Raisons d’État: Justifying Assassination and Murder of American Citizens

From Niccolo Machiavelli and Cardinal Richelieu to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, survival of the state has been the highest priority of political authority. Any means necessary regardless of morality or legality is sanctioned for reasons of state (raisons d’État). In statecraft, the ends justify the means.

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future. — Adolf Hitler

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, longstanding American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, more effective methods than those used against us. — 1954 Report on the Covert Activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (The Doolittle Report)

As the historic anniversary draws nearer I suspect that many of these craven individuals (of both parties) will soon be marching in lock-step unison in shouting their support of an earlier assassination of an American citizen by the top tier of the National Security establishment fifty years ago who was seen as a traitor to his nation during the height of the Cold War.

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6:48 pm on February 12, 2013