we should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists
-Glenn Reynolds
Beheadings are for barbarians. Decapitations are for civilized actors. You know, actors like the one who plays Jack Bauer?
Frustrated with Iran's failure to be frightened by America's mighty penis, certified small-dicked moron and law school professor Glenn Reynolds calls for the decapitation of Iran's capacity to make war on his peace of mind. Religious leaders and scientists? Dead!
Matthew Yglesias, demonstrating a healthy impatience far beyond his years, applies the definitive smackdown:
One thing to consider about the Glenn Reynolds / Hugh Hewitt assassination strategy for coping with the Iranian nuclear program ... displaying an almost childlike faith in the competence, honesty, and efficacy of the federal bureacracy insofar as that bureacracy is tasked with dishing out lethal force that they would never in a million years ascribe to, say, the people in charge of the Endangered Species Act.
Well, that's probably because Jack Bauer doesn't spend a lot of time electrocuting people in the name of the Endangered Species Act, but let's not take our eye of the ball. Even a good liberal like Yglesias is more careful about the limited abilities of government to make the world safe for Glenn Reynolds' tiny pecker:
We're talking, presumably, about the clandestine branches of the same intelligence agencies who can't decide what the state of the Iranian nuclear program is, don't know where Iran's nuclear facilities are, and are unsure who, if anyone, in the Iranian government is responsible for Iranian weapons winding up in Iraq.
The Bush adminsitration, however, already knows how to deal with intelligence agencies in such matters. Agents who can't find or kill these targets will be required to pretend that they have made these kills even if it means that Doug Feith has to dangle his legs out of a CIA dumpster while he scratches out every other word including the "and" and the "the" on a stack of CIA "Sorry, I Failed to Kill Him" forms, forms that he will then hand to Condi Rice (standing in for Colin Powell) to wave in front of the United Nations. George Will will then opine that only people from San Francisco could fail to be impressed with our imaginary body-count.
Under the Reynolds/Hewitt plan, our farsiphone ninja paladin hashhashin agents will have to stalk imaginary targets and post fictitious kills, if they want to keep their Death Squad jobs that is.
OK, let's cut the crap. As the appropriately named Ugh has observed, "Glenn is advocating the assassination of Iranian versions of himself." Bush's supporters need Ahmadinejad, and vice versa. But the rest of the world doesn't need them. Come to think of it, we probably can't afford them. Our mad mullahs and intellectuals, or at least the rightwing ghetto, unceasingly call for others' blood (to be spilt by yet further others unnamed, voiceless, and by our Dear Leader unmourned) and attack all others not in their Armchair Death Squad as being both traitorous and apostate. It is a "clash of civilizations," if by "civilization" you mean "failed patriarchal opponents of modernity advocating pious genocide."
But here is where I can wholeheartedly support Glenn Reynolds, if only because his target (for a change) is Iran. After four years, it would be nice if other rightwing bloggers could take a break from calling for the murder of their Arab equivalents and follow Reynolds' lead in advocating the butchery of their Persian counterparts instead. And then, later, they can call for the deaths of their Chinese or North Korean equivalents and then, if things go very very badly, their Pakistani counterparts....
Or we could cut out the middle men (i.e., soldiers and civilians) by putting all these far-right vicariously homicidal wussies from every nation in one big room with a lot of nuclear-powered vibrators with like razors and shit on them and leave them all in there until the screaming stops.
Or is that a "big government solution"? Sadly, it will never have Mr. Reynolds' support. He's a good libertarian and doesn't trust The Government to take care of his problems for him.
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