Sy-cho?

From My Lai to Abu Ghraib, Seymour "Sy" Hersh has made a career of exposing things the government would rather hide. Lately, however, he seems to be exposing his own ignorance.

In a short Reason interview (not yet available online) he's asked "What's the best-case scenario for Iraq now?" His response:

"We lose. The faster we lose the better....

We're told we're fighting an insurgency there. 'Insurgency'? No way. They're the people we went to war with: the Sunnis, the people we thought we beat. It's not an insurgent movement; it's the original war, now being fought on their terms."

Stunning. So we're fighting on their terms. Imagine I'm a Sunni before America invades. "Here are the terms upon which we'd like to fight the war. Instead of controlling all or most of the country, as we have for decades, we want to control almost none of it. Instead of fielding our old, huge army and fighting against thousands of enemy soldiers every day, causing massive casualties, we'd rather have several thousand thugs with little central control who can only make small amounts of mayhem, and have to resort to soft targets much of the time. Instead of walking proudly in the streets as we always did, we'd rather spend our time skulking and wearing masks because we can't afford to be spotted. Instead of running things completely, we'd rather have 85% of our countrymen despise us so much they're not even willing to negotiate to bring us back into the fold, while elections are planned so their opinion matters as it has never before. And, oh yeah, we want to make sure we lose more men on a regular basis than our opponents do." Some terms.

As to the sickening idea that the sooner we lose the better, this would be a huge victory for terrorists everywhere. It would be a signal that terrorism works and the U.S. is a paper tiger, time to really start attacking. And it could mean a horrendous civil war in Iraq that might end in hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions dead, likely followed by a return to brutal dictatorship. Is Hersh so upset by how we run our prisons (or petulant since his reporting isn't getting the attention he thinks it deserves) that he doesn't care about the millions of Iraqis, Americans and others who are fighting right now to bring democracy to the area?