ASSASSINATION

“Murder, I should fancy, is invariably rather a mistake,” Oscar Wilde has demonic Lord Henry Wotton drawl in The Picture of Dorian Grey, “one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner.” This cynical axiom would not have impressed President Donald Trump, no great exponent of good manners and etiquette, when he ordered the dispatch of Iranian General Suleimani, a venomous enemy of the US and the West in general. Iran and her Arab allies have been whipped into an even higher level of anti-American hysteria, aided by the usual suspects in the West, but political assassination is a well-established technique and the cries of horror at the very thought of it have an unrealistic ring.

Donald Trump

General Suleimani

Philip II of Macedon (336 BC), father of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar (44 BC), Roman emperors Caligula (41 AD), Galba (69) Vitellius (69) and Domitian (96) were all bumped off by political or dynastic rivals. Very few lucky Emperors of Rome or Byzantium (i.e. the then civilized world) died of old age or in their beds and this gory tradition persisted in Renaissance Europe with the Medicis and Borgias stirring or dodging poisoned chalices every day.

Julius Caesar

Lucretia Borgia

In more modern times maniacs abounded, British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval falling to one in 1812 while plucky Queen Victoria survived at least 5 nefarious attempts in her long reign. 4 US Presidents have not been so lucky, Abe Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) and John Kennedy (1963), all lethal targets. Unsurprisingly, Russian tsars have also been targets, Alexander II (1881) and Nicholas II, plus family, mown down without due process (1918). 

Other crowned heads suffered the same fate – Empress Sisi of Austria (1898), by an Italian anarchist, George I of Greece (1913), by a leftist vagrant, Alexander of Yugoslavia, accompanied by French Foreign Minister Barthou (1934) at the hands of a Croat fanatic. Going down several classes, Hitler, never one for half-measures, managed one weekend to dispose of his ideological enemy Gregor Strasser, his predecessor as Chancellor, General Schleicher, and his rival in thuggery, Ernst Röhm, in the Night of the Long Knives (1934). Joseph Stalin, among his many crimes, also ordered the assassination of rival Leon Trotsky in Mexico City (1940) executed (unlamented) with an ice-pick.

Empress Sisi of Austria

Ernst Rohm

As an instrument of policy, assassination is notoriously unpredictable. The Serbs behind the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (1914) can hardly have wished the world to be convulsed with a War during which Serbia ceased to exist for some years. Murdering Abe Lincoln did nothing to alleviate the sufferings of the South and the death of JFK only brought deep sorrow. Very often an assassination is a form of revenge – a dish best served cold – as the Armenian diaspora hunted down for many years those responsible for, and senior deniers of, the Ottoman genocide of 1915-18, and Israeli Mossad tracked the Palestinian killers of athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Similarly the elimination of Osama bin Laden, organiser of 9/11 and many other murderous sorties, by US Navy Seals (2011), can be thought a just retribution. The liquidation of ISIL’s Al-Baghdadi (2019) and Iran’s General Suleimani (2020) can be looked at in the same light.

Trump pledged that US troops would leave the Middle East and this will happen well before the US elections in November. He fired his deadly Parthian shot to remind Shia Islam that America’s arm is long and it can defend its interests just as easily from its base in Omaha, Nebraska, as it can from its compound in Baghdad.

Osama bin Laden

Lord Mountbatten of Burma

Yet assassinations can cause much grief and injury to what I look upon as the forces of progress. Who benefited from the murder of Mahatma Gandhi (1948) or of Martin Luther King (1968) or of the offspring of Nehru, Indira Gandhi (1984) and Rajiv (1991), other than incorrigible extremists –  or from that of Benazir Bhutto (2007) in the violence of Pakistan? Nearer home there is a grim catalogue of assassinations in Ireland, ranging from the Phoenix Park murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish (1882), of Sir Henry Wilson (1922), of Treaty negotiator Michael Collins (1922) of vigorous Free-Stater Kevin O’Higgins (1927), British Ambassador Christopher Ewart-Biggs (1976), of war hero Airey Neave (1979), of eminent Admiral Lord Mountbatten (1979) to Thatcher loyalist Ian Gow (1990). Many murders of ordinary people soiled the reputation of Ireland in the inter-communal Troubles (1968-98). Let us hope that period of horror is behind us forever.

It is legitimate to dispense death in an overtly military and well-declared conflict. Alas, many modern conflicts are conducted in surreptitious forms in a half-light, surrounded by fake news and weasel words. Novel judgements of danger and hard decisions are often quickly required. Human lives are precious and may our leaders have the wisdom and means to protect us from our enemies without betraying the moral values we cherish.

SMD

12.01.20

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2020