Assassins R Us

As the Iraqi resistance expands and perfects its attacks, the American military, like so many occupying armies before it, is turning to methods of warfare long outlawed by civilized nations -- assassinations and reprisals against civilians. When it comes to the first, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has long been on record as wanting Saddam Hussein and the leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban brought in "dead or alive," with emphasis on the former.

Now, according to a November 7th front-page piece in the New York Times, the Pentagon, in conjunction with the CIA, has announced the creation of a new "task force" -- polite language for an assassination squad -- to accomplish these ends. "The new Special Operations organization," according to reporters Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, "is designed to act with greater speed on intelligence tips about 'high-value targets' and not be contained within the borders where American conventional forces are operating in Iraq and Afghanistan." In other words, this death squad, composed of U.S. Army Special Forces troops, can run down its quarry in countries like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan but presumably also (if the occasion required it) in France, Germany, or even the United States itself.

The contradictions inherent in this plan are striking and tell us a great deal about what it means to be the lone planetary superpower. Although the Bush administration has refused to join the new International Criminal Court because it allegedly threatened our sovereignty, we now openly say that nobody else's sovereignty means anything at all to us. Without debate or oversight by elected officials, we are seemingly adopting a militarized version of globalization -- sending "terminator" squads wherever we want to whenever we care to -- whose operations will inevitably change the nature of our world, no matter how any individual attack may sort itself out. The concept of sovereignty -- that national governments exercise supreme authority within their own borders -- is the bedrock of global order. Without it, we open the door to anarchy.

Something like this plan for officially sanctioned assassinations has been in the cards for some time. On November 4, 2002, the Bush administration acknowledged that it had carried out a strike in Yemen, violating that country's sovereignty. Using an armed "Predator" unmanned surveillance aircraft monitored by CIA operatives based at a French military facility in Djibouti and at CIA headquarters in Virginia, the U.S. released a Hellfire missile that destroyed an SUV said to contain a senior al-Qaeda terrorist. Not only was the vehicle so completely vaporized that this claim cannot be verified, but the nature of the strike itself -- coming after the Yemeni government reportedly refused to act on information passed to it by the CIA -- must give pause to other governments. Why couldn't a Hellfire missile released from a remote-controlled drone be used to destroy reputed terrorists in the Philippines, in Singapore, or in Germany, regardless of what a local government might think or wish?

It would be prudent for our leaders to remember that sovereignty only makes sense when it is honored by all nations reciprocally. The day could come when the United States might be vulnerable to another country's use of such missiles against the homes and offices of supporters of, say, Israel or Taiwan.

Secretary Rumsfeld is, in fact, taking a leaf out of the play-book of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. He has long employed hit-squads against Palestinian and Hamas leaders who displeased him, and he is on record as having seriously considered "taking out" President Arafat. Just as Sharon and his government are indifferent to the collateral damage caused by their missile assaults, Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of all U.S. military forces from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, invariably uses the word "terrorist" to describe Iraqi resistance fighters. Calling guerrilla fighters "terrorists" allows American soldiers great leeway in avoiding responsibility when, for instance, they shoot unarmed civilians at checkpoints because they failed to obey shouted orders, which they may not have understood, fast enough.