Assassination Proclamations

A few days ago Flippant Conservative Reaction Machine (AKA Instapundit) crapped out a long brown "idea" regarding assassination of civilian Iranian scientists:

We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists.

Now, some people thought this was a somewhat asinine idea because it's a little difficult to assassinate a sovereign nation's nuclear scientist community quietly. That's not something you can do on the 'down low'. It also begs the question of whether we have the intelligence resources to identify the correct people and quietly (or even loudly) assassinate them.

Paul Campos of the Rocky Mountain News labeled Insta-Rhetorical-Loop as the Right's Ward Churchill. (I tend to think that's a little kind to Mr. InstaLobotomy.) Mr. Campos writes:

Certainly, it's worth asking Reynolds' administrative superiors at the University of Tennessee what limits, if any, the terms and conditions of Reynolds' employment put on his behavior. After all, if the American government were to follow Reynolds' advice, his employer would have an accessory to murder on its payroll.

This led to a reaction from Instanutter defending his assassination wet dream:

And as a 1989 memorandum by the Judge Advocate General of the Army notes, killing enemy leaders or weapons scientists isn’t even assassination: “Civilians who work within a military objective are at risk from attack during the times in which they are present within that objective, whether their injury or death is incidental to the attack of that military objective or results from their direct attack. ... Thus, more than 90 percent of the World War II Project Manhattan personnel were civilians, and their participation in the U.S. atomic weapons program was of such importance as to have made them liable to legitimate attack.

“Similarly, the September 1944 Allied bombing raids on the German rocket sites at Peenemunde regarded the death of scientists involved in research and development of that facility to have been as important as destruction of the missiles themselves. Attack of these individuals would not constitute assassination.”

And it will continue to go round and round because both of these guys are lawyers, and they are highly trained in creating linguistic moebius strips.

Now, I think it's time to consider Instaheadache's response with regard to civilians that contribute toward a military objective. Members of the 101st Keyboard Division like to claim that liberal bloggers reduce soldier's morale with the hurtful things they type. So, the converse of this is the assertion that conservative bloggers improve soldier's morale with the incredibly brave words they type. Hell, Michelle Malkontent has even flown to Baghdad and blogged from the battlefield itself. Can you imagine how much worse the situation in Iraq would be if our soldiers were depressed because they didn't have access to conservative blogs? The liberal media would reduce them to nothing but quivering, crying Oprah-loving peace machines. If it weren't for the 101st Keyboarders, we would've lost Iraq years ago.

That's why I'm concerned for Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, and the rest of the crew at Red State. If we quietly assassinate the key components of the Iranian war machine, then they might start assassinating the key components of our own. Hell, it seems like you can push an agenda to assassinate anybody if you try hard enough. You'd almost think there should be another way to secure world peace and equitable global commerce. But, no probably not. I think it's time to go out and buy some body armor.