chapotraphouse

It's when you dress up in all white and jump on a dude from thirty feet in the air and then stab him precisely in the neck, then having a philosophical discussion with them in a white room

I disagree somewhat, I think an assassination is the targeted killing of an individual or group of individuals.

Differentiated from a military action because the intention is to kill a specific person and from murder because the goal is to effect some political gain.

~~assassination should be narrowly understood in the modern Marxist context that Lenin defined it in, we shouldn't call ancient groups like the Hashashayin "assassins"~~

i'm on team 'any politically motivated murder' is an assassination. does this make most soldiers deaths assassination? yes. i do not care.

'assassin' is used with less discrimination in other languages.

I fully agree. An assassination requires at least some uncertainty about the culprit. A missile that kills 9 innocent people and one target* that you take full credit for is an act of war, not an assassination.

*The target is also almost always more innocent than every person involved in the strike.

No. Blowing up Suleimani with a predator drone was not an assassination. No. Blowing up Saleh al-Arouri with a drone was not an assassination.

NATOids are really gatekeeping assassination now