September 11, 1973. Chile. A dictator has fallen. Arch-socialist, hater of individual liberty, Salvador Allende, who had assassinated his political opponents, harassed right-wing reporters, and nationalized almost the entirety of Chile’s industry, including the assets of key American copper firms, is dead. The man responsible for Chile’s economic ruin and the looming threat of socialism in the Americas has been overthrown by a coalition of military, businessmen, workers, intellectuals, freedom-loving activists, and… the CIA. Chile’s economic prosperity surged from the post-coup free market period, when inflation rates dropped almost to those of the U.S. Several years later, however, President Ford initiated a ban on assassinations that would render the Allende coup impossible today.  Yet present threats to American security, posed by authoritarian rogue regimes trampling on liberty at home and abroad, are far more grievous than ever. Case studies of three countries, North Korea, Libya, and Palestine, will demonstrate why assassination of dictators and their affiliates must become a US option on the international arena.

In North Korea, the communism inherited by Kim Jong Il turned a once prospering land into a famished ruin. The citizens’ assets are confiscated in order to maintain the largest per capita military in history, while Kim constantly threatens to escalate North Korea’s nuclear capacity and attack South Korea unless the United States gives his government the aid it needs to… escalate North Korea’s nuclear capacity and attack South Korea! According to John Dawson, writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, “While he holds his own people in hostage, Kim can threaten any atrocity and demand any tribute, knowing that Bush will appease him rather than face the denunciation of critics wielding a morality he dare not reject.” Kim can do this, while he lives. Unlike Saddam Hussein, who had a weak military and no time to wield tools of destruction against the free world, Kim already maintains a nuclear arsenal and a crack army. Overt war against him is too costly to contemplate. A targeted, secret assassination is not. The United States must eliminate the bastion of totalitarianism in North Korea and cease gratuitously surrendering its resources to its foes.

The government of Libya, led by dictatorial socialist Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, has already violated American lives. Complicit in the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 118, the government of Libya also severs freedom of speech outside the state party line from its citizens, monopolizes media, and used terrorist tactics to rise to power in a 1969 coup. Gaddafi then began to export terrorism to other Arab states like Egypt, Algeria and Palestine, and, more recently, to Iraq and Afghanistan, using Libya’s government-seized oil profits to fund anti-American terror cells. To add insult to injury, “international opinion,” dominated by the behemoth-monstrosity of the United Nations, heavily favors the Libyan government. Libya has just one year ago been appointed to chair the U.N. Commission on Human Rights! In the war against terror, the need for unilateral American action against Libya must not be overlooked. Once again, the death of Gaddafi by a most expedient and targeted mechanism should be embraced as an option.

A third threat to American security is arrayed against us in the person of Yasser Arafat. According to Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, “Over a span of 35 years, Arafat and the PLO have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israeli, American, Lebanese, and Palestinian civilians. Through the PLO, Arafat has orchestrated the kidnapping and murder of Israeli school children, the hijacking of airliners, numberless car bombings and death-squad killings. Often Arafat's violence has been targeted at his Arab ‘brothers,’ as is evidenced by the PLO's role in Jordanian (1960s-'70s) and Lebanese (1970s-'80s) civil insurrections. Palestinians live in constant fear of having their property arbitrarily confiscated by Arafat's corrupt ‘police’ force. Laws prohibiting free speech are common and are enforced brutally. To silence those who oppose him, Arafat shuts down radio and TV stations. According to Amnesty International, dissenters are arbitrarily detained, tortured, or ‘encouraged’ at gunpoint to leave the territories. In November 1999 a group of prominent intellectuals who signed a petition accusing Arafat's regime of corruption was summarily jailed. They were lucky; some recalcitrants are assassinated. Arafat's current regime is barbaric and oppressive.” Israel is America’s most loyal and precious ally, a bastion of liberty amid the totalitarian muck of the Middle East. In order to protect it, and establish chances for peace with innocent Palestinians, Arafat must die. In order to die without further intensifying the already rampant violence in the region, Arafat must be assassinated.

As renowned novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand wrote, "the right of 'the self-determination of nations' applies only to free societies or to societies seeking to establish freedom; it does not apply to dictatorships." Dictatorships have no right to exist, but especially no right to endanger America and American allies. There is no way to resist these initiators of force except by their own chosen method, force. Lifting the executive ban on assassinations will add to the worldwide anti-terror arsenal a potent weapon, which can remedy the perilous happenings in North Korea, Libya, and Palestine. Let Kim, Gaddafi, and Arafat go the way of Salvador Allende, and let freedom-loving innocents prosper in peace once more.