Jonah Goldberg has a column about whether it’s okay for the U.S. president to mark people for assassination. I can see how that makes people queasy, but killing bad people gets things done. Here’s my idea though: Normally, the president isn’t allowed to assassinate anyone. But, once every ten years — just like the census — we’ll have what we call “The Global House Cleaning.” On that day, the president gives a list to the military of all the people around the world Americans don’t like — all the dictators we’re tired about hearing in the news and what not — and then the military just goes assassination crazy and hunts down and kills them all.
Now, some people will say it’s wrong for America to assassinate that many people — especially foreign heads of state — but that’s because people would be afraid we’d abuse our power. But we’re not abusing our power if we moderate ourselves and only do it once a decade. Then, if someone times it right, he can still have a pretty decent run as evil dictator uninterrupted. Just people have to know that all evil things come to an end. We are a super powerful country who can easily kill lots of evil people, so probably best we just let that out every once in a while and be done with it. The world will adjust.
then it would be open season on the president and congress and the fed courts…
pay back are a b….
The Isreralis hunted down the backers of the Munich Massacre for over a decade. Cheny had reccommended doing the same after 911, but it did not go very far as far as we know.
The only fault with Frank’s Ten Year Clean-up is who would be the president. Like Obama would off our allies.
Yes, I suppose it would be open season to deliver the “special treatment” to all enemies, foreign and domestic. Seems to me, there are far more domestic enemies than foreign ones today, but we shall see if the balance of enemies shifts on November second. Do we have to wait ten years before the policy kicks in, or does it kick in today? I doubt very much that the Republic has ten years to live.
“quasimodo says: then it would be open season on the president and congress and the fed courts…
pay back are a b….”
Wait .. is that an argument in favor of or against assassination, Quasi? 😉
I’m very strongly in favor of assassination. It addresses the root cause of most disputes, allows for our nation to successfully engage a greater number of threats simultaneously, exposes fewer Americans to harms way and, if marketed properly, has the potential to make us appear more compassionate as we have chosen a method of conflict which results in the least collateral damage.
Is that why Daley’s leaving office?
with your suggestion and the present administration, I fear that Hugo Chavez would be fine, but the Fox News team would be missing.
The only problem with your theory, Frank is that right now with Obama in charge I would be in deep hiding! You would already have been blown away! I think the 10 year bad guy smotin’ shall only apply to GOP Presidents.
I’m always a little fuzzy on why we can’t kill people during a war. Isn’t that the whole point of a war? As to Frank’s fine suggestion, I’m all for it. After all, it was that Von Clausewitze bloke who first said, “Diplomacy is simply killing people by other means.” The only prob I see is that once every ten years, a bunch of fereigners would come here to lobby against being killed, so mebbe we shouldn’t tell them about our plan.
Thanks to liberals getting their way for as long as they have, our presidents are now from Kenya or Indonesia, and America’s enemies are now raised on American soil and taught by libs to kill our own citizens. Libs like Jonah Goldberg. But now, Jonah Goldberg tries to position himself as an “independent thinker” who’s torn between his imaginary shades of gray.
It’s pretty simple, really. If it’s trying to kill you, kill it first.
Imagine if Lincoln had Pred’s in the Civil War? Should he have hit Lee? Or, Jeff Davis?
Sounds good, let’s call it “Jubilee”.
psst kiethp: you might be a little new to this whole “conservatism” thing, but we’ve traditionally counted Lee and Davis among our heroes.
@keithp: Lee and Jeff Davis would have been out of bounds. Mary Surratt’s Tavern would have been a fair target for a hellfire missile.
@JPG: Just out of curiosity, are you from the South? Neither of the two have been much in the hero department for me, despite ties to the South.
actually a little assassination could be a good thing!
Just think of of the ‘HOUSE’ cleaning we need in the US House and Senate. Cleaning either would require an elimination (or assassination) of wasteful spending.
But don’t get me wrong I don’t think that we should (have to) assassinate them. They should (have to) police their own Houses! I mean it is their job to clean their HOUSE. I shouldn’t have to worry about it.
So I propose that all government employees and politicians be issued hand guns, rifles, grenades, and all the ammo they can use. The best way to eliminate waste might be to just let them eliminate each other. It could be a Last man Standing gets to keep his job thing!
And if this works (and I am sure it would) we could extend the program (the Assassinate Wasteful Spending Act of 2011) to the public School system in Liberal cities. Let the kids get rid of bad teachers the old fashioned way!!
Burmashave, my guess is that JPG is from the party that was once all over and all for that Lee and Davis thing.
Sorry, I’m from Illinois. So, the whole Lee and Davis as heroes… meh… not so much.
Burmashave: Depends on who is calling the shots. Lincoln as NCA or allowing the Military to target? Little Mac prolly would not have targeted Davis or the other CSA political leadership. Grant. Prolly. Sherman? Oh yeah!
It shouldn’t be hard for our Special Super Secret Assassination Squad to find most of the people on that hypothetical list, many of them show up at the UN once a year to make rambling, anti-American speeches. After the first ‘house-cleaning’, the list would be shorter, but the remaining people on the list would be harder to find, which would be as it should be.
@keithp: You’re prolly right. I do like the mental image of Booth and his nutjobs going up in the teeny tiny splinters of Mary Surratt’s tavern.
You know what?
I really like this:
I just have one question: What day of the year are you thinking of using? I’d really like to leave it open on my calendar.
@BurmaShave – Them coming onto our spoil to Beg for Clemency would just make it a hell of a lot easier. Just set up Sniper teams around the perimeter of Turtle Bay and we’d do 50% of the work then and there.