Georgetown Prof: Assassinating Obama Isn't the Worst Idea in the World

Michael Scheuer has long been a grenade-tosser, from his days as a CIA officer to his anonymous 2004 broadside against the war on terror, "Imperial Hubris." Now, the Georgetown instructor has fine-tuned his argument: Barack Obama and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron are legitimate targets for assassination.

That was part of Scheuer's argument in a rambly, controversial late-December post on his blog, After arguing that Obama and his British counterpart have broken myriad laws through NSA surveillance and warmongering, are making more enemies among Islamists, and will further erode civil liberties, he goes for the literal jugular:


The following week, he sharpened his focus:

Clearly, Mr. Obama, in a paraphrase of the Rev. Mayhew's words, is on the verge of "un-presidenting" himself not only by putting himself above the law, but also by making himself the sole source of some laws. If this process continues, American citizens are duty bound to act in the manner they deem most useful to stop the consolidation of arbitrary power in, and its exercise by the national government.

Stock tea party imagery, if weirdly Anglophilic, right? It's consistent with other angry populist comments on his blog about "Mrs. Clinton's American-killing performance in Libya" and an Ivy League-educated "self-designated coterie of elitists who believe they are born to rule rather than govern Americans."

When asked by the Georgetown Hoya about his comments Monday, Scheuer clarified that yes, he'd like to get all Cromwell on these leaders' asses:

"Obama, Mrs. Clinton, Bush, Cheney, all of them [argue that Islamists] hate how we live. They don't. They don't hate the American people, what they do is hate the American government for what it does in their world," Scheuer said. "Until we realize that as fact, this war — we're going to keep losing it as we are now."

Scheuer said that if electoral options failed to remove egregiously erring leaders, the people of a republic have a right to pursue other options, including protests, refusing to pay taxes and as a last resort, revolution. Scheuer, in this vein, refused to shy away from endorsing assassination.

"At some point, when push comes to shove, you kill people and get them out of the way," Scheuersaid. "But it's the end of a very long process, and one would hope that supposedly smart men who went to Harvard and Oxford would know that the future is not a happy one for them if they continue to disregard the liberties their people have fought for over centuries."

On one hand, it's hardly surprising to see a former career CIA officer advocating the use of political assassinations. It is weird, though, to see it turned domestically and couched in Braveheart "FREEEEEEDOM" terms. It's even weirder from an instructor in good standing at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where since 2005 Scheuer has taught future diplomats and military officers a graduate-level course on Al Qaeda (titled, appropriately, "Learning to Think Like the Enemy"). He must be really pained teaching the same fancy-college "coterie of elitists" that he rails against outside the classroom.

School representatives declined comment about Scheuer to the Hoya yesterday, and a university spokeswoman said academic freedom is a wonderful thing, which of course it is. But that's beside the point here, which is: Ron Paul/Mike Scheuer in 2016!

[Scheuer screenshot courtesy of YouTube]