Takes One To Make One

This man is an asshole:

Shiite Cleric Calls for Attacks on U.S. Soldiers
Deaths of Ten More American Troops Announced
By STEVEN R. HURST
AP
BAGHDAD (April 8) - The powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militiamen on Sunday to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq 's army and police should join him in defeating "your archenemy." The U.S. military announced the weekend deaths of 10 American soldiers, including six killed on Sunday.

Monsieur al-Sadr may well have been an asshole from birth. He was likely the kid who tromped on your grandma's peonies just as they bloomed or who put gum in your hair or who kicked your ass once a week after school. He, like most assholes, probably has a lengthy list of very plausible explanations for his seemingly maniacal persona.

We also know, however, that not every creep of a kid grows up to be a world-class inciter of violence. Sure, you get your Hitlers, Mussolinis and Reagans who grow up to sanction wholesale slaughter. But developing a reliable profile on these assholes is tough. By the time their tendency toward anusdom is fully matured, it's generally too late to do anything about it - absent lethal force or Alzheimer's.

Nature or nurture? Like we'll ever know. The more the Human Genome Project tells us about the wondrous possibilities in our DNA, the more I think we're going to end up knowing where it all comes from. I also fear we'll not be able to do a thing about it. It reminds me of the tiny snag in a cashmere sweater that once pulled becomes a $450 scar across your chest. Identifying the problem is SUCH a long way from knowing how to fix it.

Of this one thing I am sure: Assholes Multiply. Drop one into a population pool and in no time at all, you will have three. Like Sea Monkeys...only less mysterious and far more annoying. To bring things to a finer point: Nobody had ever heard of this asshole until the last few years. Unremarkably, the key event immediately preceding his emergence on the world stage was an encounter with another world class asshole, thus proving my hypothesis.

So while I cringe at the news reports that I am now the "arch enemy" of an unattractive man I've never met, I will rest assured that I know how this happened. Typically, it takes me 72 hours to earn the label of "arch enemy" (I know this because I was told as much). In this case, we owe this latest asshole to one we know all too well:

It's no longer even a matter of serious debate as to whether this asshole should have our citizens where the other asshole can reach them with your average pistol. The turbaned asshole would surely have erupted into murderous rage owing to his upbringing, a dead-end job, a relationship gone wrong, or an unfortunately undersized penis. He didn't need our help. But hey...as long as we're willing to be on the wrong end of target practice, the guy will delay his own foray into therapy because we're a convenient excuse for his anger.

As to our own asshole, we have the blessed assurance that he'll be a bad memory in about 18 months. Then we get a new asshole, I'm sure. Jaded? Lord, no! Who wouldn't like a new asshole? They wear out, wear thin, can itch, bleed or even prolapse ( I saw that in a video once and swore off anal sex for a full day). A new asshole is a new beginning, a chance to start over, use better lube, make more responsible toilet tissue choices.

So while our current asshole may be multiplying like a hermaphrodite rabbit in the Land of Sand and Burkas, take cheer! Your new asshole is in the mail. We can only hope that the old one hasn't doomed the new one to a legacy of cleaning up after his ass.

But that's just the sort of thing a true asshole would do.