I really like this analogy, and I'm going to steal it. It really drives the point home.
I do have to be a pedant though and point out that "fatwa" just means "legal opinion" - in common parlance, we use it to mean "death sentence" because we think of people like Salman Rushdie (whom Khomeini sentenced to death under a fatwa in 1989).
If anything, this makes it worse - at least Khomeini had to provide some legal justification for his decision[0], whereas Obama has refused to do even that.
[0] A legal justification under Islamic law, which many would agree is itself arbitrary, but that's still marginally better than "trust me, it's legal, but I'm not going to tell you why".
I was aware of that, Shia canon law is a pretty fascinating system. If you can figure out a way to keep the pithy nature of the comparison while improving the accuracy, I'm all ears.
I do have to be a pedant though and point out that "fatwa" just means "legal opinion" - in common parlance, we use it to mean "death sentence" because we think of people like Salman Rushdie (whom Khomeini sentenced to death under a fatwa in 1989).
If anything, this makes it worse - at least Khomeini had to provide some legal justification for his decision[0], whereas Obama has refused to do even that.
[0] A legal justification under Islamic law, which many would agree is itself arbitrary, but that's still marginally better than "trust me, it's legal, but I'm not going to tell you why".