Assassination, Yesterday and Today
by Polly Mann, WAMM

Some years ago, WAMM member Susan Giesen and her husband Bob created an educational opportunity for Minnesotans entitled “Native Routes,” designed to expose participants to the history of the indigenous people of the area. The classroom was a bus that transported participants to locations where there were stories to be told.
One of the places we visited was Mankato, where 38 Dakota men were hanged because they had participated in an uprising against the U.S. government—an uprising brought on by near-starvation conditions on their reservation. The men were denied the jury trial to which they were entitled, instead being tried by a military tribunal. While reading the plaque on display in Mankato about the event, I thought to myself that it would be impossible for such a miscarriage of justice to occur today.

But recent events have reminded me that such injustices still occur in this country which prides itself on a judicial system that is designed to provide equal treatment for all. Indeed, with the advent and use of modern technology, the law is, very often, ignored. U.S. government agents have attempted to assassinate world leaders—acts that are not only immoral but criminal. There is no question about the illegality of assassinations.

As far as I can determine, there has been no public outcry at the admitted recent assassination of six men in Yemen as described in the New York Times, November 10, 2002: “The missile attack last Sunday destroyed a car carrying a senior leader of Al Qaeda and five others. It was the first time that the CIA’s armed version of the Predator, a drone aircraft used by the military for surveillance, has launched a missile strike against suspected terrorists outside of Afghanistan.”

What government has the right to kill, at will, citizens of another country? We know the answer: Only that government which is the most heavily armed in the world.

Perhaps descendants of the Dakota murdered at Mankato would spearhead a movement to force the U.S. government to live up to its constitution and a system of laws and abandon its “cowboy” mentality. There is a connection here. After all, there once was a time when it was reportedly said, “the only good Indian is a dead one.”