OPINION:
Sen. Lindsey Graham recently came under fire for calling for a brave Russian soldier or citizen to remove President Vladimir Putin “by any means possible” to save their country and Ukraine. Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov has said Mr. Graham is promoting “terrorism” while some Americans have accused him of calling for a political “assassination.” As a former Washington prosecutor, I can safely say that under the law, they’re wrong — dead wrong.
Mr. Graham said, “Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for someone to take this guy out. You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service. The only people who can fix this are the Russian people. Easy to say, hard to do. ”
It may be an inconvenient truth that NATO isn’t standing up to Mr. Putin, but it is a fact. As long as he remains in power, he will continue to murder innocent civilians. So who’s going to stop him?
“The Russian people are not our enemy,” Mr. Graham told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade last week. “I’m convinced it’s a one man problem surrounded by a few people. So at the end of the day, Brian, how does this end? We’re not going in on the ground in the Ukraine … the best way for this to end is to have an Elliot Ness or Wyatt Earp in Russia, the Russian Spring, so to speak, where people rise up and take him down.”
Mr. Graham’s call to overthrow Mr. Putin “by any means necessary” is not terrorism. Terrorism is “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” Mr. Putin is not a civilian being intimidated into changing his political aims, but rather the terrorist, in fact, who is committing violence and intimidation against civilians.
Mr. Graham chose the example of von Stauffenberg for the same reason I did in my Washington Times column last week. Von Stauffenberg did not try to engage in an “assassination” or “murder” when he tried to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944. Webster defines assassination as “the act of murdering a usually important person by a surprise, or secret attack,” and murder is defined as “a homicide committed with malice aforethought,” meaning the killing was unjustifiable.
But some killings are justifiable — under law.
The Nazis executed von Stauffenberg, but his act is widely hailed as legal, moral and heroic since it was in the “defense of others” under the doctrine of justifiable homicide. Under common law, such killings are legal if one “reasonably believes such force is necessary.” Under statute, killings are generally permissible to “prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony crime or to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to oneself or another.”
These legal principles should come as no surprise since millions of conservatives cheered for the acquittals of George Zimmerman in 2012 and Kyle Rittenhouse in 2020. Although both men asserted the justifiable homicide principle of “self-defense” in their trials, but their initial mental state was acting in the “defense of others.” Had they fired their weapons to prevent an assailant from causing imminent death or great bodily harm to another person, they still would have had the law on their side.
If someone can defend others from a would-be murderer threatening lives on the street, they can also defend others from an actual murderer who proudly admits to ordering the mass murder of civilians from inside a citadel. As long as there is a reasonable belief of imminent loss of life, defense of others is a legal and moral principle.
There are few today who would not argue that, in defense of saving millions, the killing of Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler or Mao Zedong before their genocidal purges would have been the moral and rational thing to do. Had anyone had the courage to do so, they too would have legally engaged in defense of others — and saved lives. No such killing would have the “mens rea” or translated, “evil intent” element required to qualify as a premeditated “murder.”
It is easy for the free world to sit idly back while innocent Ukrainians die and suggest that calling for the killing of their executioner is inappropriate. If our own homes were bombed, loved ones murdered or children scarred for life, we would not be acting so “civilized.” We would demand immediate relief — and justice.
Perhaps what Mr. Graham’s critics are really upset about is that his comment is inconsistent with the free world’s desire to skittishly tip-toe around Mr. Putin so we avoid inviting a Russian nuclear warhead into Anytown, USA. Those concerns are not invalid and must remain under constant consideration. But we can’t live in fear of Mr. Putin forever.
There are Russians who know their country was hijacked by a war criminal masquerading as a statesman. Those Russians deserve moral support from the free world. They need to know if they display the same courage Col. Von Stauffenberg did in 1944, they too will be recognized as heroes, not criminals.
Mr. Putin also needs to know the reality that is facing him. He can continue to hide under the false veil of Russian law, but inevitably he will face justice — whether his sentence is issued at the Hague — or executed in Moscow.
Correction: A previous version of this column misspelled the name of Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov.
• Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is a former Washington, D.C. prosecutor and the former director of the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting. He is currently the assistant commentary editor for The Washington Times.
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