Matt Yglesias

Goldfarb Endorses Terrorist Ethics

The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb makes the case that it’s appropriate and praiseworthy for countries to deliberately target the wives and children of people they consider enemies. This kind of moral posture is not unheard of, of course. But it’s strange to see the ethics of Osama bin Laden being explicitly adopted by the organs of mainstream conservatism.

To be clear, he’s not saying that it’s sometimes okay to kill a bad guy’s innocent children as part of a military operation directed against the guy. He’s saying it’s better to kill his children than it would be to avoid killing them.

It’s really too bad John McCain lost the election so we don’t get to see this character in federal office.