As debates go, my favorite of all possible mediums is trading essays. On television, rivals don’t have time to organize their thoughts. In forums, there’s a strict time limit on how long someone can address a topic. But in print, particularly online, people can organize their thoughts, respond carefully to the other side’s claims, and make the best possible argument.
For some, it’s a beneficial format. For those who play fast and loose with the facts, it’s not. Take Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, for example.
Nine days ago, Reynolds caused a bit of a stir when he recommended that U.S. assassins infiltrate Iran and kill some of the country’s “mullahs and atomic scientists.” University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos took Reynolds to task for the idea.
Of course Iran is not at war with America, but just as Reynolds spent years repeating Bush administration propaganda about Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, he’s now dutifully repeating the administration’s claims about supposed Iranian government involvement in Iraq’s civil war.
Moreover, even if Iran were at war with the United States, the intentional killing of civilian noncombatants is a war crime, as that term is defined by international treaties America has signed. Furthermore, government-sponsored assassinations of the sort Reynolds is advocating are expressly and unambiguously prohibited by the laws of the United States.
How does a law professor, of all people, justify advocating murder?
Reynolds, none too pleased, went after Campos with a vengeance in a guest newspaper piece, and on his blog, twice. Reynolds’ rather shrill responses led Campos to return to the subject today, in a piece for Glenn Greenwald’s blog.
First, Reynolds argues there are circumstances under which government-sponsored assassination is both legal and morally defensible. Yet whatever merits that general claim might have, it has nothing to do with the legality and mortality of Reynolds’ specific recommendation that the United States government should be “quietly” assassinating Iranian mullahs and atomic scientists, today if not sooner. Obviously there is a world of difference between speculating on whether it would have made sense to assassinate, say, Saddam Hussein, or the Iranian head of state (presumably at some time when we weren’t funneling arms to them), and advocating the assassination of civilian research scientists.
As for Reynolds’ claim that killing scientists wouldn’t be murder because it’s only against the law until the law is changed, what can one say? Lawyers’ claims to find a statement shocking often sound a lot like Capt. Renault claiming to be shocked to discover there’s gambling in Casablanca, but I’m not saying this rhetorically: It’s shocking that a professor of law would dare make such a despicable argument in print. In fact assassinations are currently prohibited by law — something Reynolds cannot of course dispute — and the law would have to be changed before what Reynolds says our government should be doing at the present moment could even arguably begin to be considered legal.
Sensing, perhaps, that he’s saying something too ridiculous for his audience to swallow, Reynolds starts arguing in the alternative, by claiming that assassinating research scientists isn’t really assassination. His basis for this is the argument that when research scientists are present at legitimate military targets, their deaths from lawful military attacks on those targets aren’t assassinations. But this is about as relevant to his original argument as the claim that scientists who die from lung cancer because they smoked a lot haven’t been assassinated. Remember, Reynolds argued originally that we should be “quietly” terminating research scientists with extreme prejudice, and that this was preferable to, for example, bombing Iranian military installations. Yet the examples he gives of the legitimate killing of scientists all require precisely the course of action he claims his assassination scheme is designed to prevent.
I don’t doubt that Reynolds, unwilling to quit while he’s behind, will find it necessary to lash out at Campos again, calling him names, and justifying legally dubious assassinations by pointing to nothing in particular. But in the meantime, it’s nice to see such a thorough and complete takedown.
See, aren’t written debates fun?