ei=5090&amp;en=63a6edb455801eef&amp;ex=1253937600&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;partner=rssuserland&amp;adxnnlx=1096243314-rRIjfMxoOpmqAZO2mDbuqw\">New<br \/>\n          York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">&quot;CAIRO, Sept. 26  An official of the militant organization<br \/>\n          Hamas was killed today when his sport utility vehicle exploded in a<br \/>\n          neighborhood of Damascus, the Syrian capital, heavily populated by<br \/>\n          Palestinian refugees.<\/p>\n<p>  Syria and Hamas officials quickly blamed Israel for the killing of the Hamas<br \/>\n  official, Izzideen Al-Sheik Khalil, calling the car bomb a new phase in the<br \/>\n  Israeli government&#8217;s assassinations of Hamas leaders.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/assass.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"285\" align=\"left\">In<br \/>\n        this area, if in few others, we are convinced the United States should<br \/>\n        emulate the Israeli example. We cannot defeat terrorism<br \/>\n        with conventional military movements into hostile territory.&nbsp; We<br \/>\n        cannot capture, imprison and bring to trial all the lost souls who have<br \/>\n        dedicated<br \/>\n        their lives to killing us. And we should forget about taking them out<br \/>\n        with grotesquely inaccurate &quot;smart bombs&quot;, which attempt to divorce<br \/>\n        those doing the killing from the psychic and visceral repercussions<br \/>\n        of the act. Unsuccessfully.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">What we need, as the richest, most developed and advanced<br \/>\n        nation on the planet is a fanatical cadre of the most professional and<br \/>\n        stone-cold lethal assassins the world has ever known.&nbsp; If the United<br \/>\n        States can produce the best scientists, the most gold medal winning athletes,<br \/>\n        the greatest business minds and the hottest rock and roll, there is no<br \/>\n        reason we shouldn&#8217;t have the best world class killers, ninjas, wet work<br \/>\n        specialists and dedicated sociopaths as well.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">As the Israelis have known since Munich, 1972, when there<br \/>\n        is state-supported terrorism afoot the only way to root it out is to<br \/>\n        hunt down the terrorists, one by one, wherever they run and try to hide,<br \/>\n        and exterminate them like diseased insects.  Fairly soon, after the massacre<br \/>\n        in Munich, the Israelis discovered the identities of virtually all of<br \/>\n        those responsible for planning and carrying out the attack. In most cases<br \/>\n        they knew where they were hiding.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Did the Israelis go to the United Nations and ask for a<br \/>\n        resolution to turn over these murderers for trial?&nbsp; Did they go<br \/>\n        to the International Court in the Hague and ask for indictments to bring<br \/>\n        the criminals to trial? Did they try to convene a Nuremburg-type show<br \/>\n        trial for the international community to see?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">No. They very quietly and ruthlessly set special assassination<br \/>\n        squads on the trail of these guys, and over the following 5 years, one<br \/>\n        by one they dropped off the face of the earth. All of them.&nbsp; Sometime<br \/>\n        it was a car bomb, sometimes betrayal by a confidant or lover, sometimes<br \/>\n        a portable telephone would explode in the middle of a conversation.&nbsp; Some<br \/>\n        were shot in their sleep, some were poisoned, some were garroted silently<br \/>\n        in the night.&nbsp; Some were never found, but simply disappeared.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The Israelis never announced or admitted what they were<br \/>\n        doing, but everyone knew what was going on. Those who were the last to<br \/>\n        go must have felt the invisible footsteps of the Mossad hit squads dogging<br \/>\n        their heels for months before they finally caught up with them.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">This is the essence of revenge, terror against terror,<br \/>\n        but 100% targeted and, when performed professionally, absolutely safe<br \/>\n        for innocent bystanders.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Americans today, wrapped in their cloak of righteousness,<br \/>\n        are quick to smite the enemy, but prefer to do so from the Olympian safety<br \/>\n        of launch platforms at 20,000 feet, like high-tech Zeuses flinging thunderbolts<br \/>\n        at moral miscreants below. Laser guided bombs, GPS cruise missiles and<br \/>\n        other &quot;smart&quot; weapons are our lightning bolts of choice.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The effects are almost always devastating, but not exactly<br \/>\n        in the ways intended by the weapons designers. Often the target is taken<br \/>\n        out, but more often than not any other human beings, including minor<br \/>\n        officials, wives, children, waiters, servants and passersby who happen to be in the general vicinity are taken<br \/>\n        out with them. They may kill one or two very bad men, but in the process<br \/>\n        create<br \/>\n        a dozen innocent martyrs and leave 50 widows and orphans who will spend<br \/>\n        the rest of their lives hating Americans and the day we rained death<br \/>\n        from the sky.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">A further failure of the intended effects of these terrible<br \/>\n        weapons is that the victims, of course, cannot retaliate against the<br \/>\n        deadly silver dots streaking across the stratosphere, and so they look<br \/>\n        for any accessible manifestation of the power which so suddenly and callously<br \/>\n        took their loved ones and destroyed their worlds. Unfortunately, the<br \/>\n        grunts, drivers and aide workers bear the brunt of the insane rage and thirst for blood revenge<br \/>\n        kindled by these latest intelligent instruments of death. <\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The sad truth is that almost every person left alive in<br \/>\n        the entire country of Iraq at this point has lost a loved one or knows<br \/>\n        someone personally who has been killed in the fighting, the majority<br \/>\n        by US troops. Effectively, almost everyone over there wants us dead,<br \/>\n        or gone, or dead AND gone.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Finally, and in an ultimate irony, in the ultimate analysis the killer cannot divorce<br \/>\n        himself from his handiwork simply by inserting a variety of electronic<br \/>\n        switches and complicated machinery between himself and his victims. What<br \/>\n        kind of emotional and psychological scars are our children going to have<br \/>\n        when they come home? Both those doing the long distance killing and those<br \/>\n        bearing the up-close consequences, keeping low and trying to survive<br \/>\n        the hatred of a nation, are sure to be haunted and tortured by the implications<br \/>\n        and memories of what they have seen and done. Do you really think that all the Vietnam<br \/>\n        vets became homeless junkies and psychos after the war because that was<br \/>\n        what they were before, or do you think that what happened to them over<br \/>\n        there turned them into homeless junkies and psychos?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">So we believe that it would be much healthier, psychically<br \/>\n        and karmicly, to go in and get these Al Qaida scum one by one, with our<br \/>\n        bare hands, so to speak, to send them to an early date with Allah and<br \/>\n        let them see what HE thinks of their shenanigans. We must have the talent,<br \/>\n        on the streets of our cities, within the armed services, or currently<br \/>\n        honing their skills in one of our many excellent rehabilitation facilities. <\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Most importantly, it would save the lives of countless<br \/>\n        innocent human beings who just happen to be in the vicinity at the exact<br \/>\n        moment that some trigger happy cyber-jockey 20 miles away presses a button<br \/>\n        or releases a switch. That kind of indiscriminate death-dealing is positively<br \/>\n        un American. Our judicial system would rather let 10 guilty men walk<br \/>\n        than send one innocent man up the river &#8211; blindly accepting warfare where<br \/>\n        we are killing scores of civilians in order to get at a few truly evil<br \/>\n        men is unacceptable and is eating away at the American subconscious.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">So bring back the assassins. Teach them to shoot, and stab,<br \/>\n        and garrote, and poison.&nbsp; And teach them to be conscious human beings<br \/>\n        while they are wielding the wrath of the terrible swift sword; to identify<br \/>\n        and isolate their victims, to abort the mission if women or children or<br \/>\n        innocents are around, and to look into the eyes of the murderous cowards<br \/>\n        they are eliminating and say with their own eyes &#8211; this is what happens<br \/>\n        to those who kill Americans.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From tomorrow&#8217;s New York Times: &quot;CAIRO, Sept. 26 An official of the militant organization Hamas was killed today when his sport utility vehicle exploded in a neighborhood of Damascus, the Syrian capital, heavily populated by Palestinian refugees. Syria and Hamas &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/09\/26\/bring-back-the-assassins\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}