Why can't there be sent special ops forces on behalf of international force to take down tyrant dictators that oppress their countryman and women and bully others?

Many of these leaders are liked by many of the people.

Hitler was democratically elected.

yes
who is the judge that decides which leader dies? and what if killing him opens up a spot for someone worse? do they die too? what is the time period between killings?

Three of those people are dead and the other isn’t the ruler of his country any more.

It’s one thing to take someone out. It’s quite another to deal with the fallout. The CIA could probably take out any leader on the planet. Take out Sadaam with a sniper and then what? Who fills the vacuum? That was the problem with the Iraq invasion. They toppled the regime but had no long term plan for governing the country.

because then they’d have to come for the U.S.

Because they’d have to start with the US and that’s where most of the special ops come from :P

Saddam Hussein for example was a democratically elected leader of one of the closest allies the USA ever had. (yes, the elections were rigged and the US were only using him, but still…) By the time he became an “enemy” he went into hiding. And he was eventually caught using the tactics you describe.

Hitler was also democratically elected, and even though he did not win the majority he was asked to form a govenrment by his Kaiser – all legit. Our side tried to assassinate him, but that’s not so easy when you’re already at war and his side is actually winning. He eventually lost the war and committed suicide iirc.

Even if you’re pretty sure you know what you’re doing (and in most cases our “tyrant” could be someone else’s hero), it’s not that simple to just go into a foreign country and remove the head of state. And in many cases, even if you did manage that, someone even worse would emerge (just look at what happened when Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated).

Who polices the police?

Why can’t I punch you in the face if you piss me off?

@Jayne, because your arm isn’t that long?

@evelyns_pet_zebra, sez you

@Jayne
You’re supposing that our government doesn’t do these things because of the rule of law?
I think you extend our government more credit than due. If there is an international treaty, we’ve broken it at one point or another.
Rather than international law, I think it’s the complex political ramifications which keep us on a tether.

i think jayne’s writing a novel

That is partly the idea behind UN Peacekeeping Forces, although they are supposed to keep the peace rather than break it by assassinating elected officials. However, from what I have seen, being run by a committee (the UN) makes it hard to be efficient.

And then there are all those folks who fear the UN as representing the New World Order and demonize it.

@SeventhSense; oh, I’m sure we do it; it’s unavoidable that governments will violate the law for the sake of pragmatism. But the point is that it still is a violation, and the laws are there at least in name, adding an important layer of complexity to those political ramifications you mention. There are consequences, and where there are consequences there is moderation. I could punch you in the face, but I would have to deal with the consequences of that action, and so I probably won’t. I only would if you really pissed me off; it remains a last resort for extreme cases, not a tool to use on a whim. The laws must be in place to force governments, or one global government, to reserve assassination for real threats and prevent them from using it as they please on their enemies.

I could be wrong, of course. Perhaps consequences caused by breach of law do not force moderation, as they must also force secrecy. The other side of the coin is that if, as the asker suggests, assassination were institutionalized, it would also be subject to regulation, and could perhaps be less chaotic and self-serving than it is today. I cannot quite picture what form this would take, however. It would have to be the tool of a worldwide organization, acting unitedly, or else it would simply be an extension of wars between nations, self-serving and often counter-productive. But if such an organization existed, truly transcending national boundaries, then these tyrants are effectively rebels against a global state. Assassinating violent rebels may be permissible, but when a government falls into the habit of assassinating those who rise up in arms against it, it risks acquiring the habit of assassinating those who rise up with words; political assassinations, which would doom democracy to failure. It would be impossibly, I thing, to encode assassination in law so as to prevent the possibility of this decline. So I doubt that it could ever be brought out into the political daylight as the asker suggests.

I apologize for the possible incoherence or inconsistency of this argument (or novelette). It is late, and I welcome any rebuttals, which I will address on the morrow. Night, all!

Because it is not any country’s right to dictate how another country chooses to run itself. End of discussion.

@dynamicduo – When genocide is involved we need to step in (mandated by the UN). A good example was Kosovo. A bad example was Rwanda.