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Notes -
By "before", do you mean taking precedence over the utilitarian arguments? Because in that case, as always with deontology, you face this position being taken to absurdity, e.g. claiming you have assassinating the dictator at the cost of a nuclear war that kills everyone but you.
Do you not think that you can ever be morally obliged to suffer indignity or coercion?
Practically speaking, you can’t adequately calculate the consequences of the assassination, so it defaults to “him or you” and you’re morally justified to kill him (he is the aggressor because a dictator issues implicit death threats). Perhaps Tito not being assassinated and keeping yugoslavia going longer than it should have, precipitated the genocidal killings of the breakup .
On principle, on hypotheticals, I agree that you shouldn’t kill him (and even die by his hand if necessary) if you have divine knowledge of incoming nuclear war or genocide. But that’s a huge if.
"Practically speaking, you can’t adequately calculate the consequences of the assassination"
But you can study history. How many cases in history are there where successful hit at high value target worked as hitman intended (few) and made the world, from objective standpoint, a better place (much fewer) ?
Morally good:
Roman Emperors who did us all a favour by being assassinated: Caligula, Commodus, Elagabalus.
Quick executions where everybody went “About time!”: robespierre, beria.
Achieving goals:
Making Serbia great again: Alexander I of serbia, Franz Ferdinand.
Left-wing rabblerousing impeded: Jean Jaures, the Gracchi.
Japanese military rule through assassination in the 1930s.
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