Sure It’s Illegal *Now,* But…
By Glenn Reynolds uses some somewhat prose-like stylings (“beclowned“?) to defend his crackpot assassination scheme. Alas, he doen’t explicitly defend his farcical claim that the U.S and Iran have been at war since 1979, although his analogies and tu quoques implicitly depend on such an assumption. I did enjoy this part:
Nor would such action be illegal. Assassination is forbidden by executive order. Nothing prevents the president from rescinding that order, or amending it.
Heh. Indeed. Similarly, kidnapping someone and taking them across state lines isn’t really illegal, since nothing could prevent Congress from repealing the law if they wanted to!
Anyway, what’s more striking and important is that whether or not such a plan would be legal, Reynolds has yet to offer any substantive argument for why it would work. Could anyone be dumb enough to think that the American assassination of Iranian clerics, scientists and/or political leaders would help liberal forces in Iran? That killing a couple scientists would make Iran less determined to acquire nuclear weapons? That these kinds of covert ops are remotely viable? The whole thing is nuttier than a Planters factory, and Reynolds can’t even be bothered to begin an argument on the merits. This should be irrelevant to his job, of course, but that anybody takes anything he writes about foreign policy seriously is remarkable.