Posted on 12/18/2004 7:29:02 PM PST by LibWhacker
SYDNEY, Australia (DPA): Hunting and killing known terrorist kingpins makes more sense than invading a country to get at them, a former top-ranking Australian diplomat said on Saturday.
Duncan Campbell, a former ambassador to Rome and Vienna, said Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the leader of South East Asian terror network Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), would be a prime target for a state-sponsored assassination.
"Why should we wait for a murderous fanatic such as Ba'asyir in Java to strike against us first?" Campbell asked The Sydney Morning Herald.
The Java-based Islamic cleric is widely believed to have ordered the October 2002 bombing in the Indonesian island of Bali that took 202 lives, among them 88 Australians. Ba'asyir is on trial in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, for terrorism offenses.
Campbell said it was absurd to blithely commit troops to an invasion that would cost thousands of lives but be squeamish about rubbing out the leader of the enemy forces.
"Why should not a known organizer of terrorist cells ... be mercifully removed when there are covert and controlled means available for us to do so?"
He said Australians should debate the morality of taking one life to preserve many.
"Can you imagine how easy it ought to be in a prison such as the one Ba'asyir is in to persuade someone, for a lump of money, to doctor his rice?" he said. "That wouldn't involve Australian hands at all, except perhaps the passing by someone to someone ofa little lump of chemicals of some sort."
The government of Prime Minister John Howard has said it does not support the sort of targeted assassinations carried out by the Israeli armed forces against known Palestine freedom fighters. (***)
Kudos to former diplomat Mr. Campbell, and let's hope that some of Australia's current diplomats have some stones too.
It is good advice, which we've already implemented: anyone remember the Hellfire missile strikes in Yemen? We killed a carload of al Qaeda.
let the croc hunter get him......crikey !!!!
He'll just tag their ears and let them go.
"'Ere we 'ave a Black-Turbaned al-Zarqui - very rare! Let's take a closer look at this beoootiful bugger...blimey, 'Ee's cranky!"
Looks like he is embracing Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes.
When we passed that stupid law against assasinating foreign leaders, I hope we didn't entirely stop training and development of the people with those skills. I hope that such folks are already in Iran, for example, so that we can avoid some of what was necessary in Iraq. I don't think we should ever admit to a change in our law or policy on this kind of action, though. Just do it without telegraphing our punches.
Them aussies have a certain pragmatism I find refreshing.
No it does not.
We are at war with the ideology not the individual.
Perhaps we should set our existing Bounty Hunters loose on the problem. Some of those guys would surely try for the $25M.
Damn Java. It's permeating everything.
I heard the new version is pretty good. If you play it backwards, Paul gets beheaded.
Australia has already experienced attrocities at the hands of mass murdering islamic terrorists. They're going to experience much more, and far worse.
At some point they're going to get tired of sitting around waiting for the next mass murder and take action along the lines this fellow advocates. Maybe after a coming attack killing 10s of thousands and sabotaging their economy in an enduring way.
Unfortunately this fellow is ahead of his time, and they'll probably have to wait for more and worse before it becomes accepted policy. Wake up, they are already at war with you plotting horrific attrocities, and you're just waiting to take hits instead of fighting back.
It seems only fitting- Muslims invented the assassination as a military tactic.
The word "assassin" was derived from the the Arabic "Hashishin", operatives trained to carry out targeted killings. Their commanders kept them loaded on opium and hashish and had prostitutes service them regularly so that they thought they where in heaven. Whenever they wanted someone killed, the operative was taken off the drugs and told he had to go back to earth to carry out a mission for Allah. They were quite fearless because they believed that since they were already dead nothing could happen to them.
pop....
pop, pop....
and evacuate the area.
consider it preventitive maintenance...
That law doesn't apply in this case. It only applies to national leaders- terrorist kingpins, like military officers, are legit command & control targets.
I like the way Israel handled the Munich killers- they knocked them off, one at a time, over a period of several years. It got to the point where the terrorists were terrorized. More importantly, they were all so busy watching their backs that they couldn't do anything else.
When you grab them by the individuals, their ideology will follow
You can thank partially thank Duncan Campbell for that.
If you wanted to assassinate him then do it and keep your mouth shut about it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.