If you found out Putin had been assassinated...

EGarrett

EGarrett

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...by a lone Russian citizen with a rifle, how would you feel? Obviously something pretty bad would happen to the assassin, but what would happen if it was up to you? Should they be arrested and put to death? Or treated as a hero?

More broadly, when if ever, do you think it is appropriate for a politician to be assassinated?

This is a serious question.
 
Of course it is appropriate when you think about characters like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc.

If killing a dictator will end a conflict or genocide, it is a more moral way of waging war than killing draftees in the field.
 
Denter said:
Of course it is appropriate when you think about characters like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc.

If killing a dictator will end a conflict or genocide, it is a more moral way of waging war than killing draftees in the field.
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Problem with assassinating people like that is that you make heroes out of them. The dumbest thing we could have done in WW2 was assassinate Hitler. Would have reinvigorated them, and allowed them to replace Hitler with a more capable leader. WW2 ended the way it did in major part because Hitler was a fool who thought he was a military genius. It was best to have him calling the shots.
 
EGarrett said:
...by a lone Russian citizen with a rifle, how would you feel? Obviously something pretty bad would happen to the assassin, but what would happen if it was up to you? Should they be arrested and put to death? Or treated as a hero?

More broadly, when if ever, do you think it is appropriate for a politician to be assassinated?

This is a serious question.
Click to expand...

Yes, i think he should be treated like a hero, unless he is just some crazy guy.

Yes, it is. Specially politicians who start offensive wars. They should be tortured and killed. Some kind of a concentration camp would work too. I believe that most politicians are psychopaths, so they don't deserve any better.

This is serious and colorful answer. :icon_chee
 
ncordless said:
Problem with assassinating people like that is that you make heroes out of them. The dumbest thing we could have done in WW2 was assassinate Hitler. Would have reinvigorated them, and allowed them to replace Hitler with a more capable leader. WW2 ended the way it did in major part because Hitler was a fool who thought he was a military genius. It was best to have him calling the shots.
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There wouldn't be WW2 if not for Hitler. (as we know it)
 
Rusk said:
There wouldn't be WW2 if not for Hitler. (as we know it)
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Well, if we'd assassinated Hitler pre-war, you think the Nazi party would have just taken that lying down?
 
ncordless said:
Problem with assassinating people like that is that you make heroes out of them. The dumbest thing we could have done in WW2 was assassinate Hitler. Would have reinvigorated them, and allowed them to replace Hitler with a more capable leader. WW2 ended the way it did in major part because Hitler was a fool who thought he was a military genius. It was best to have him calling the shots.
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If Hitler would have been killed in the 1944 plot against him, the officers were planning on immediately suing for peace with the Allies.

You think Count von Stauffenberg and the rest would have continued Hitler's genocide in his absence? I think not, they were already galled that people were being exterminated instead of being used as labor.

Yes, if Hitler was killed in 1941 or so, there might have been a different outcome, but the German general staff did not want to fight a war with the Soviet Union, so who knows where that would have gone.
 
If Putin was assassinated, a lot of not very good things would occur afterward once responsibility was determined. (see Archduke Franz Ferdinand) You can't say it's one shooter and stop at that, shooter has history, contacts, political beliefs, etc., and those would be explored and exhausted for motive. Leon Czolgosz assassinated President McKinley and when they looked into him Czolgosz was influenced to carry out the assassination (but not explicitly told to do so) by anarchist Emma Goldman.

Besides, who is Putin's successor? You create a large political vacuum and political vacuums being filled does not always result in good things. It's an uncontrollable variable.
 
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I'd be shocked and feel bad for the Russian people.
 
ukraine would get their shit pushed in if this happened now..
 
Denter said:
If Hitler would have been killed in the 1944 plot against him, the officers were planning on immediately suing for peace with the Allies.

You think Count von Stauffenberg and the rest would have continued Hitler's genocide in his absence? I think not, they were already galled that people were being exterminated instead of being used as labor.

Yes, if Hitler was killed in 1941 or so, there might have been a different outcome, but the German general staff did not want to fight a war with the Soviet Union, so who knows where that would have gone.
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Totally agree. In most cases, I think individual leaders play relatively little role, they just follow the road that the current situation forces upon them (see Obama, for example). Hitler was a definite exception. The established German military leaders pretty much loathed Hitler, and only did his bidding because he managed to get the masses behind him. They had zero interest in taking on Russia, and they certainly did not want to fight an apocalyptic war to the end, rather than surrendering to the West.

A very rare example where if you killed the head, the snake dies.

Russia is not such a situation IMO, because its policy is driven more by its political and economic situation, less than by a popular cult of dictatorial personality. Russia is simply not going to be a Western-style democracy any time soon, and it is not going to stop taking a strong political position against its neighboring countries, regardless of who its present leader happens to be.
 
Vast majority of great leaders in history had blood on their hands. History is written by the victors. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan are celebrated while their bloody histories are a mere afterthought. While you can claim Putin is power hungry, he had wrestled control of Russia back from the oligarch and ensured its stability for the last 10 years. The last three American presidents were bigger thugs on the international stage than Putin could ever hope to be.
 
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