Targets Past, Present, and Future(?)

An interesting slide show in Foreign Policy on examples of "Kill Teams" from history, although they conflate manhunts (i.e. the Zarqawi and Reyes operations) with assassinations.  In my book, I broadly define strategic manhunts as campaigns in which military forces are deployed abroad with the operational objective of killing or capturing one man.  Although assassinations are similarly directed at individuals, by definition they exclude the possibility of capture.  Additionally, the essence of assassination is its treacherous nature, which includes the use of violent force during peacetime by covert personnel.  Conversely, strategic manhunts use at least some overt deployment of uniformed forces acting under an established chain of command. 

From yesterday's Daily Telegraph, a list of 12 most wanted men in Pakistan.  For some reason they exclude Sirajuddin Haqqani, the military commander of the Haqqani Network, which according to some sources works with al Qa'ida as much as the Tehrik-I-Taliban does.  This oversight aside, it is a useful primer.

And finally, today The Washington Post editorializes that NATO forces should directly target Moammar Gaddafi.  Specifically, they argue that Gaddafi "presides over military units that are intentionally targeting civilians" and that targeting Gaddafi "maybe the only way . . . to stop his carnage."  This echoes a question raised by Colonel (Ret.) Ralph Peters in a 1996 article in Parameters: “Why is it acceptable to slaughter – and I use that word advisedly – the commanded masses but not to mortally punish the guiltiest individual, the commander, a man stained with the blood of his own people as well as that of his neighbors?”  Peters eventually answered his own question by noting: “Current and impending technologies could permit us to reinvent warfare, once again to attack the instigators of violence and atrocity, not the representational populations who themselves have often been victimized by their leadership.”