Assassination is an act of war

On Monday, August 22, 2005 evangelist Pat Robertson called for the US government to "take out" Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The comments were made on Robertson's television show The 700 Club. Two days later, after the resulting furor, Robertson retracted his statement, saying "Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement. I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him."

This incident raises some interesting questions. Is assassination by a state a legitimate action? If it is, can Christians rightly condone or participate in it? If so, is it right for ministers of the Gospel to publicly call for such action? I know that I'm treading on delicate ground, but I'll try to address all of these questions.

Let's take care of the last two questions first. If we stipulate for the moment that it is right for states to kill certain individual enemies, what about participation by Christians, especially pastors? Christians are to be good citizens. If it is the duty of a citizen to participate in a war or an assassination in order to enable the government to "bear the sword" (see Romans 13, 1-4), that would seem to be part of good citizenship.

Pat Robertson's comments are another matter. His television show is a Christian Gospel ministry. As such, it should not be used for political purposes, because mixing the Gospel with politics can only take away from the message of the Gospel. It takes even more away from the Gospel to associate it with ideas that may seem to be anti-Gospel, thus potentially driving people away from the message that they urgently need for their salvation. I would urge Rev. Robertson to talk about political topics only when he is clearly away from his "pulpit," and even then only when he can take the time to show clearly that what he is saying is not inconsistent with his call to preach the Gospel.

For the previous discussion we've assumed that it can be legitimate for a government to carry out an assassination. Is this true? If we think of some extreme examples such as Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Osama bin-Laden, it seems that there must be some circumstances where it would indeed be legitimate.

Hugo Chavez isn't yet in the same class with these mass murderers, but he has done some things that rightly offend us. For example, Venezuelan military defectors have told us that right after 9/11 Chavez paid a million dollars to al-Qaida as a sort of thank offering. He is a bosom buddy of Fidel Castro, and entirely open about spreading socialism/communism throughout Latin America. Hugo Chavez definitely qualifies as a dangerous enemy of our country.

What are the circumstances where such assassinations would be justified? Assassination is killing of a human being. I can think of only three contexts where killing by government is not considered by civilized societies to be murder: defending people from immediate criminal action, capital punishment and war. As far as we know, Chavez has not committed a crime in the United States, so police action and capital punishment are out. Therefore the only circumstance in which an assassination might be legitimate is in war.

That limitation fits the fact that assassination is itself an act of war. If Venezuela were to assassinate our president, we would correctly treat it as such. The same would be true if we were to kill Venezuela's leader.

The US is not currently at war with Venezuela, so assassinating Chavez at this time would not be justified. Strictly speaking, we are not at war with al-Qaida either (it's not even a country!), so assassinating bin-Laden or other known terrorists is also problematical. What can we do when it is necessary to remove the danger posed by such men?

One option might be to leave these decisions solely to the discretion of the president, as we have been doing in most matters of war for some years now. This has been the practice with assassinations in the recent past; for example the multiple attempts on Fidel Castro's life at the orders of President Kennedy.

Two problems come to mind with that. It's illegal, since the Constitution grants power only to Congress to declare war, or by implication to authorize acts of war. Also, what is there to limit the targets that a president might choose to call "enemies?" Even if we make the risky assumption that our current president would target only people who are truly dangerous to our country, we have had and will again have presidents who aren't limited by moral strictures.

Clearly we don't want to declare war against Venezuela so we can legally kill their head of state, just as it would be absurd to declare war on Saudi Arabia in order to target bin-Laden, a Saudi citizen. Fortunately, the Constitution offers us a form of limited warfare for these situations: Article I Section 8 specifies that Congress may "grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal." Such a letter is basically authorizing specific people to capture or kill an enemy(s) that is not a government. Historically, the letters were used to target enemy shipping or international criminals such as pirates.

Use of letters of marque and reprisal would have the advantage of making Congress responsible for starting the limited war. It takes the decision out of the hands of one man, the president, and ensures that there is a political and moral consensus before taking action. It would of course have the disadvantage of telegraphing our intent, and ways would have to be found to prevent this.

There is a real national security need to carry out occasional military or other violent actions, including assassinations, short of war. Grants of letters of marque and reprisal are the constitutional way to initiate these actions. Unilateral actions by the executive branch are illegal and should be condemned.