Don't We Have to Kill Him?

The head of Hezbollah, according to University of Michigan middle east scholar Juan Cole, has raised the possibility of bombing chemical factories in Israel. Cole regards the threat itself as a war crime, to say nothing of the actual doing of it. Professor Cole has a reputation as a severe critic of Israel's aggressive foreign policy, but he states plainly here that Israel has every right to kill a man who would threaten to gas innocent civilians.

As irresponsible pacifists, we at the Blasphemy Blog of course would oppose killing this guy. (His name is Nasrallah.) Why? Well, because it's wrong and it won't work.

Terrorists are nothing more than well-armed gangsters, and you can kill a gangster but there will always be more gangsters. Plus, killing people is bad for you. Really. They have done studies on it, and it turns out that killing people injures your psyche, no matter how much society tells you it's okay that you did it.

Unless, of course, your psyche is already damaged to the point where a little more damage won't matter much. But sending our psychos to kill their psychos is probably not the best way to guarantee the safety and security of the world.

So what should be done with Hezbollah's psycho? Arrest him. Put him on trial. Lock him up. We know, we know...there's not an effective international criminal court yet. But we're working on it, and some day there will be. Some day killing will just be a crime. Just you wait.