We Have To Be Like Iverson In The War On Terror

There is a story that Bill Simmons tells about Allen Iverson in his excellent new book, The Book of Basketball that Obama needs to incorporate in our war against Islamic psychos.

Here is Simmons:

I remember attending a Boston-Philly game when Iverson was whistled for a technical, yelped in disbelief, then followed the referee toward the scorer's table before finally yelling "Fuck You!" at the top of his lungs. The official turned around and pulled his whistle toward his mouth for a second technical. They were maybe 25 feet away from me, so I could see everything up close. And I swear on my daughter's life, the following moment happened: As the ref started blowing the whistle, Iverson's eyes widened and he moved angrily toward him, almost like someone getting written up for a parking ticket who decides it would be easier just to punch out the meter maid. For a split second, there was real violence in the air. The rattled official lowered his whistle and never called the second technical. By sheer force of personality, Iverson kept himself in the game.

Look I'm not condoning what happened. It was a frightening moment. I specifically remembering thinking, "I am frightened." But I have not seen a basketball player bully a referee like that before or since, it was like playing an intramural hoops game against the football team and watching the biggest offensive lineman intimidate a 130-pound freshman ref.

We have to be Iverson-like in the war on terror. Like the referee afraid to call the 2nd technical foul on Iverson, we have to make the terrorists afraid to get on that plane or do anything else that would bring us harm. We have to make them think twice about the ramifications of their actions.

Now some my say how do you intimidate someone willing to kill themselves as long as it brings us harm? But every man is afraid of something. Every man. Whether it is his family being harmed/killed, his city being flattened or something else, we have to get to the point where they are the ref about to blow the whistle, but then they realize what would happen if they did blow the whistle, and that realization and fear of what would happen if they went through with it makes them put that whistle down.

America needs to project an Allen Iverson image to the world.

Let's do it.