alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

August 15, 2006

The Neoconservative Mindset

by AltHippo @ 9:57 am. Filed under foreign affairs, Lebanon

I noticed this bit from yesterday’s Democracy Now inteview with Seymour Hersh:

There was another element, and you mentioned that in your intro and also in your news report. One of the things that struck me right away, as soon as I saw how Israel was bombing, and my instinct told me there was something there, because in one of the Air Force plans that I knew about but didn’t write about, one of the Air Force options for taking out Iran was, of course, shock and awe, a massive, massive bombing well beyond any of the nuclear facilities. Go hit the country hard for 36 hours, drive people into underground bunkers. Don’t target civilians, necessarily, but hit their infrastructure, hit the roads, hit the power plants, hit the water facilities.

And so, when they come out of their bunkers after 36 hours, they look around. In the American neo-con view, they were going to say to each other, “Oh, my god, the mullahs did this to us, the religious mullahs who run the country. We’re going to overthrow them and install a secular government.” That was the thinking for the last year. That is the thinking for the last year inside some elements of the Pentagon, the civilian side, and also in Cheney’s shop.

The larger point Hersh is making is that recent events in Lebanon have been on the drawing board for some time, and had already been “blessed” by the Pentagon. But I’d like to focus on the smaller point, what Hersh understands is the Pentagon’s view of the Middle East mindset, or at least the neo-con portion of the Pentagon.

Particularly, how a typical citizen in Lebanon, or for that matter Iran, would respond to being bombed.

Of all the cause-and-effect analyses that a bombed-out civilian might have, that he should find the mullahs to be the source of his troubles would rank dead last. I know the more extreme bloggers on the right like to use the phrase “blame America first” to describe their nemeses on the left. But to have no understanding of US culpability, to completely ignore the likelihood that the US would be blamed first can only be sourced in willful ignorance of history.

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