Joseph Palermo: So political assassination in 2008 is an impossibility?
[Assistant Professor, History, CSUS. Bachelor's degrees in sociology and anthropology from UC Santa Cruz, master's degree in history from San Jose State University, master's degree and doctorate in American history from Cornell University.]
The French philosopher Michel Foucault called the unfolding of history the "exteriority of accidents," which was his way of saying "shit happens." Any historian will tell you that political assassinations are not surprising or new. As grade school students we all learned that Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated, shot with a pistol by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater. And Booth was part of a "conspiracy."
Charles Guiteau assassinated President James Garfield in Washington, D.C. with a handgun. And Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York, also with a pistol. There was an assassination attempt on President Theodore Roosevelt.
Introductory history textbooks often claim that World War I was sparked by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. And the Bolsheviks assassinated Czar Nicholas II and the entire Romanoff family to make sure they never returned to power.
Anarchists tried to kill Attorney General G. Mitchell Palmer, which sparked the "Palmer Raids." There was also an assassination attempt against President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt while he was giving a speech in Miami, Florida.
Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico with a pickaxe because he had the temerity to stand up to Josef Stalin. And in Nazi Germany, there was the "Night of the Long Knives," or the "Roehm Purge," which was nothing more than a coordinated set of political assassinations.
In the United States in the modern era, the Central Intelligence Agency played a role in the assassination of the democratically elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, as well as the Domican Republic's Rafael Trujillo. There were also at least eight documented attempts by the CIA to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In June 1963, the NAACP's first field secretary for the state of Mississippi, Medgar Evers, was assassinated. In South Vietnam, a CIA-engineered coup d'etat ended in the assassination of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. (The U.S-backed General Duong Van Minh didn't want to risk the return of the Ngo brothers in a "re-coup.")
And then followed the most spectacular assassination in American history in Dallas, Texas when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot in the head by a high-powered rifle in Dealey Plaza.
In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem, the result of an internal beef within the Nation of Islam. And then three years later, in Memphis, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., honored today with a national holiday, was killed with a rifle outside of room 306 on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Eight weeks later, New York Senator Robert Francis Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel after winning the California Democratic primary.
In 1972, former Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace was the victim of an assassination attempt that left him paralyzed. In 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende was assassinated in yet another CIA-engineered coup. In 1975, there were two assassination attempts against President Gerald Ford. And in November 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk both were assassinated. (Dianne Feinstein owes her political career to these killings.)
President Ronald Reagan was almost assassinated early in his first term.
In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was spectacularly assassinated while reviewing his own troops in a stadium. In 1983, Grenada Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was assassinated, which precipitated the U.S. invasion of the island. And on March 8, 1985, the CIA tried to assassinate Hezbollah chief Sheik Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. Lebanese agents working for the CIA detonated a car bomb filled with 440 pounds of explosives outside a Mosque in Beirut killing 80 innocent people but missing the elusive Shia cleric. The assassination attempt was in response to Hezbollah's suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in October 1983 that killed 241 U.S. servicemen and wounded 60 other Americans. (You can read all about this incident where CIA Director William Casey bares his soul in Bob Woodward's Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, which is his best book.)
In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin was shot in the stomach with a pistol and killed by a right-wing Israeli assassin who was proud of his deed. (The Israel government as conducted "targeted assassinations" of Palestinian leaders for over 40 years.) In February 2005, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated with a car bomb. And most recently, on December 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while waving to an adoring crowd in Rawalpindi.
Every nation on earth has had their share of political assassinations. One might trace such acts back to Brutus's assassination of Caesar in ancient Rome. Or maybe to the internecine conflicts that Machiavelli describes in Medici Florence. During the French Revolution there were so many political assassinations that historians often lose count.
So, as a historian, I don't understand why people, including many of my colleagues, seem to believe that political assassination in the United States in 2008 is an impossibility; something that only crackpots and lunatics contemplate.
Read entire article at Huffington Post (Blog)
The French philosopher Michel Foucault called the unfolding of history the "exteriority of accidents," which was his way of saying "shit happens." Any historian will tell you that political assassinations are not surprising or new. As grade school students we all learned that Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated, shot with a pistol by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater. And Booth was part of a "conspiracy."
Charles Guiteau assassinated President James Garfield in Washington, D.C. with a handgun. And Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York, also with a pistol. There was an assassination attempt on President Theodore Roosevelt.
Introductory history textbooks often claim that World War I was sparked by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. And the Bolsheviks assassinated Czar Nicholas II and the entire Romanoff family to make sure they never returned to power.
Anarchists tried to kill Attorney General G. Mitchell Palmer, which sparked the "Palmer Raids." There was also an assassination attempt against President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt while he was giving a speech in Miami, Florida.
Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico with a pickaxe because he had the temerity to stand up to Josef Stalin. And in Nazi Germany, there was the "Night of the Long Knives," or the "Roehm Purge," which was nothing more than a coordinated set of political assassinations.
In the United States in the modern era, the Central Intelligence Agency played a role in the assassination of the democratically elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, as well as the Domican Republic's Rafael Trujillo. There were also at least eight documented attempts by the CIA to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In June 1963, the NAACP's first field secretary for the state of Mississippi, Medgar Evers, was assassinated. In South Vietnam, a CIA-engineered coup d'etat ended in the assassination of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. (The U.S-backed General Duong Van Minh didn't want to risk the return of the Ngo brothers in a "re-coup.")
And then followed the most spectacular assassination in American history in Dallas, Texas when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot in the head by a high-powered rifle in Dealey Plaza.
In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem, the result of an internal beef within the Nation of Islam. And then three years later, in Memphis, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., honored today with a national holiday, was killed with a rifle outside of room 306 on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Eight weeks later, New York Senator Robert Francis Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel after winning the California Democratic primary.
In 1972, former Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace was the victim of an assassination attempt that left him paralyzed. In 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende was assassinated in yet another CIA-engineered coup. In 1975, there were two assassination attempts against President Gerald Ford. And in November 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk both were assassinated. (Dianne Feinstein owes her political career to these killings.)
President Ronald Reagan was almost assassinated early in his first term.
In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was spectacularly assassinated while reviewing his own troops in a stadium. In 1983, Grenada Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was assassinated, which precipitated the U.S. invasion of the island. And on March 8, 1985, the CIA tried to assassinate Hezbollah chief Sheik Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. Lebanese agents working for the CIA detonated a car bomb filled with 440 pounds of explosives outside a Mosque in Beirut killing 80 innocent people but missing the elusive Shia cleric. The assassination attempt was in response to Hezbollah's suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in October 1983 that killed 241 U.S. servicemen and wounded 60 other Americans. (You can read all about this incident where CIA Director William Casey bares his soul in Bob Woodward's Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, which is his best book.)
In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin was shot in the stomach with a pistol and killed by a right-wing Israeli assassin who was proud of his deed. (The Israel government as conducted "targeted assassinations" of Palestinian leaders for over 40 years.) In February 2005, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated with a car bomb. And most recently, on December 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while waving to an adoring crowd in Rawalpindi.
Every nation on earth has had their share of political assassinations. One might trace such acts back to Brutus's assassination of Caesar in ancient Rome. Or maybe to the internecine conflicts that Machiavelli describes in Medici Florence. During the French Revolution there were so many political assassinations that historians often lose count.
So, as a historian, I don't understand why people, including many of my colleagues, seem to believe that political assassination in the United States in 2008 is an impossibility; something that only crackpots and lunatics contemplate.