Letters of Marque and Reprisal

On January 6, 2020 at 5:18 PM,  NH wrote:

 

In response to Trump’s assassination of Soleimani, Iranian state TV has announced an 80 megabuck bounty on Trump. Citation:

https://occupydemocrats.com/2020/01/05/iran-offers-80-million-bounty-on-donald-trumps-head-after-suleimani-assassination-2/

Trevor Moore’s jokes are... edgy. As for me, I want Trump to leave the Oval Office as vertical as the bars that we then lock him behind.

There is precedent for warfare by assassinations. Hassan-i Sabbah founded the Asāsiyyūn (أساسيون, meaning “people who are faithful to the foundation [of the faith]”), from which we get the word “assassin”.

If Trump wanted a war of assassinations, then he should have first asked Congress for a Letter of Marque and Reprisal. Congress has this power by Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution. Technically such letters are for sea raiders, but I modestly propose issuing them to mercenaries and assassins in general, to deal with terror threats too small to settle by warfare, and too big to settle by police work.

My inner brat smiles at the prospect of a war of assassinations. May the ruling classes kill each other and leave the rest of us alone! But my inner geezer fears the chaos that assassination warfare causes.

Sure, it’s annoying that our misrulers hide behind the people, and call dissidents cowards for objecting to being their human shields. But this craven custom exists for a reason; namely, that rich powerful psychopaths do nasty things when their money is threatened, but they do even nastier things when their lives are threatened.

 

LF replied:

Technically, hired mercs are operating under “letters of marque”. Not a bad idea, really. Better to kill off the rulers than the population.

 

NH replied:

And it’s good to formalize the process. Open piracy. But wars of assassinations can have unintended consequences. For instance, the kind of political leaders who survive such wars are not the kind you want to have in peace. Also, your side might lose. Like, maybe, JFK vs Castro.

Here’s Stan Rogers’ low opinion of privateers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7Ufe0jF-AE