Okay, there's some Al Qaeda in Iraq bigwig named Abu Omar al Baghdadi who has just offered a $100,000 reward for the assassination of Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. And his crime? He drew a picture of a dog with Mohammed's head on it. And there's also a $50,000 bounty on the head of the editor of the newspaper that published Vilks' cartoon.
Of course, these people don't seem to get it: that whole thing about not making images of Mohammed? That's your thing. Because, you know, you're a Muslim fundamentalist. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest a guy named Lars Vilks is not. So you don't get to make him follow your backward religious code. That's how we roll here in the West. With freedom of expression. And lots of offensive cartoons.
See, there I go again, trying to talk sense into a religious fundamentalist. Silly me.
And these are the people who need to be killed in Iraq -- or at least thrown in jail -- because they're the type of crazy mofos who are trying to spread their militant views of Islam to places where it doesn't belong. Like that place where the bikini team comes from.
I just don't know why we think we have to be the ones who kill them. Other than because we're Americans, and we kill things the bestest.
Yes, the uncomfortable reality of the Iraq War is that, unlike under Saddam, there really are some nutty Islamic types of the Al Qaeda variety wreaking a decent amount of havoc, even if they only constitute about 2% of the people we're fighting there.
The good news is that we're not the only people who want them dead. The Shiites want them dead, because al Qaeda is Sunni. The Kurds don't want them in their territory either. And now even the Sunnis in Anbar have revolted against them.
Why not let the ruthless, burn-you-to-a-crisp-and-hang-you-from-a-bridge crowd take care of it? Because that's how they roll. And we don't. And we shouldn't.
It's like when Colonel Kurtz was wishing he could have men with the will to hack off the children's inoculated arms in Apocalypse Now. Effective? Yes. Un-American? You betcha.
But you know who will go all Viet Cong on Al Qaeda's ass? The Sunni tribesmen in Anbar, who are even more pissed now that it appears Al Qaeda killed one of their tribal leaders because he was working with the Americans.
Here's a sampling of some of what they had to say:
"Revenge should be made quickly," mourners chanted as the coffins of Abu Risha and two bodyguards, draped in Iraqi flags, were carried to the cemetery. "We will chase the killers."
"All the tribes agreed to fight al Qaeda until the last child in Anbar."
"The killing of Sheikh Abu Risha will give us more energy ... to continue confronting al Qaeda members and to dispose of them," said Sheikh Rashid Majid, a leader of the al-Bufahad tribe in Ramadi.
"By killing Abu Risha al Qaeda wants to shut down the voice of Iraqi tribes. The heads of the tribes will continue to fight al Qaeda and we will support them."
I say arm them, assist them, and let them go nuts. And then leave.
Bill Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" which airs every Friday at 11PM.