No amount of paste could help Dooku now. If only Anakin had had a little more courage and self-confidence, he wouldn’t have fallen victim to peer pressure. He could have looked the chancellor in the eye and said, “No thank you. I don’t want to.”
Remember kids, if one of your friends wants you to decapitate one of your handless, geriatric captives and you don’t want to: just say no.
Though, truth be told, this act of Anakin’s was the beginning of a
beautiful friendship.