This might be the stupidest thing I’ve read in a week full of stupid things. The Washington Post was stupid enough to publish a column by a couple of dream-addled religious types.

Let the fisk begin.

Here’s how Jim Wallace and John Bryson Chane think we can get rid of Saddam short of war, and make the world a better place full of puppy dogs and daisies:

Remove Hussein and the Baath Party from power. The Bush administration and the antiwar movement are agreed on one thing -- Hussein is a brutal and dangerous dictator. Virtually nobody has any sympathy for him, either in the West or in the Arab world, but everybody has great sympathy for the Iraqi people, who have already suffered greatly from war, a decade of sanctions and the corrupt and violent regime of Hussein. So let's separate Hussein from the Iraqi people. Target him, but protect them.

That’s all fine and dandy. We have plenty of GPS-guided munitions to do just that. But Wallace & Chane think there’s a better way.

As urged by Human Rights Watch and others, the Security Council should establish an international tribunal to indict Hussein and his top officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This would send a clear signal to the world that he has no future. It would set into motion both internal and external forces that might remove him from power. It would make clear that no solution to this conflict will include Hussein or his supporters staying in power. Morton Halperin has pointed out: "As we have seen in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, such tribunals can discredit and even destroy criminal regimes."

Ah, yes – Yugoslavia and Rwanda as models of how to get rid of genocidal maniacs through the lovin’ power of lawsuits. Yugoslavia’s Slobo Milosevic, you might recall, was removed from power after NATO bombed Belgrade’s lights out. Literally. And you should also recall that NATO acted without UN authorization, because Slobo’s enablers in Moscow threatened to veto any resolution against him.

But it’ll work this time, you betcha. Or not.

Turn the clock back even further, and see what the UN did about Rwanda. They got right on that whole mess after, like, a million civilians were killed with machine guns and/or machetes. You read that number again and stop wondering why the UN is so unconcerned about a mere 3,000 Americans killed 18 months, 2 days, and 16 hours ago. Now, Rwanda is a tiny little country, population (post-Million Man Slaughter) of 7,398,074. The US has about 280 million souls. Perhaps we can get France on our side just as soon as a proportionate number of us are killed. Which American cities shall we flatten with nukes to add up to 40 million dead?

Pursue coercive disarmament. Removing Hussein must be coupled with greatly intensified inspections. This would mean not just more inspectors but inspections conducted more aggressively and on a much broader scale. The existing U.S. military deployment should be restructured as a multinational force with a U.N. mandate to support and enforce inspections. The force would accompany inspectors to conduct extremely intrusive inspections, retaliate against any interference and destroy any weapons of mass destruction it found. There should be unrestricted use of spy planes and expanded no-fly and no-drive zones.

Ah, yes – the unwilling will do the undoable by performing the impossible. Aggressively! Hans Blix as Rambo, Part IV: The De-Arminator. Broader scale! More international bureaucrats Saddam can shove around, lie to, and hide from. At least until he has enough of them to use as hostages and un(?)willing human shields. Mandate! By all means, put US CENTCOM under the UN flag. Surely, that will put the fear of God into Hussein. Right now, he doesn’t know for sure if we’ll attack without France’s permission. Surely, he’ll become more pliable once he knows every single order we issue to our troops will first have to be cleared by Chirac, Schroeder, and Putin. Force! Retaliate with those UNstrung bombers, assuming we can get nine votes sans veto.

I know these are religious men of great faith who wrote this column, but Jesus never told us to turn the other ass cheek.

Foster a democratic Iraq. The United Nations should begin immediately to plan for a post-Hussein Iraq, administered temporarily by the United Nations and backed by an international armed force, rather than a U.S. military occupation. An American viceroy in an occupied Iraq is the wrong solution. An internationally directed post-Hussein administration could assist Iraqis in initiating a constitutional process leading to democratic elections.

The first two paragraphs guarantee there won’t be a “post-Hussein Iraq” until the bastard is in late-stage Alzheimer’s. And the bastard I’m speaking of isn’t Saddam Hussein, he's Uday Hussein. For those of you who don’t like having a second Bush in the White House, I promise you he’s still better than having an Uday ensconced in Baghdad. But the real post-Hussein Iraq (coming soon to a theater near you) will be occupied by a multinational force. Thankfully, though, they’ll all speak one language – although you’d never know it, hearing some of those Brits and Aussies speak.

Organize a massive humanitarian effort for the people of Iraq now. Rather than waiting until after a war, U.N. and nongovernmental relief agencies should significantly expand efforts to provide food, medical supplies and other humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people now. Focusing on the suffering of the Iraqi people, and immediately trying to relieve it, will further help to protect them from being the unintended targets of war. It would also help to further isolate Hussein from the Iraqi public by contrasting the world's humanitarian concern with his indifference to his own people.

And daisies and puppy dogs will make Saddam a sweeter soul.

Right now, the food-for-oil program provides enough food to feed the people of Iraq. So why is even Saddam’s freakin’ army underfed? Because he diverts that aid to feed his illegal weapons programs. So the solution is to give him more stuff to trade for more weapons, and more well-meaning fools to hold as hostages. If insanity is making the same mistake over and over again, then what is it called when you graduate from banging your head against the wall again and again to doing the job with a ball-peen hammer?

Finally, to ensure a lasting peace in that troubled region, two other points are necessary.

Any takers on my bet that the two points are the lumps cause by that ball-peen hammer?

First, we should recommit to a "road map" to peace in the Middle East. The United States, Britain and other European Union nations must address a root cause of Mideast conflict with a peace plan resulting in a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by 2005, structured to include meaningful deadlines enforced by the international community.

Let me translate this for you: The way to weaken Saddam is to strengthen Arafat. Had we followed this logic in the ’80s, we’d have attempted to weaken Moscow by arming the East Germans and telling West Germany to give them all of Berlin back. And maybe Hamburg, too, just for the sake of reconcilation. As I recall, that’s not what we did. I also recall us winning the Cold War.

Then again, my memory may be rusty since I haven’t been jogging it with a ball-peen hammer.

Second, we should refocus the world's energies on the greatest threat it faces -- networks of suicidal terrorists. The international campaign against terrorism has succeeded in identifying and apprehending suspects, freezing financial assets and isolating terror networks. But it is in danger of being disrupted, both by acrimony and by lack of attention, as the world focuses on the impending conflict with Iraq.

These guys are writing for a newspaper, but they don’t, apparently, spend much time reading one. What they suggest we do instead of doing the right thing in Iraq, is exactly what we’ve been doing, while we've been doing the right thing in Iraq. Just two weeks ago, we nabbed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, his back hair, and his partner, the Evil Wife-Beater of Doom.

And the world is really focused on Iraq? The world is focused on anything but Iraq. If they were, they’d be cheering us on and offering to pay for new JDAMs, rather than sitting on the sidelines, wondering how many billions they can get out of us to buy their attention for long enough to raise their hands for a moment at the UNSC.

The world, in other words, is focused on money. Meanwhile, we crass, commercial Americans are trying to get just a little useless "moral" support before we spill our own blood to rid the world of a killer.

Unless an alternative to war is found, a military conflagration will soon be unleashed.

Nope, no alternative here. Certainly none provided by Ball & Chane.

A morally rooted and pragmatically minded initiative, broadly supported by people of faith and goodwill. . .

“Morally rooted” = Untouched by reality.

“Pragmatically minded” = more of the same stuff that hasn’t worked in a dozen years.

“Initiative” = following France’s lead.

“Broadly supported” = see the entry for “initiative.”

“People” = Just not American people.

“Faith” = Faith that somehow it’ll all be puppy dogs and daisies.

“Goodwill” = anti-American.

. . . might help to achieve a historic breakthrough and set a precedent for effective international action in the many crises we face in the post-Sept. 11 world.

That’s exactly what we’re doing, kids. And praise be to Whomever for it.