Ending assassination abuse without ending assassination, because that would be crazy

It’s always nice to watch the official “liberal” mind in action. The NYT editorial page today takes up the issue of Obama’s assassination program, intoning Very Seriously that “assassinations are a grave act and subject to abuse”. And if there’s one thing we hate, it’s seeing something noble and pure like assassination being... oh it hurts even to say it... abused.

Evidently Bush committed such abuses, but “So far, President Obama’s system of command seems to have prevented any serious abuses”. The Times doesn’t explain what an unserious abuse in a program of assassinating people might be.

The Times says that the Obama administration should forthrightly assert that it only assassinates in accordance with international law and strictly, strictly I say, in self-defense. And it needs to be a last resort (well, pretty much by definition...)

We should get the permission of foreign countries before killing people there “if practical.”

The Times’s answer to the problem of abusive assassination is, of course, to bureaucratize the machinery of murder. Because there’s nothing like a few oversight committees to make assassination shiny and clean. And we should establish secret courts to issue assassination warrants, because there’s nothing like a piece of paper, with official stamps and everything, to make assassination shiny and clean. Do all that, and the Times and all Americans can sleep soundly at night, safe and secure and morally pure.