Assassination of Dr. Tiller and Counter-insurgency

Dr. George Tiller was one of a handful of doctors that were essentially abortion providers of last resort for those late in a pregnancy.  Thus, as Matt Yglesias notes, they make a fairly effective target for political violence.  Here’s my attempt to look at how we should respond if I were considering a more generic counter-insurgency operation.

1) Differentiate between groups with similar agendas and investigate those that cross the line into threats or violence.  I tend to think the thresholds for investigation were too low in practice post-9/11 as they had often been throughout U.S. history, so I strongly doubt any increased powers are needed.  However, coordination of these efforts at a federal level is probably a good idea.  In any event, deciding that political violence is appropriate and acting on that decision is hardly unprecedented but it makes one a legitimate target for state violence within the usual legal confines.  Live by the sword, die by the sword.

2) Co-opt groups willing to eschew violence.  This does necessitate talking to them but does not require giving them what they want.  I think we might do better if we actually debated abortion rights rather than ‘judicial activism’ as the former is what people care about.  At the same time, I think it is key to have those whose rights are most impacted to be directly involved in negotiation.  That’s why I’m trying to eschew making compromise proposals, it isn’t my rights on the line.

3) A civil protection strategy is necessary.  Ann Friedman over at The American Prospect gives a good breakdown of the history of violence and intimidation as well as Congressional efforts to stop it.  That link is via Ezra Klein who I think makes a mistake in this passage: “That campaign [to deny access] stretched over decades of protests, lawsuits, violence, and, finally, murder.”  Successfully implementing a co-option strategy requires clearly differentiating between acts that are legitimately within the political sphere and those outside of it.  This doesn’t mean the strictly political are appropriate, fair, or the like, just that they use legal tools and can be countered by other legal political tools such as the National Network of Abortion funds.

4) Keep things in perspective.  I haven’t been able to find the chart by Googling, but the Washington Post had a great chart that did show that incidences of clinic violence were going down on the whole.  However, as noted above, the 1% of abortions that happen in the third trimester and have a notable bottleneck when it comes to providers.  This vulnerability means that even a comparatively small violent campaign can be effective.  The U.S. can mitigate but not eliminate the threat of violence and as a result so long as the bottleneck is so small there will always be a worry.  Decreasing the intimidation short of violence levels will help, but I think a game changer might be needed.  I have some thoughts on that issue, but I think that gets back into areas where I have no extra knowledge.