Blowback, Seymour Hersh inteview

by Miguel de Icaza

From the Seymour Hersh interview on the US and Lebanon.

GORANI: The Senora government, in order to counter the influence of Hezbollah in Lebanon would be covertly according to your reporting funding groups like Fatah al-Islam that they're having issues with right now?

HERSH: Unintended consequences once again, yes.

...

HERSH: Well, the United States was deeply involved. This was a covert operation that Bandar ran with us. Don't forget, if you remember, you know, we got into the war in Afghanistan with supporting Osama bin Laden, the mujahadin back in the late 1980s with Bandar and with people like Elliott Abrams around, the idea being that the Saudis promised us they could control -- they could control the jihadists so we spent a lot of money and time, the United States in the late 1980s using and supporting the jihadists to help us beat the Russians in Afghanistan and they turned on us. And we have the same pattern, not as if there's any lessons learned. It's the same pattern, using the Saudis again to support jihadists, Saudis assuring us they can control these various group, the groups like the one that is in contact right now in Tripoli with the government.

...

HERSH: [...] Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, has been very articulate about it. We're in the business now of supporting the Sunnis anywhere we can against the Shia, against the Shia in Iran, against the Shia in Lebanon, that is Nasrullah. Civil war. We're in a business of creating in some places, Lebanon in particular, a sectarian violence.

The blowback discussion seems to be the political equivalent mistake of introducing new species and then wondering what went wrong.

Except biologists do not get to claim that the rabbit population in New Zealand exploded and became a problem because "Rabbits hate our freedoms". There had to be a downside to being a scientist.

Lebanon War of 06

Last year, while the US claimed they were doing everything in their power to negotiate stopping the '06 Lebanon War (and as usual in these cases, taking as much time to show up and enforce anything and block any attempts at real progress) those that got their news from outlets outside the Foxosphere-of-influence [*] knew that these claims were far from honest.

Its nice to find out -again- that we were right and they were as usual lying.

Once again, am shocked! shocked!

[*] Foxosphere: About 90% of the news outlets in the US, with notable exceptions like the comedy central fake news line up.

Summer Wars

Last year I read an interesting article about managing wars from a PR standpoint.

Just like Bush administration waited over the summer to introduce the Iraq War, as "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." There is a similar rule for launching unpopular wars and attacks, although I can not longer find the article anymore, the thesis is simple: launch those attacks during the summer.

You introduce these during the summer because Universities in the US are on vacation, and Universities are a central hub of information and organization.

Lets test the theory and see see what this summer has in store for us.

Posted on 01 Jun 2007