One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me [Hersh] that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government."And since these guys were so accurate in their predictions on Iraq, we should trust them on this one, right?
It always amazes me when someone expects people in other countries to respond to aggression in ways that we ourselves never would. If we were attacked, would we rise up and overthrow the government? Or would we put aside our feelings about the government (hard as that might be to do) and fight tooth and nail to defend our country, our homes and our families?
Of course we would. And I don't believe that anyone would make this assumption about a westernized society. It is a racist assumption that says that people in Iraq, or in Iran or in Vietnam or in Palestine are cowards. That they are afraid to fight, they have no pride and do not love their countries as we do; therefore, they will give up and do what we want.
Funny how we always turn out to be wrong about that. Funny how we never seem to learn from our mistakes either. Because it's always someone else's fault: the liberals, the media...the French. This would merely be an annoying trait in a ten-year-old. In the men with their fingers on the nuclear trigger, it is dangerous bordering on insane.
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