Assassination Hypocrisy by Jacob G. Hornberger!
(2022-02-10 at 02:28:02 )

Assassination Hypocrisy by Jacob G. Hornberger!

On the morning of January 25, 1993, a man named Mir Amal Kansi appeared outside Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he began assassinating people who were driving their cars into the facility. He ended up killing two CIA employees and wounding three others.

Four years later, FBI agents arrested Kansi in Pakistan and brought him back to the United States.

Mr. Kansi was prosecuted in a Virginia state court for murder, where he was convicted and sentenced to die. On November 14, 2002, the state of Virginia executed him.

What I find fascinating in this episode is that under United States national-security law, when the CIA assassinates people, it is not considered murder. But as Mr. Kansis case shows, when people assassinate CIA officials, it is considered murder.

Mr. Kansi gave the reason for his assassinations. No, he did not say that he hated the United States of America for its "freedom and values." He said that the reason he was assassinating CIA officials was to retaliate for the fact that the United States government was killing people in Iraq and for its role in helping Israel kill Palestinians.

Under United States national-security law, U.S. officials can assassinate anyone they want - "communists," "terrorists," "bad guys," "adversaries," "opponents," "rivals," or "enemies." When they do that, it is to be called an "assassination" or a "targeted killing."

Moreover, under the law, United States officials can kill whoever they want with economic sanctions, as they were doing with the Iraqi people at the time that Mr. Kansi was retaliating. I am reminded of U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albrights infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were "worth it." Those killings were not called "murder" of course. They were called unfortunate deaths arising from the sanctions.

U.S. officials also wield the authority to kill whoever they want with invasions of Third-World countries. The people of Afghanistan and Iraq can attest to that. Again, those killings are not considered to be murder. They are considered to be casualties of war.

If, however, anyone retaliates against the national-security establishment by assassinating officials within the national-security establishment, it is called "murder," in which case the assassin will be put to death after being accorded a trial.

Of course, this was the law prior to the 9-11-01 attacks. After those attacks, the law was implicitly amended to provide that the national-security establishment had the option of taking "bad guys" like Mr. Kansi to Gitmo, where they could be tortured, held indefinitely without trial, or executed after a kangaroo trial before a military tribunal.

All this hypocrisy goes to show what the conversion from a limited-government republic to a national-security state has done to the consciences of the United States of American people.

Most everyone has come to accept the state-sponsored assassinations and deaths arising from sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, and wars of aggression as just part and parcel of the U.S. governments "foreign policy tools."

As I pointed out in a recent blog post, however, the Pentagons and the CIAs assassinations do constitute murder, just as Mr. Kansis assassinations do.

Why, even Lyndon Johnson referred to the CIAs assassination program as a "Murder, Inc.," which is precisely what it is. The same goes for deaths arising from sanctions, embargoes, wars of aggression, invasions, and occupations. It is just plain murder.

Referring to Mr. Kansi, Virginia prosecutor Robert F. Horne stated, "I have tried an awful lot of killers in my life, and I think he is the only one I have run into that is absolutely proud of what he did. You get a lot of killers who do not feel all that bad about what they did, but he is proud of it."

Apparently Mr. Horne has never met any CIA assassins. Like Mr. Kansi, they feel really good about their killings and are absolutely proud of what they do. What Mr. Horne fails to realize is that even though Mr. Kansi is a "bad guy" for assassinating people, that does not convert the CIA assassins into "good guys."

It is probably worth mentioning that after Mr. Kansi was executed, four American citizens were assassinated in Pakistan in retaliation.

What we need in the United States of America is a great awakening, one that involves a revival of individual conscience. When that day comes, Americans will put a stop to the evil within our midst by converting America back to a limited-government republic and putting an end to state-sponsored murder. It will also make Americans traveling overseas a lot safer.

Reprinted here with permission from Mr. Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation!! Their Libertarian Website!!