Emissions and Inspections

In response to the Oh, Brother gang touting its unverifiable gangland hit on Osama bin Laden--we shot him and we dumped him in the drink? what's not to believe?--as a sort of forged-in-the-crucible moment demonstrating the Prez's iron soul, Willard shrugged and said, well, shee-it, even Carter would've pulled that trigger.  And I am inclined to agree; Carter, after all, did pull it; his raid just didn't go so well, although, to be fair, he chose a set of targets that existed, observable to the outside world, and he couldn't fob the whole thing off by wrapping a sack of potatoes in a bloody sheet and tossing it overboard.

But to Romney's point, I say: it's a pretty good one.  The idea that US presidents agonize over this shit, wrack their midnight consciences or whatever, is false; there is no problem on earth that cannot be solved with a cap in someone's ass; to believe otherwise would be un-American.  The whole system of the imperial state tugs its symbolic figurehead in the direction of giving his benediction to acts of war.  No one selected for that office would do otherwise; a US president standing in the way of blowing something up for some or other reason would be the equivalent of a Pope redecorating the tacky-ass interior of St. Peter's--unthinkable, absurd.

What I appreciate about Romney's remark, even though this obviously isn't what he intended it to mean, is that it makes so plain the basically quotidian nature of murder-by-Presidential-decree; it says that ordering hasty acts of war is the equivalent of updating your Outlook calendar or checking your voicemail in the morning, a mundane and repetitive task that everyone performs, just a part of the job, one part Easter Egg roll and one part press conference.  Romney is standing in front of the great national Meineke and asking us to laugh at the incumbent mechanic for bragging about offering oil changes and tire rotations.  Well, what else would he be doing?