#12 / Governmental Murder

Every morning, I read at least four newspapers (the old fashioned way, which gives me ink stains on my fingers). This morning, The Wall Street Journal had a front page story under the headline, "Scientist Killing Stokes U.S.-Iran Tensions." That article began as follows:

An Iranian scientist working for a key nuclear site was assassinated in Tehran with a magnetic bomb attached to his car, in what the government said was a plot by the U.S. and Israel at a time of growing strains over Iran's nuclear program.

Was the United States government complicit in this murder? I don't know. Maybe the facts will come to light, at some time in the future. The charge, however, has an inherent plausibility since it is no secret that the United States government takes the position that the murder of individual persons engaged in activities that the U.S. government believes are threatening to the the United States is an absolutely acceptable practice.

Murder by government, without trial, and without the victim being afforded any opportunity to "confront his or her accuser," is now a routine practice of the government of the United States of America. Even American citizens are not immune. Is the picture a "Predator," or a "Reaper?" I don't know. It's a weapon under the control of federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. who use it to kill people that someone in their bureaucracy decides shouldn't be allowed to continue to live anymore. And anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity, too. We shouldn't forget that.

It is my belief that our "human world" is a world that we create ourselves, by our own actions. Because anything is possible within the world we create, we can make our dreams come true. We can make our nightmares come true, too.

It continues to be almost unbelievable that the Holocaust could have occurred. It was a nightmare, made real, with the knowledge and participation of thousands, or tens of thousands of people. How could so many human beings really have participated in what amounted to an industrial-scale system of governmental murder? I have no sympathy for the "Holocaust deniers." It did happen.

I don't like the idea of Iran developing nuclear weapons. I think that terrorist attacks, like the attacks of 9/11, are horrible and deplorable.

But I do not think that governmentally-sanctioned murder is the right answer to the dangers of nuclear proliferation or the horrors of terrorist attacks.

There are two practical and pragmatic reasons to denounce this practice by our government, and to seek to stop it now, before it spreads further. First, any one of us (just plain vanilla American citizens) can ultimately be murdered by our own government once it is admitted that this practice is acceptable. Second, what the United States government does elsewhere will ultimately be done to us here. It is not in the self-interest of the citizens of the United States to allow our government to murder people in the name of achieving good objectives.

This is not the world that we should want to create. And if we don't want to create that world, we need to dream another dream.