Pundits who suck, Version 5.1.6b

The mustache bothers to opine on both Gerry Ford's funeral and Saddam's hanging, and manages to sound silly on both. : A Hanging and a Funeral (subscription required). Unfortunately, this column was not nearly as entertaining as the film "Four Weddings and a Funeral." I'll spare you most of the blather, but this one passage jumped out at me:

Saddam deserved to die 100 deaths. But imagine if Iraq’s Shiite leaders had surprised everyone, declared that there had been enough killing in Iraq and commuted Saddam’s sentence to life in prison — sparing his life in hopes of uniting the country rather than executing him and dividing it further. I don’t know if it would have helped, but I do know Iraqis have rarely surprised us with gestures of reconciliation — only with new ways to kill each other.

Gee. Imagine if we were the kind of country who had outlawed capital punishment? and that we had insisted that the Iraqis spare his life? Imagine if we had simply refused to turn Saddam over until we were certain that the execution wasn't going to turn into a grisly and appalling snuff film? And imagine if we hadn't invaded Iraq on nonsensical grounds and we hadn't ignited this civil war in the first place? And imagine if we hadn't backed a 'government' (a term I use in the loosest sense) that regularly engaged in ethnic cleansing? And how about if Friedman had actually thought about these things and written about them in his miserable column? Now that would have really surprised everyone!

Friedman is the perfect example of what's wrong in mainstream pundit-land. He was one of the main cheerleaders for the invasion, and now that it's all gone tragically wrong, he stands off to the side, tut-tutting and thinking, "My, how did THAT mess happen?"

I guess the moral of the story is that violence only begets violence, and wankers only beget wankerosity. Or something. Feh.