Tilted_Logic said:
To be honest, I'm amazed it doesn't happen more often. Not just to political people... But anyone in general. In the grand scope of things (at least here in Canada) people seem to have such restraint. Even something as simple as an arsonist. Anytime I pass a forest it makes me realize just how easy it'd be for someone with the will to toss a match or light a fire and watch the blaze.
I am in no way saying I support or feel the urge to do any of this, it just occurs to me how easy it could be for terrible things to happen, and the fact that they don't (well, too often) is cause for appreciation.
As for political leaders? I really don't know how hard it'd be for someone with the will and the capability to do something like that. I know many people disliked Bush, and he's still kicking.
Well you could educate yourself on forest fires, the forests of North America NEEDS those fires and the naturally happen from lighting strikes and have had periodic fires for millions of years. Forests need fires every couple decades to clear the small bushes, the large trees survive the fire, but only if there is a small amount of brush. The problem is forest fires have been prevented so well for over a century the brush has built up so thick that any fire would completely destroy all trees from the intensity of large amount of brush burning. Human involvement in trying to prevent fires have meant fires when they DO come will be worse than ever and completely destroy even the large trees, and the fire-fighters cannot prevent.
The "Only you can prevent forest fires" is a lie. No one can prevent lighting strikes which are common over vast areas of forest.
Now forestry services are practising controlled burns through really every couple decades, every forest should have a fire burning the small amount of brush - so low intensity - to clear and leave the trees. But it's arguably too late now. And human interact with the environment in completely different way from pre-Columbian North America.
You couldn't just "burn down a forest" but discarding a match. The forestry services are very good (arguably TOO good) at containing forest fires not by extinguishing the fire but by cutting it off with firewalls in the forest.
And applying this to Political leaders, their security aren't dummies. The President is extremely well protected, in 1963 Kennedy's USSS detail didn't take an precaution for a gunman in a window. Robert Kennedy was assassinated as at the time candidates weren't given Secret Service protection.
The thing is, the type of people who are crazy enough to want to kill a political leader are also so mentally deficient that they cannot outsmart the security. It's like a straight jacket, Houdini said that he didn't make the straight jacket obsolete by how he was able to so easily escape from them because the type of analytical mind needed to escape a straight jacket is precisely the type that would stop you ever end up getting put in one.
Political assassination is not the worry right now, it's relatively easy to protect one man or woman. The problem today is protecting EVERYONE ELSE!
Things like en mass terrorist attacks are harder to prevent and arguably much more devastating than a president who is limited to only 2 terms anyway. Of the thousands of flights every day, Al Qaeda consider it a victory to blow one of them out of the sky and it would truly terrify and intimidate everyone.
