Whose Nightmare?

It seems that if we take our maximum leader seriously, and Seymour Hersh's latest article from the New Yorker is correct, there is only one conclusion we can draw.

We have to bomb ourselves.

The resolution passed to give el Presidente authority to do, apparently, whatever the hell he wants:

THE PRESIDENT'S CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY TO CONDUCT MILITARY OPERATIONS AGAINST TERRORISTS AND NATIONS SUPPORTING THEM

The President has broad constitutional power to take military action in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Congress has acknowledged this inherent executive power in both the War Powers Resolution and the Joint Resolution passed by Congress on September 14, 2001.

The President has constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations.

The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11.

Now, according to Hersh (whose character, credentials, attitude, approach, and probably his love life are frequently attacked; interestingly, it is much more rare to find his results shown to be false by these same critics):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
. . .
The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.” . . .

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the [Prime Minister of Lebanon] Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

Opening up the can of worms that was the invasion of Iraq thus has had several consequences--none good:

a) Iran is stronger
b) Hezbollah is stronger
c) Iraq is in a civil war
d) resources are diverted from Afghanistan
e) Pakistan can ignore our pleas to "crack down" on terrorism

To do something about b) (which is exacerbated by a), we do d), can't do much about e) [but send Cheney to threaten the Pakistanis with . . . Democrats!], and all along continue to focus on c), which is, at least to a large extent, what led to a) and thus b) and thus d) and thus e).

Clearly, there are a couple of obvious conclusions to draw from this rather horrifying Realpolitik sorites:

1) Bomb and/or invade Iran.

2) Follow the resolution above, and allow the President to deploy military force against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11.

The Pentagon is quite nervous about scenario 1; some reports indicate that a number (5 is the number I've heard thrown around) of generals have threatened to resign upon its implementation, and it is quite hard to see what that will accomplish beyond adding f), g), h), etc. [fill in your own consequences] to the list above.

So I think it is pretty clear that by the Administration's logic, we have little choice but to bomb the country responsible for setting all of this into motion.