Jeremy Scahill is one of the three founding editors of The Intercept. He is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, and author of the international bestselling books Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the national security correspondent for The Nation and Democracy Now!.
Jeremy Scahill has a new book out and in his appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher," he believed using drones in warfare is assassination. He stated the US Congress doesn't have a clear definition for it.
Before I get in to the word, Jeremy Scahill pays a farewell to an important person involved with peace, "Father Daniel Berrigan." (click here) I think it is important to understand why Jeremy has such a strong focus on the moral reasons that surrounds war and death in war.
I don't have a clue about Congress's specific participation in defining assassination, but, the word does have a legal basis. I didn't go to Oxford University to discuss the history of the word, what I did find is an online article that explores the history of the word assassination. I was surprised. I didn't expect to see any history of a word at all.
First Merriam Webster:
Assassinate (click here): to kill (someone, such as a famous or important person) usually for political reasons
The article begins with assassination of President William McKinley and then goes on to explore the word itself.
Murder committed (click here) by a perpetrator without the personal provocation of the victim, who is usually a government official.
First used in medieval times to describe the murders of prominent Christians
by the Hashshashin, a secret Islamic sect,the word assassination is used in the twenty-first century to describe murders committed to political reasons, especially against government officials. Assassination may be used as a political weapon by a state as well as by an individual; itmay be directed at the
establishment or used by it.
The term assassination is generally applied only to political murders—in the United States, most commonly to attemptson the life of the president.
