-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:51 PM 2/25/96 -0500, David R. Conrad wrote:
Salman Rushdie, in a speech I heard several years ago, said that it was widely doubted that Iran would or could actually come up with the three million dollar bounty on his head. This may play a large part in why he is still around.
A few people who basically seem to oppose my idea ("Assassination Politics") try to use the Rushdie example as being some sort of "evidence" why it wouldn't work. ("If Rushdie is alive years later, with a few million on his head, that proves assassination doesn't work...") I, on the contrary, believe that it actually SUPPORTS my theory: Clearly, nobody has trusted Iran's leadership enough to genuinely believe he would be able to collect the reward, and thus the apparently size of the reward is discounted in people's minds. When I respond to these objectors, I point out that if Iran was REALLY serious about expecting to see Rushdie dead, they would have long ago set up some sort of system, analogous to AsPol, that would allow an anonymous assassin to kill Rushdie and collect the reward, guaranteed, without risk of exposure. Clearly, that hasn't happened. (I think we would have heard about it if it had.) This doesn't make the Iranians any more "civilized," obviously, it just means that they are either less competent or trustworthy about achieving their goals (or are seen to be so), or that they really don't want to/can't pay anybody the money for Rushdie's death. I don't recall every seeing anyone even attempt to contradict this counter-argument; they always agree that nobody really believes anyone can safely and reliably collect the Rushdie reward. Needless to say, this raises serious doubts about the competence of many objectors to critically analyze the issues in AsPol. It would be interesting to get Rushdie's opinion about AsPol. It's understandable if he had an initial feeling of revulsion about such a system, on the other hand he should recognize that this system would also allow opponents of the Iranian government to eliminate those who called for his death in the first place. It is reasonable to suppose that had this system been functioning years ago, Iran's government would have been taken down long ago.
I think all the analyses of the economic costs of protecting one person vs. protecting many people are rather beside the point, in light of this.
I agree. AsPol will work even if a few people can be protected, and protecting many people is simply not an option. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMTJ0NPqHVDBboB2dAQGLmAP/dAPz0FrZNT12NjEvkXuXm5JHVbdJPwDq JhwDBTAReTOirpNJ8mcgn8KN4hsL5rK5Qwyp+7YO3xRPMh39HPH2uBpq63/RZn2p uu7eXmrR4HQMKhuK5XReYJtARdPdTgL/F3cmMr1TNUW7M+aJikGo4b1OEycIYNdo Aa1o/peUXlw= =059O -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----