I’m not sure that changes my question. Does the situation change if the guy in the lobby identifies with a population with which the senator’s nation is at war?
In other words, Jiro is implicitly defining assassination as violence that improperly escalates a conflict from one where violence is not justified to one where violence is permissible. Under such a definition, the US didn’t assassinate Yamamoto, it simply targeted him specifically for killing.
It seems plausible to me that this definition cuts the world at its joints, but there could be edge cases I haven’t considered.
That’s not my answer. My answer is that the checks and balances inherent in having a democratic government make it permissible for the government to decide to kill people under circumstances where I would not want to let random individuals go around killing people. (This doesn’t mean that I approve of all government killing—just that I approve of a wider range of government killing than killing by individuals.)
Whether you want to say that for the government to kill someone in a war counts as assassination is just a question of semantics.
If the guy in the lobby identifies with a population with which the senator’s nation is at war, and he is aiming at the senator as part of a campaign orchestrated by that population’s government, then yes, the situation does change. (That doesn’t mean I’d approve of the killing, just that the specific reason I gave above for not approving doesn’t apply. There might still be other reasons.)
...and we’re implicitly assuming that ArisKatsaris’ example is of an individual engaging in improper escalation… e.g., that the senator being targeted is not herself engaging in violence (in which case shooting her might be OK), but rather in some less-intense form of conflict (such as rational debate, on your account) to which violence is not a justifiable response?
OK, fair enough.
I’m not really on board with your definitions of “rational debate” or “assassin”, but I’m not sure it matters, so I’m happy to leave that to one side.
And I endorse some notion of proportional response, certainly, though the details are tricky.
I’m not sure that changes my question. Does the situation change if the guy in the lobby identifies with a population with which the senator’s nation is at war?
I’m not Jiro, but I think the best answer involves creating a scale of intensity of a conflict, and then drawing a line such that rational debate is never an intense enough conflict to justify violence. (by definition of rational debate).
In other words, Jiro is implicitly defining assassination as violence that improperly escalates a conflict from one where violence is not justified to one where violence is permissible. Under such a definition, the US didn’t assassinate Yamamoto, it simply targeted him specifically for killing.
It seems plausible to me that this definition cuts the world at its joints, but there could be edge cases I haven’t considered.
That’s not my answer. My answer is that the checks and balances inherent in having a democratic government make it permissible for the government to decide to kill people under circumstances where I would not want to let random individuals go around killing people. (This doesn’t mean that I approve of all government killing—just that I approve of a wider range of government killing than killing by individuals.)
Whether you want to say that for the government to kill someone in a war counts as assassination is just a question of semantics.
If the guy in the lobby identifies with a population with which the senator’s nation is at war, and he is aiming at the senator as part of a campaign orchestrated by that population’s government, then yes, the situation does change. (That doesn’t mean I’d approve of the killing, just that the specific reason I gave above for not approving doesn’t apply. There might still be other reasons.)
...and we’re implicitly assuming that ArisKatsaris’ example is of an individual engaging in improper escalation… e.g., that the senator being targeted is not herself engaging in violence (in which case shooting her might be OK), but rather in some less-intense form of conflict (such as rational debate, on your account) to which violence is not a justifiable response?
OK, fair enough.
I’m not really on board with your definitions of “rational debate” or “assassin”, but I’m not sure it matters, so I’m happy to leave that to one side.
And I endorse some notion of proportional response, certainly, though the details are tricky.