Should Obama Assassinate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ?
CNN news reports today that Obama is trying to decided whether or not to
order the assassination of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the ISIS or
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Usually, the US just kills people right away without bothering to ask
questions about it, but there are some complications about this particular
assassination.
The thorn in Obama's side is a law passed by President Reagan in 1986 that
prohibits the US Government from assassinating foreign leaders. This law
was passed after it was widely believed that the CIA had caused an airplane
crash in which an African leader had been killed.
Since then, that law has been deemed too restrictive and now it has been
liberalized so that now it is perfectly OK if the US President kills
someone, provided certain conditions are met. One is that the foreign
leader must be the leader of a "terrorist group".
This is no problem here as al-Baghdadi is the leader of a group that
opposes the puppet government the USA has set up in Iraq. Any group that
opposes a group set up by the USA is needless to say a terrorist group.
However, there is a further criteria that is giving Obama trouble. That is
that this group must threaten the United States.
Since it seems unlikely that the group headed by al-Baghdadi will attempt
an amphibious landing anywhere in the Continental United States any time
soon, this has been addressed by saying that the al-Baghdadi group might
attack or attempt to take over the US Embassy in Baghdad. This is a real
possibility because the ISIS is already on the outskirts of Baghdad so they
might take over the US Embassy there at any moment. In spite of knowing
this, the US has NOT ordered an evacuation of the US Embassy in Baghdad.
It is unclear whether an attack on a US embassy in a remote foreign country
is the same as an attack on the United States, but this fine distinction
does not seem to bother the Obama think tanks.
So why don't they just kill the guy with a drone and get it over with?
The thorn in the side according to CNN is al-Baghdadi knowing that Obama is
planning to kill him keeps himself surrounded by a bunch of kids and women
carrying babies in their arms, making it difficult to kill him with a drone
without killing a bunch of babies and small children at the same time. So,
now they are trying to figure out a way to get him away from a large group
of people so they can get a clear shot at him.
They are also concerned that the assassination of al-Baghdadi along with a
large number of innocent children will create a stink and that his second
in command might be even worse.
Sam Sloan