Assassination: An Underappreciated Tool in the Toolbox

Assassination is a Facet of The Military Element of Power
The recent announcement of a large reward for the murder of a Danish cartoonist by a ‘cleric’ in Pakistan highlights a dynamic in the current war against Islamofascists that isn’t being discussed openly in the West. Hopefully it is being discussed privately among the Western leadership.

The subject is assassination and subversion: more specifically, the selective assassination of certain so-called 'leaders' calling for the destruction of the West, and the active subversion of their power structure. These ‘leaders’ are actively seeking to destroy Western Civilization, and impose dhimmitude upon the West. Their selective death and/or disappearance would frustrate and inhibit potential replacements. This will do nothing about the burning hate behind the remaining fascist’s ideology, but it will ensure that their hate stays within a tighter circle of fanatics...because it is a lot harder to foment trouble when you can’t scream at the top of your lungs about it.

How to (Mostly) Stem the Tide of Islamofascism
It seems to me quite sensible to develop a coherent strategy for dealing with these vermin as individuals without having to go to the trouble and cost of conventional warfare for the following practical reasons:

1. If action must be taken, the elimination of a relatively small number of troublemakers is a far more moral and desirable option than placing large populations under the threat of total warfare. Taking this approach would not necessarily pre-empt use of general warfare for other compelling reasons.

2. Assassination would more fully exploit a Western advantage in asymmetrical warfare. It capitalizes on the weaknesses of the Islamofascist organization along tribal lines. Decapitation of organizational leadership creates greater internal friction among factions and potential successors in these kinds of groups as compared to democratic organizations with tried-and-true formal rules of succession.

3.Assassination will create distrust between the heretofore cooperative elements, such as the different allied organizations operating under the Al Qaeda umbrella

4. The current aversion to assassination as a military option is a relatively modern phenomenon. Serious consideration of the assassination option will shed new light on the flawed logic that proscribed it in the first place.

To preempt any silliness asserting that we shouldn’t use assassination as a tool because someone else could try and use it against us, let me point out that they have already tried to use it.