Like many in my profession, I have a good deal of respect for the notoriously cranky investigative reporter
Seymour Hersh -- and his national security reporting for the New Yorker. He's making headlines again with
this piece perhaps setting the table for potential military action against Iran and featuring the eye-catching theses that the Bush administration is again hankering for regime change and at least contemplating the prospect of using tactical nuclear weapons.
It's fascinating and frightening stuff, written in Hersh's singular style -- lots of anonymous quotes from grizzled insiders and tough guys written in a straight-down-the-shaft linear style. But I found reading "The Iran Plans" to be more frustrating than enlightening. As he portrays an administration -- already militarily and politically bogged down in Iraq -- using the same philosophy driven by the same people to think about repeating the same policy, two huge questions come to mind.
1) Is it really true that the situation in Iraq hasn't given this administration a little more reason to pause, to view the virtues of multi-lateralism more warmly, and to question its ability to control events and manage the spiralling fallout from a major military operation? Can that be possible?
2) How will the great mass of American people -- now giving Bush the lowest grades of his presidency and giving Capitol Hill Republicans the willies about the 2006 midterm elections -- react if and when key administration figures start making belligerent noises about attacking another Middle East country on the basis of fears about their ability to acquire WMD and use it against us?
Here, Hersh's piece comes up empty. And if the he can't finish the job, then New Yorker editor David Remnick should assign someone to do a companion piece looking at the political/philosophical questions raised by Hersh's reporting. Hersh can always raise the pulse rate and your blood pressure. But somebody needs to add some much-needed context.