"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

The Assassinaton Game

by Lee

A couple of days ago I wrote a post detailing why I thought it was unfair of the media to use the term “assassination” when reporting the Israeli killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.  It just dawned on me exactly what it is that I find so objectionable about the use of that term.  It implies illegality.  When Oswald assassinated JFK he may have done so for perceived rigteous reasons but it was still an unwarranted, illegal killing.  The same goes for Lincoln, Sadat, Gandhi, MLK, and so on.  The Yassin extermination was different in the sense that he was a declared, open enemy of Israel, the head of the terrorist organization Hamas.  He was a legitimate target. Whether you agree or disagree that taking him out was a prudent thing to do, it’s quite another to believe that his killing was in any sense of the word unjustified, unwarranted, or illegal. 

The use of the term “assaassinated” is simply one way that the media can express their slant on the story.  Yassin was not a head of state or a civil rights leader, he was a terrorist.  You can take the angle that one man’s terrorist is another man’s civil rights leader, but Gandhi never send explosives-laden suicide bombers to kill innocent women and children.

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