The only thing worse than someone trying to kill you is someone trying to kill you incompetently.

When your dark nemesis sends his best swordsman to snatch your life away with his murderous double-edged steel, at least you can't help feeling honored. But when he sends his worst swordsman who is easily induced to commit suicide by a carefully strung bit of dental floss at the entryway, it just makes for a lot of embarrassment and awkward police reports.

I, for one, say that insult calls for insult.

So next time terrorists use un-tamped, medium-grade explosives with barely functional detonators against reinforced concrete tunnels, we should retaliate by sending an elite team of six-year olds armed with sticks to Syria to make acquaintance with resident kneecaps. And when Kim Jong Il hinges his nuclear blackmail on an impressive showing of his long-range missile's skinny dipping abilities, we should send Dan Quayle armed with nerve gas filled party balloons to assassinate him.

I'm not saying we can't saturation bomb them, too. A few massive ordinance drops do wonders for adjusting attitudes. I'm just suggesting that, inbetween crippling annihilations of our enemies' infrastructure, maybe we could try to humiliate them into being a bit more competent.